The World Problems Index

Environment

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GlobalEnvironmentSince 1850Curatedmedium confidence

Climate Change

Warming driven by greenhouse gas emissions is raising mortality, displacement and economic damage across every region.

Severity score

89.6

Catastrophic · default weighting

Trajectory

Worsening

What this is

Human-caused climate change is the single largest slow-onset threat measured on this index. Rising global mean temperature intensifies heatwaves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms; shifts disease vectors; and stresses food and water systems. Mortality attribution is contested because deaths are usually recorded under a proximate cause such as heat stroke, famine or flooding, so estimates vary widely. Economic damage estimates likewise diverge depending on whether they count only direct disaster losses or the full drag on future output.

Score breakdown

Loss of life

72

Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.

Lives negatively impacted

100

People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.

Financial cost

95

Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.

Environmental impact

100

Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.

Trajectory

90

Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.

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