The billion deaths are total premature deaths. It's analogous to the total covid death toll. Have millions of people died due to covid? Yes. Were the deaths uniformly distributed across the world's population? No. The majority of premature covid deaths were concentrated in specific groups of people.

The climate change death toll is similar. People who are living in already precarious situations will be disproportionately impacted.

I think lots of people see that billion deaths number and imagine tornados, hurricanes, and heat waves destroying western cities. In reality, it will largely be the sick, young, and elderly in developing nations prematurely dying due to resource scarcity.

Obviously still a major problem, but the context is necessary to develop effective responses and solutions.

[–] uphillbothways@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Could be argued it's also misleading because it's a conservative estimate by a full order of magnitude.

[–] hypelightfly@kbin.social -1 points 1 year ago

That's all true and it's good to put the statistic into perspective, but even with that context it refutes the comment they replied to.

Tell them that none of the scientists are suggesting they’re going to die from climate change, that’s coming from laymen repeating stuff with their own flair and farming engagement from them on tiktok.

This is straight up false.