The Death Toll From Extreme Weather Is Becoming Clearer
In 2020, in the wake of Australia's Black Summer bushfires, Paddy Manning wrote Body Count: How Climate Change is Killing Us (Simon & Schuster, 2020). He spoke with the families and friends of victims of extreme weather events and told the human stories behind the statistics. In this Next Chapter, Manning looks at why the death toll attributed to climate change continues to be systemically underreported as well as the consequences of that disconnect.
From wildfires to tornados, heat waves to hurricanes, there seems barely time to process the last climate disaster before the next one is upon us. The World Meteorological Organization estimates there were 151 unprecedented extreme weather events last year alone. The US Federal Emergency Management Agency responded to a major weather-related disaster on average every four days in 2024.
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