Landslides raise question: What do we count as climate change-related death?

Another new study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that 21,518 people have died from heat-related causes since 1999. Since then, heat-related deaths have increased by 117 percent, with a sharp increase since 2016. The hottest year on record was 2023, when at least 2,325 people died from heat-related causes in the U.S. — as did Europe, where 47,000 people were reported to have experienced intense heat waves. This year is shaping up to be even hotter, thanks in part to heat waves like the one that hit the eastern United States earlier this week.

The assessment of what counts as a heat-related death is complicated, and some studies estimate that the actual number may be much higher. If you die after collapsing at work, overheating in the blazing southern sun — perhaps in a part of the country that has only recently become so hot — your death certificate may not even state that you died from heat-related causes. The same is true for other deaths linked to climate change. Hurricanes, derechos, and other extreme weather events are certainly being supercharged by rising temperatures, and scientists’ ability to assess exactly what role climate change is playing is improving. But that’s not accurate science, as they say.

Attributing the death toll to the climate crisis is even more difficult. Some cases may seem straightforward: people caught in wildfires that were fanned by a glut of dead branches from a hot, dry spring; a tenant who drowned after getting stuck in a New York basement apartment during flooding caused by a hurricane that intensified over unusually warm water in the Gulf of Mexico. I can think of less obvious examples, too. What about a small farmer forced off his land and into dangerous parts of the informal economy after years of drought destroyed his crops? If he died in a shooting, could his death also be considered climate-related?