4 Billion Deaths: What The World Actually Looks Like at 3C of Global Warming

It's bad enough.

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There’s a new strain of hopium going around. It sounds like this: We’re probably on track for 3C of global warming by the end of this century, and we should celebrate. The apocalypse is canceled. Well, they’re wrong.

Anyway, 3C is just a number and a letter.

It almost sounds like a bra size.

What does it look like?

And is 3C likely?

Yes, that’s the new scenario we’re being sold. That’s the consensus. Not 1.5C. That’s dead. Forget that ever happened. The new goal is 3C. It was always 3C. Who ever said 1.5C? Lol, ridiculous. It’s entirely possible that most of the planet could breach 3C of warming as early as the 2050s.

One major study by scientists at Stanford, Colorado State, and ETH-Zurich analyzed 10 different climate models and found that the majority of Earth will blow past 2C of warming by the 2040s, landing firmly in 3C territory by the early 2060s. The German Physical and Meteorological Societies issued a joint warning that the planet could go 3C over preindustrial levels by 2050.

Work by James Hansen and Leon Simons has predicted the planet will start hitting 2-3C of warming by the middle of the century. Simons has also commented on the 3C scenario and finds it plausible. In early 2025, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) and the University of Exeter released a report laying out the worst case: We hit 3C of warming by 2050.

According to the actuarial report, 3C of warming would result in 4 billion deaths, leading to “significant sociopolitical fragmentation worldwide, failure of states… and extinction events.” They also predict a 50 percent drop in GDP.

The Institute and Faculty of Actuaries isn’t a bunch of Reddit doomers. They’re one of the most respected groups in the world. They assess financial risk and uncertainty for institutions. It’s their job to be right. When they’re wrong, they face consequences, unlike podcast bros who can say whatever they want. The University of Exeter is one of the best universities, part of the Russell Group, considered the “American Ivy League.” They’re known for their intellectual rigor.

You can trust them.

If you want to see the world at 3C, I would recommend three books: Our Final Warning by Mark Lynas, 3 Degrees More edited by Klaus Wiegandt, and Racing to Extinction by Lyle Lewis. Let’s go ahead and paint the picture: We can already expect 4 billion deaths coupled with a 50 percent collapse of the global economy, but it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s going to happen over a period of decades, a slow grind punctuated by disasters like Hurricane Helene.

At 3C, large parts of Europe and North America turn into deserts. Dustbowls reminiscent of the 1930s in the U.S. become permanent, with a 40-50 percent collapse in agricultural production. According to a 2020 study in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, “the United States depletes nearly all of its wheat reserves” within four years, triggering a larger “loss of 31 percent of global wheat stocks.” According to a 2016 study in Nature, soy and corn drop by 40 percent. Every degree above the preindustrial average would make it 25 percent worse. Famine ensues.

At 3C, cities like New York experience catastrophic flooding on a regular basis. High tides invade large areas of downtown every night.

Eventually, they’re underwater.

Dangerous heat waves envelope large parts of the world during their springs and summers. Power grids start to buckle. In large cities like Phoenix, up to half of the city could wind up needing a hospital.

In a 3C world, a billion people around the planet routinely endure "temperatures that exceed the workability threshold, where it becomes impossible to safely work outside artificially cooled environments, even in the shade.” We see four times more floods. They cause 10 times more damage, killing at least 20,000 people a year, and rendering hundreds of thousands homeless. That alone guarantees the collapse of the insurance industry.

Pandemics become routine events. Mosquitoes and other insects migrate north, bringing everything from malaria to yellow fever with them. Ticks become an ever-present threat in your back yard. Diseases we thought we conquered with vaccines will mutate and strike back harder. F5 tornadoes become normal. Category 5 hurricanes become normal. Catastrophic floods and fires that used to happen every 100 or 1,000 years happen almost every year. Supply chains won't withstand the bombardment. Neither will power grids. A 3C world pushes us beyond many of our tipping points. The ice sheets melt. AMOC collapses. Permafrost thaws. The rainforest dies. The boreal forest moves north. We know for sure these events will release even more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. They'll unleash new pandemics. Most of Africa and the Middle East will become completely uninhabitable.

That’s what a 3C world looks like.

It is not a fun place. There is no reason to celebrate this. Even suggesting so is either deeply naive or deeply disingenuous.

That’s not fearmongering. That’s not doomerism. It’s science. It’s reality. It’s a hard look at the future, unadulterated by our hopes and wishes about what happens. That’s the path we’re on. We’re currently not on a plan to avert this world. This is the world that most scientists agree we’re heading toward. The only disagreement now is whether we’re going to get there by the end of the century or the middle of the century. Anyone who tells you that renewables alone will save us doesn’t know about Jevons Paradox or the corruption of climate conferences by the fossil fuel lobby. Accept this reality or don’t. It’s your choice.

Is there hope?

When the party that promises to save us from fascism engages in climate hushing and completely ignores anyone who talks about degrowth or steady-state economies, I think we have to be honest.

That won’t work.

This is the part where emotionally fragile adults start whining and demanding that we, the ones who pay attention, present them with solutions that they find convenient and acceptable. Well, sorry, buddy, there are no convenient or acceptable solutions. There are difficult solutions. There are solutions that require some sacrifice and hardship. There are solutions that require cooperation. There are solutions that won’t save everyone or prevent every bad thing.

There are solutions that won’t seem fair.

These solutions require us to do things we don’t want to do. They’re the only solutions we’ve got. Everyone knows what they are at this point. They’ve been said over and over. People just don’t want to do them.

I’m not saying this to scare or panic anyone. Do I sound scared? I’m not. I’ve been living with this news for a long time. I’m doing what I can to prepare, and I realize the limits of preparedness. I’m getting ready to die. I’m not letting it stop me from enjoying my life. I’m doing all the things I enjoy. I’m doing all the things I find meaningful. I’m not sitting on my phone doomscrolling. But I also can’t just sit back and let toxic optimists and climate hushers control the discourse. They’re wrong, or they’re lying, and they deserve to be called out.

When someone accuses you of being a doomer, you can say: What would you rather have? Do you enjoy being lied to? Do you enjoy being treated like a child or a small pet that can’t handle the truth? Do you enjoy being coddled? Or do you want to join the adult table and have real conversations every so often about what we can do to make the rest of this century a little less painful?

I like the adult table.

Many people prefer the kids’ table.

That’s the real reason we keep seeing all the hopium and goalpost-shifting on the climate targets. It’s why the new climate optimists want you to throw a party over 3C of warming, when it’s actually going to kill half of us.

We already have all the solutions.

We just won’t do them.