Implied in report of global warming death toll, an accusation of censorship

If 300,000 people die each year because of global warming, as the Global Humanitarian Forum asserts in a report released today, why don’t we hear more about it? The death toll is higher than the body count from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and if you consider it preventable, places global warming among the world’s leading preventable causes of death, though not quite on par with road accidents, violence, and suicide. Yet. The report estimates the annual death toll will reach a half million by 2030.
Global warming is often described in terms of its impact on the planet: melting glaciers, rising sea levels, vanishing species. Where are the headlines about the cost in human lives?
According to the Forum’s president, Kofi Annan, and the report’s authors, many of the victims of climate change don’t know they are victims of climate change, because they experience more immediate effects: heat waves, floods, storms, forest fires. And many who are surviving climate change pay little attention to those who aren’t, nearly all of whom live in the Third World.
First Worlders may be interested in the economic cost, however: $125 billion per year, the report estimates. Contrast that with $18 billion in foreign aid promised to developing countries to help them cope.
In today’s Guardian, Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, writes of “This silent suffering”:
Four main factors have contributed to the silence. First, while the world has been coming to terms with the science of climate change, the problem has moved from being a future threat to a current danger. Climate change is an evolving concern, affecting people now.
Second, 99 percent of the casualties linked to climate change occur in developing countries. Worst hit are the world’s poorest groups. While climate change will increasingly affect wealthy countries, the brunt of the impact is being borne by the poor, whose plight simply receives less attention.
Third, and worse, climate change hides its influence among a wide range of today’s key global problems. It impacts heavily on nutrition and diseases such as malaria, and increases poverty. But that impact can be lost among the many contributing factors.
That is why a fourth major challenge is the current inability to separate the impacts of climate change in specific situations. It is impossible to say, for example, how much the severity of any hurricane is due to climate change.”
via The Guardian.