The surprising cause of most global deaths, and how we can stop it

Dire predictions about climate change and health omit the cost of cold, says Bjorn Lomborg. By Bjorn Lomborg, 13 Mar 2009 Global warming will increase the burden on the British health system because more people will suffer from heat-caused illness. This was the message delivered to a conference in Copenhagen this week by Alistair Hunt, a researcher at Bath University. "I am trying to bring home the impact of climate change to everyone," he said. (...) 

Jobs don’t come much tougher than this. Whoever is chosen as the new head of the World Health Organization next week has $4.5 billion a year to spend – but when you’re trying to improve public health on a planet of 7.5 billion people, you have to use it wisely.

So the new director-general needs to prioritise areas where a sharper focus would squeeze the most out of every dollar, yen, euro or pound spent. Doing this would also bolster the case for an increase in the WHO’s budget.

Last year, life expectancy on the planet reached 70. This is remarkable progress — just 115 years ago in 1900, life expectancy was around 30. In Roman times, life expectancy was about 22 years. Compared to a century ago, each of us has now been granted more than two lifetimes