“The doom industry is alive and well despite a litany of failed predictions along the way…. Statism and statism alone can cause mass destruction and deaths, as proven in the 20th century…. The ‘insurance policy’ against this is a free society based on private property rights, voluntary exchange, and the rule of law.”
The world’s most viewed climate website (WUWT) contains a list of the exaggerated, failed apocalyptic predictions from neo-Malthusians in the last half century. So I was surprised to see this new prediction making the rounds.
Mark Campbell, “environmental journalist and communicator,” posted at his website: “Insurers Say Half the World Could Be Killed by Climate Change” (June 11, 2026). I learned of him and this prediction in a LinkedIn exchange where he protested against Michael Shellenberger’s “Caught Pushing an Apocalyptic Scenario They Knew Couldn’t Occur, Climate Scientists Are Now Claiming Their Policies Prevented It.” Cambell commented:
Some of the worst misinformation I’ve had the displeasure to read on LinkedIn and Substack. A total misrepresentation of the UN report. This sentence says it all: “They say the new worst-case scenario is just 3.3 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100 over pre-industrial temperatures.” JUST 3.3 degrees?! 3.3 degrees would cause the deaths of 4 billion people, according to a report by the insurance industry – and they understand risk. Check out the 4 Billion Dead movement if you want actual facts.
It’s a scandal of sorts:
I would wager that’s the most important story of your lifetime. But chances are, you haven’t even read it, heard it, seen it. It was in the news cycle briefly in January 2025, and came from extremely credible sources. It was reported on by the likes of The Guardian, Grist, and the insurance media but soon disappeared.
Campbell bases his gloomy warning on a report, Planetary Solvency – Finding Our Balance with Nature, published in January 2025 by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in collaboration with the University of Exeter. “The IFoA is the professional body for actuaries,” Campbell explains,
who underpin global insurance and pension markets – so it’s basically the insurance industry, which is why it carries significant weight. They understand the risks. They need to know the facts.
Other Support
Wilmar Igl, a statistician from Sweden. commented:
In fact, Professor Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber provided an educated “guess-timate” of the maximum carrying capacity of 1 billion (1 000 000 000) humans under un-controlled global warming at a plenary talk at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009 (Schellnhuber, 2015, p. 507).
Professor William Steffen, a leading climate scientist and senior research fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, also used Schellnhuber’s estimate for the maximum carrying capacity of “hothouse earth” at a recent presentation at Uppsala University on March 16, 2019. However, at present 7.6 billion people are living on planet Earth. Even if these estimates of the maximum carrying capacity are way off and the actual number is 5 billions, it still indicates an existential crisis for future generations. [1]
The catastrophists are out in force.
In mid-June, Action Network hosted “The 4 Billion Dead International Public Call,” described here. Doug Grandt contends the debate is over:
Don’t waste any more time engaging in this manufactured brouhaha [of skeptics]… even XOM has acknowledged the foreshadowing of imminent collapse as posted nearby by Rob de Laet https://lnkd.in/p/gfWYA9VH
What does the Brazilian de Laet, “Co-Leader at Climate Cooling Initiative,” state?
EXPECT TWO TO FOUR BILLION PEOPLE TO PERISH
Their risk matrix:
▪️ 2°C or more by 2050: “Catastrophic.” GDP losses above 25%, potential mortality above 2 billion people, ocean circulation severely impacted, involuntary migration of billions of people.
▪️ 3°C or more by 2050: “Extreme.” GDP losses of 50% or more, potential mortality above 4 billion, global tipping point cascade, breakdown of critical Earth climate and social systems.
Exxon’s business-as-usual forecast lands squarely between those two rows.The dashboard already rates the risk trajectory for climate and nature as RED.
So this is where we stand: the fossil industry publishes 2.5 to 3°C as a routine market outlook, and the actuarial profession tells us that range means civilizational breakdown. Both documents are public.Emissions cuts alone arrive way too late. We must also actively cool the planet the way Earth has always cooled itself: restoring forests, water cycles and living landscapes at scale, and financing the people who already protect them…. Where is our plan?
Conclusion
The doom industry is alive and well despite a litany of failed predictions along the way. Remember what Obama’s two-term science advisor John Holdren said? Back in the 1980s, he forecast that as many as a billion people could perish from climate change.
Statism and statism alone can cause mass destruction and deaths, as proven in the 20th century by such names as Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin. The ‘insurance policy’ against this is a free society based on private property rights, voluntary exchange, and the rule of law.
[1] References: Schellnhuber, HJ (2015). Selbstverbrennung. Bertelsmann, p. 507.
Steffen, W. (2019-03-16). Climate Change 2019: Rising Risks; Growing Challenges. Uppsala University, Retrieved 2019-05-21 from https://bit.ly/2Isb0Ue .
Rees, W. E. (2019-09-18). Yes, the Climate Crisis May Wipe out Six Billion People. The Tyee Online Magazine. URL: https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2019/09/18/Climate-Crisis-Wipe-Out/
NEP Global Environmental Alert Service (GEAS) (2012). One Planet, How Many People? A Review of Earth’s Carrying Capacity – A discussion paper for the year of RIO+20. URL: https://na.unep.net/geas/archive/pdfs/geas_jun_12_carrying_capacity.pdf
McKinsey Global Institute (January 2020). Climate risk and response – physical hazards and socioeconomic impacts. (“Livability and workability”, p. 98), https://mck.co/2ZuSYcV
Global economy could face 50% loss in GDP between 2070 and 2090 from climate shocks, say actuaries