By Rebecca Beitsch - 10/12/20 02:39 PM EDT
There were more than 7,000 extreme weather events since 2000, a major increase over the previ.ous 20 years due in part to climate change, according to a Monday report from the United Nations.
From 2000 to 2019, there were 7,348 major recorded disasters claiming 1.23 million lives, affecting 4.2 billion people, “many on more than one occasion,” and causing approximately $2.97 trillion in global economic losses, according to the report.
There were 4,212 such events from 1980 to 1999, which took 1.19 million lives, affected 3.25 billion people and resulted in approximately $1.63 trillion in economic losses.
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"It is baffling that we willingly and knowingly continue to sow the seeds of our own destruction, despite the science and evidence that we are turning our only home into an uninhabitable hell for millions of people," Mami Mizutori, head of the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, wrote in the report's forward.
Flooding and storms were the most prevalent events, together comprising 72 percent of all major natural disasters. The number of major floods doubled between the two time periods.
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