why we love them
We love 4 Billion Dead for bringing to light difficult-to-digest science — and the resulting calamities we can expect — surrounding the mass extinction event we are currently living through. We love the invitation to confront this reality emotionally, while asking some of the biggest questions: Why are we here? What holds the universe together? How do we bear witness to these times?
What They Do
4 Billion Dead is a public information project that translates climate science into human scale. Based on peer-reviewed research, it highlights the widely cited risk that up to 4 billion people could die this century if global heating continues unchecked. Numbers alone are easy to ignore. Faces are not. This campaign invites people to take part in a simple, visible act of witnessing. Take part by downloading a 4 Billion Dead placard (or make your own), standing somewhere that matters, taking a photograph, and uploading it to the 4BD website.
How They fit in the ecology of movements
As a campaign for collective liberation, 4 Billion Dead advances the citizen-led All Systems Iterative Approach to translating the latest climate data into the projections of what that means for human society and life on this planet – highlighting the very real impacts of mass-death and societal breakdown that can be expected in the coming years and decades. In that way, the campaign challenges us to face the enormity of the moment we are in – this planet’s sixth mass species extinction in over 3 billion years of life.
As we grapple with such disturbing visions, many find themselves confronting existential questions that challenge the paradigm of Modernity itself – who are we? What are we doing here? What will remain when we die? How might we live a life of purpose and meaning now? 4 Billion Dead invites us face these questions collectively and courageously, and to find liberation from the stories of capitalism that keep us small and disempowered.
Support & donate
You can support 4 Billion Dead by making a donation, becoming a paid subscriber or by submitting your photograph to join the movement.