Despite dire climate narratives dominating coverage in 2025, data show global deaths from extreme weather fell to historic lows as EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin moved aggressively to overhaul environmental policy.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
As legacy media outlets closed out 2025 with sweeping portrayals of climate-driven catastrophe, a key statistic went largely unreported: last year likely recorded the fewest deaths from climate-related natural disasters in modern history, even as the Environmental Protection Agency underwent a rapid transformation under Administrator Lee Zeldin.
Major outlets framed 2025 as a year of escalating climate chaos. CBS News declared that global temperatures had pushed Earth beyond a “critical climate change mark,” while ABC News published a year-in-review recounting wildfires, floods and extreme heat. The Guardian focused on the financial toll of disasters, noting cyclones and floods in Southeast Asia that killed more than 1,750 people and California wildfires that claimed more than 400 lives.
What those accounts largely omitted, researchers say, is that overall global mortality from extreme weather continued a decades-long decline.
Extreme-weather deaths at historic lows
According to Roger Pielke Jr., a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has spent three decades studying climate impacts, deaths from extreme weather in 2025 amounted to roughly 0.8 per 100,000 people worldwide. Writing on his Substack, The Honest Broker, Pielke said the figure represents one of the lowest rates ever recorded.
In 1960, more than 320 people per 100,000 died globally from extreme weather events. By 1990, that number had fallen to about 1.3. Since 2014, Pielke notes, there have been six years in which the death rate dropped below one per 100,000, underscoring what he describes as a sustained downward trend.
Data compiled by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters and visualized by Our World in Data show approximately 4,500 deaths from extreme weather worldwide through October 2025. Two cyclones in South and Southeast Asia later in the year killed an estimated 1,600 people. Even if those preliminary figures hold, 2025 would still mark the lowest total on record.
Pielke cautioned that luck plays a role and that catastrophic events remain possible, but he argued the broader trend reflects the “successful application of science, technology and policy in a world that has grown wealthier and better equipped to protect people when extreme events do occur.”
Media incentives and attribution debates
Energy analyst David Blackmon, author of the Substack Energy Absurdities, said the persistence of alarmist coverage reflects both audience incentives and funding structures.
“Catastrophe sells better than calm weather,” Blackmon said, adding that some outlets receive direct or indirect support from climate advocacy organizations. He pointed to funding disclosures from Inside Climate News, which lists donors such as the Rockefeller Family Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. The outlet has also partnered with major news organizations including NBC News and the Dallas Morning News. In one instance, CBS News collaborated with the group on a report critical of plastics recycling.
The Associated Press has disclosed receiving funding for climate and energy coverage, including an $8 million contribution in 2022 from organizations such as the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Quadrivium and the Rockefeller Foundation. While AP discloses the funding, critics argue it does not highlight the groups’ policy objectives.
Much climate coverage relies on rapid “attribution science,” which attempts to link individual weather events to global warming. The approach is promoted by organizations such as World Weather Attribution, cited in the CBS News article on record heat. Co-founder Friederike Otto told Politico in 2019 that the field was originally developed with litigation in mind. Otto later explained the legal strategy in an interview at Concordia University.
Pielke has criticized attribution science for methodological weaknesses and for rarely examining cases where warming may reduce harm. Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus, echoed that critique in a Wall Street Journal column, noting that the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season ended without a single hurricane making U.S. landfall — a fact reported by the New York Times without reference to climate change.
Meteorologist Chris Martz said attribution studies often lack peer review and exclude pre-1950 data, omitting extreme events from the 1930s. “It’s not how good science is conducted,” Martz said.
Zeldin’s EPA overhaul
Against that backdrop, the EPA under Zeldin has pursued a sharply different course. Long a conservative target for reform, the agency has shifted beyond traditional deregulation toward populist priorities aligned with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again initiative.
On New Year’s Eve, the EPA announced plans to regulate multiple uses of phthalate chemicals after a Toxic Substances Control Act risk assessment. Zeldin described the move as a “MAHA win”, saying updated science relying more heavily on human health data showed worker exposures exceeding safe levels.
“We upgraded the science,” Zeldin said on the John Solomon Reports podcast, adding that the agency would consider protective equipment, engineering controls and public input as part of the rulemaking process.
The EPA has also launched initiatives aimed at reducing food waste. The “Feed It Onward” program began in Illinois through a partnership between Frey Farms and Scott Air Force Base, redistributing produce that would otherwise be discarded. Zeldin said roughly one-third of U.S. food is wasted due to cosmetic standards and regulations, and the initiative seeks to redirect that supply to communities in need.
On climate spending, Zeldin canceled $20 billion in grants tied to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and $7 billion associated with the Solar for All program, citing concerns over mismanagement and conflicts of interest. He argued the cuts were necessary to protect taxpayers and ensure accountability.
As media narratives continue to emphasize climate extremes, the combination of declining disaster mortality and sweeping policy changes at the EPA highlights a growing divide between alarm-driven coverage and data-driven assessments of risk, resilience and reform.
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