You're 60 percent more likely to be displaced by a natural disaster today than you were in the 1970s

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published 21 July 2015

The latest tally of people displaced from natural disasters underscores just how much of a price we're paying for climate change. A new report from the Norwegian Refugee Council, a leading European aid agency, reveals that natural disasters like typhoons, earthquakes, and flooding forced 19.3 million people from their homes last year. Asia was hit particularly hard, with disasters in China, India, and the Philippines.

While this number is slightly down from the previous two years, the overall trend isn't good. At a Monday meeting in Geneva, Alfredo Zamudio, director of the Norwegian Refugee Council's Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, told reporters that the council's analysis "reveals you are 60 percent more likely to be displaced by disasters today than you were in the 1970s."

As natural disasters intensify — likely, Zamudio says, as a result of climate change — more and more people will be affected. In the past seven years, an average of 26 million people have been displaced. That's one person every second, The New York Times reports.