“Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” The quote has long been attributed to English actor Edmund Kean, on his deathbed in 1833. Yet another English actor, Edmund Gwen, echoed the same thought 126 years later. Death, he said, “is not nearly as difficult as playing comedy.” His parting words in 1959, seconds before he died.
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Easy or not, you and I are going to die.
We’re by no means alone.
There were 56.9 million deaths worldwide in 2016, the World Health Organization tells us.
That’s close to 157,000 people a day.
The Centres for Disease Control reports latest figure of 2,717,630 deaths in the United States in 2016. Researchers at Iowa State University estimate that 76 million Americans will reach their life expectancy of 78 years over the next 24 years.
In England and Wales, 533,253 deaths were registered in 2017.
There were 267,213 deaths in Canada in 2016, the latest figure available from Statistics Canada, the highest level since the country’s Vital Statistics system was introduced more than ninety years ago.
StatCan reported in June that the number of recorded deaths in the country is trending upward, with the number reaching record highs in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC.
The pressing question facing society, then, is where those increasing numbers of human bodies will be disposed of. There appear to be no simple answers.
Cemeteries everywhere are running out of space. And most of the alternatives to the human burial problem don’t offer many solutions.
Full-body burials – preferably “green burials” advocated by a growing movement – and cremation continue to be the most viable options for most of us contemplating our own deaths.
Yet, largely due to lack of burial spaces, they fail to meet the needs of rapidly-growing numbers of humans who destined to depart this earth over the next few years and decades. Meanwhile, concerns for the global environment continue to occupy the consciousness of those who will remain behind.
There have been plenty of imaginative and creative solutions – some more practical, respectful and publicly-acceptable than others – put forward by green-burial advocates, a few land-use planners and entrepreneurial visionaries, who recognize the pressing needs for new methods to dispose of the human dead in environmentally-conscious ways.
But few politicians and bureaucrats, who will ultimately be responsible for necessary decision-making to deal with this impending crisis, are seemingly oblivious to it. The funeral industry, itself, has been largely silent on the issue, whatever its collective views or motivations might be.
In the meantime, the loss of available land for burials, combined with the surge in numbers of deaths posed by the rapidly-aging baby-boomer generation – not to mention a forecast of increasing numbers of deaths resulting from global warming – threaten a catastrophe potentially that could be unmatched in history.
Statistics Canada pointed out in June what may seem obvious: that increased numbers of deaths are largely explained by a growing population and population aging, which increases the concentration of those in older age groups, where mortality is higher.
“This concentration should increase in the coming years with the aging of the baby-boom cohort…those born between 1946 and 1965 – and its sizable demographic with in the Canadian population,” its report said. It added the age at which the highest number of deaths occurred was 84 years for men and 90 years for women.
The number of deaths recorded each year in Canada, StatCan said, is generally trending upward.
That’s hardly breaking news anywhere.
Research by Iowa State University professors Chris Coutts and Carlton Basmajian has estimated that if all Americans expected to die in the next quarter century were buried in standard cemetery plots, they’d take up 130 square miles.
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Of 56.9 million global deaths in 2016, 40.5 million, or 71%, were due to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). The four main NCDs are cardiovascular diseases, cancers, diabetes and chronic lung diseases. The burden of these diseases is rising disproportionately among lower income countries and populations. In 2016, over three quarters of NCD deaths - 31.5 million - occurred in low- and middle-income countries with about 46% of deaths occurring before the age of 70 in these countries.
The leading causes of NCD deaths in 2016 were cardiovascular diseases (17.9 million deaths, or 44% of all NCD deaths), cancers (9.0 million, or 22% of all NCD deaths), and respiratory diseases, including asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (3.8 million of 9% of all NCD deaths). Diabetes caused another 1.6 million deaths.
Source: National Center for Health Statistics
