A warmer world, slower growth by Simon Black

slow burn
The hidden costs of a warming world
R. Ji Sung Park
Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2024, 336 pages, $29.95.

Climate change is one of the most serious threats facing the global economy. According to the World Meteorological Organization, temperatures could rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels over the next five years. And even if global mitigation policies are tightened only modestly, temperatures are expected to rise by more than 3 degrees Celsius by 2100, with potentially dire consequences.

As the world warms, concerns about its effects continue to grow. According to a survey conducted by the United Nations, two-thirds of the world’s population believe that climate change is a global emergency. There is growing concern about the risks of triggering tipping points in the climate system, such as melting ice sheets and the release of underground methane. But in addition to the risks of future climate change, there are also slow-burn effects that are already being felt around the world.in Slow burn: The hidden costs of a warming worldEnvironmental and labor economist R. Ji-Sung Park has documented these effects, from the expected, such as worsening inequality, to the unexpected, such as lower productivity and economic growth.

The relationship between temperature and economic growth is well established in the development economics literature. The observation that rich countries tend to be at high latitudes and poor countries closer to the equator has led to a number of studies examining whether this is a causal relationship or coincidence. Park summarized the literature and concluded that heat can significantly impede human performance in everything from standardized tests to professional tennis to manufacturing. “When the temperature rises, already Climate change has the potential to create winners (those who can adapt) and losers (those that cannot) and “significantly change the economic playing field.”

Regarding inequality, it has been pointed out that climate change has the potential to increase global inequality, and that the poorest countries, which contribute the least to the problem, are the most vulnerable to its effects. This appears to be the case in all countries, at the same time that poor people are concentrated in hotter regions and are more vulnerable to climate-related shocks such as heat stress than rich people. These effects are uncertain and vary widely within neighborhoods, companies, and families.

Park documents several other ways in which the slow-burning effects of climate change are already impacting human well-being. For example, rising temperatures causally increase the risk of workplace injuries, mortality, and crime rates. The knock-on effects of these impacts are uncertain, but without significant adaptation measures, they are likely to worsen as the planet warms.

However, Park concludes with optimistic words. It’s not too late to limit global warming through adaptation, building resilience to slow-burning impacts, he says. Moreover, focusing on a slow-burn perspective helps avoid the fatalism that doomsday climate change narratives evoke, and instead calls for “calm determination, compassion for the most vulnerable, and proactive He argues that we will be able to “look at climate change with a sense of hope.”

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