SLOW BURN

An invitation to “view the climate problem through a slightly different lens.”

Park, an environmental and labor activist and a social policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania, shows us how changing our focus to the deeper-seated implications of climate change for education, health, and the economy brings startling facts to bear. For example, injuries are more common on 90 F days as compared to 60 F days, murders increase, and cognitive performance declines. A warming world, Park observes, accelerates “subtle social disparities” and inequalities. In poor and developing nations along the equator, such as Ghana, heightened temperatures will mean a spike in the mortality rate, nearly double that anticipated for nations in relatively more temperate latitudes. In the U.S. on a hot day, “Black and Hispanic students are two to three times more adversely affected than their White or Asian counterparts,” given the lack of an adequate physical plant in poorer schools. Not that the wealthy are altogether safe; as Park notes, in the summer of 2023, when Canadian wildfires’ smoke blew south, New York “was the most polluted major city in the world,” the Upper East Side as much as Hunts Point. This speaks to the hidden cost to human capital, perhaps the single most important tool in working our way through the crisis. In a useful aside, the author takes on the libertarian let-the-market-fix-it crowd by observing that even Milton Friedman acknowledged that there are problems too large for the market to solve. Though some knowledge of economics is helpful for readers, Park writes clearly and well, making a strong case for immediate action rather than waiting for the costs to compound—which, over the next couple decades, they are certain to do.

A multifaceted look at the many externalities of a warming world.