Bloomberg BusinessweekHow the Subtle but Significant Consequences of a Hotter Planet Have Already Begun
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R. Jisung Park, Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses his book Slow Burn: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World.
Hosts: Tim Stenovec and Katie Greifeld. Producer: Paul Brennan.
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You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio. Katie, I know I asked you this earlier. I don't know if we were on air though, but about going to New Jersey and seeing leaves and the fire danger.
Yeah, I can't actually remember if we were on air or not. But yeah, no, I'm.
Always on air.
Oh it is always well I live here, but anyway, Yeah, no, it was wild this weekend, waking up in Manhattan seeing the air quality index above one hundred. Haven't seen that in a while. I had to flee to New Jersey, at least where I was going in New Jersey.
I have bad news for you. Yeah, there are wildfires in New Jersey and the according to the Associated Press, it's been the driest September and October ever.
Yeah.
New Jersey is now going to issue a drought warning. It could be a step that could eventually lead to mandatory water restrictions if significant rain doesn't fall soon. I'm from California. Yeah, no, this is like what we deal with all the time.
I made a joke, actually I was going to horseback rode and I made a joke to my barn manure, my barn owner.
That is relatable.
I feel like we're in California, like worried about wildfires. We're praying for rain, but we're in the great Ston, New Jersey.
So that plus the fire and Prospect Park on Friday night, the hurricane intensity that we saw, rising insurance prices scary stuff. These are things that we can see coming as a result that many scientists would argue of a warming planet of climate change, but they're also hitting costs of a warming world. And that's what our Ginsung Park writes about in his new book. It's called slow Burn, The Hidden Costs of a Warming World. The Jinsung Park is assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He's author also an environmental and labor economist. He joins us this afternoon from New York. Jinsun, good to have you with us. It's remarkable to hear that there are hidden costs here, because this is something that I think is so visceral for so many people, no matter where they live right now. So what's hidden right now?
Yeah, Well, first of all, thanks for having me on the program. I was smiling a bit when you were in the intro talking about the wildfires in New Jersey. Certainly something that my wife and I experienced a lot of when we were living in California. But that's a great case in point of the hidden costs. I mean, when we talk about wildfires, typically what's most salient and visible are the flames, right they burned down homes, they force us to evacuate, as very destructive, but at least according to recent research by research at Harvard and Stanford and elsewhere, the hidden costs associated with wildfires smoke maybe just as damaging, if not more so. The last numbers that I saw suggest that, you know, maybe dozens of people have died due to wildfire flames in the past several years in the United States, but the estimates are that anywhere between five and fifteen thousand may have died every year due to the additional air pollution caused by the wildfire smoke, which, as you may know, can travel large distances. So that's just one example of the many hidden costs. I mean, just to take a step back, one of the reasons why I wrote the book is is you know, as you mentioned, climate change has become such a visceral issue, but it's also a very complex issue, and we all need sort of you know, simplifying mental heuristics to help us think about it and for better or for worse.
You know.
I had the observation that a lot of the discussion around climate change is tended to have sort of a black or white kind of almost fatalistic hue to it, And that's useful if you think about so, it's useful to think about climate change, of course, as sort of an insurance problem, right, how are we ensuring against the risk of potential planetary catastrophe. That's obviously one important way to think about it. But one of the additional mental heuristics that I certainly hope we can add to our toolkit is to think of it as a slow burn, right, as not so much an imminent crisis for you know, all of life on planet Earth, but more of a slow burning kind of degradation of quality of life crisis that is already unfolding, sometimes in visually salient ways, but often.
In hidden ways.
Well, if you think about it as a slow burn, what does that mean in terms of addressing climate change? Because it feels like, you know, with so many things, there's this big, dramatic event and then there's all this urgency created around it to address it. If it is a slow burn, do you think that that takes the urgency out of trying to combat this problem.
Yeah, I mean, that's certainly a risk, and that's probably one of the reasons why, you know, there's so much disagreement about how we should communicate climate change, you know, the politics behind it.
It's always been contentious, you know, and there's.
Good, I think, a good argument for at least jolting us out of our complacency, you know, via images that are more you know, salient, and some might argue extreme, but I would argue that if you believe in you know, evidence based policy, and if you and if you believe in the public's ability to understand and digest even some modicum of data, the data kind of speaks for itself almost overwhelmingly. Now that even even if you think about just the economic consequences of the slow burn aspect of climate change, putting aside the sort of distant potential annihilation prospect, you know, the data suggests that it makes cost benefit sense from a societal standpoint to aggressively reduced emissions. Now, how we communicate that, who we communicate that to, in what settings? You know, I'm not an expert in that, and I'm sure that that will vary. But if you care about just understanding the basic economics behind the cost benefit, the social cost benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions aggressively, which is what is it needed right.
To slow the slow burn? The data sort of speaks for itself At this point, I think.
Well, how do you think about the I think the conversation we're having today is going to be a lot different than the conversation we would have had two weeks ago, because now Trump has been elected to another term. He's now tapped former New York Congressman Lee Zelden is EPA chief. This is somebody who's a climate skeptic. We have about a minute left. We're going to do some news and we're going to come back and talk to you more about this. But how do you think about the federal government and the new administration playing a role in everything that you're talking about?
Yeah, that's a great question. I wish I had a crystal ball.
I was speaking to one of my colleagues the other day about we were just speculating, Okay, like, how durable do we think the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act and other legislative measures on climate change that we're passed during the Biden illustration will be over the next four years? And we weren't sure. I don't think anyone is sure about that. I will just say, since we I know we need to break there's a lot of uncertainty there. But my read of the data also suggests that there's a lot of momentum that is more a product of a combination of previous policy and technical change that I imagine will be.
You know, will be in the background regardless of what.
The specific policies tomorrow or not taken in this coming administration.
So maybe that's room for a little bit of hope.
Hey, radio manager, Justin Milliner me and sending us this story.
Yeah, this is kind of wild, very timely.
Very timely. New York City Amtrak trains delayed after brushfire disrupts rail service. A brushfire east of New York Penn Station has spurred power outages for Amtrak trains running too and from New Haven, Connecticut, prompting lengthy delays.
Four passengers.
Yeah, apparently According to the agency, trains approaching Pen Station are being moved out of the area using diesel powered engines. All service between New York Pen Station and New Haven suspended for the remainder of the day. Trains between Boston South Station and New Haven are operating at limited capacity. There's a lot of unhappy commuters right now. But again, like you said, this is because of.
A brushfire exactly. This is the again, a visceral reminder of climate change, given that we've seen record heat in the area, record temperatures in the area this month and last month. Let's get back to our G Sung Park, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He's also an environmental and labor activist. He's got a new book out. It's called Slowburn, The Hidden Costs of a Warming World. He joins us once again from New York. G Sung, before we went and did some news, you mentioned that you were thinking a way you were thinking about the new administration when it comes to policy, when it comes to the inflation reduction. I'm wondering how you think about government role here versus the role of the market versus the role of individuals. It's a big issue.
Yeah, absolutely, and so maybe it's worth taking a step back and separating out what realm in which we are referring to it when it comes to climate change. The right you can think about mitigation, right, reducing emissions, the energy transition, whatever name you want to put to it.
Right, the government role.
The role of government there is in some ways unambiguous, at least in terms of whether there should be some government role, and we can get into why that is. But the short story is that, you know, climate change constitutes a classic negative externality problem and a global public good problem, and so government needs to play some role in setting the market signals straight. Of course, that doesn't mean that government is the only player it. You know, there's a huge role to be played by the private sector. We could also talk about what is the government's role in adaptation. I mean, you mentioned the brush fire and what it has done to disrupting rail service between Penn Station and New Haven. I mean that's just one example of many ways in which you know, we can expect ongoing climate change regardless of what we do in terms of emissions reductions, how how climate change will affect our quality of life, and what the government role is there in terms of.
Helping us adapt to those risk is less clear. I think I think it.
Will depend in large part on you know, what are the marketing perfections at play when it comes to these kinds of adaptation decisions. Are there important information asymmetries or is there sort of a coordination role to be played. But to answer your question, yeah, I think it kind of depends, but certainly in the context of, you know, mitigating emissions so that we can slow global warming climate change overall, Yeah, I think it's quite quite obvious that government has to play at least to catalyzing and sort of price signal setting role, if that makes sense, whether that's with a price on carbon or something else.
Let's talk a little bit more about consequences, because you make the point in the book that it's not just some of the obvious day to day consequences that you might think of, but you also talk about lower test scores for example, you talk about higher crime rates, not issues that people would typically associate with a hotter planet. Draw that link for.
Us, Yeah, sure, And again you know that was one of the motivations.
You know, the research that I've engaged in and I'm familiar with that there's this increasingly intricate and compelling story of how even so called non catastrophic amounts of warming appear to have you know, subtle but cumulatively meaningful and pervasive consequences for day to day life.
So you mentioned test scores.
You know, there are number of studies that now show that students taking their exams on a hot day, even in a place like New York City, which you know is one of the materially wealthiest you know, places on Earth.
Nevertheless, students who take their.
Exam on a ninety degree day, you know, roughly ten percent less likely these are New York City regions exams to pass a given subject.
You know.
Another example that may not be obvious is just thinking about how climate.
Change interacts with the world of work.
You know, even in the United States, again, you know, one of the most highly industrialized countries in the world, there are many millions of workers, in fact, over two thirds of the roughly one hundred million or so workers without a bachelor's degree who are routinely exposed to the elements on the job. Agriculture workers construction workers are you know, the first two categories that come to mind, but there are many others, you know, utility repair crew, warehouse workers, even in some indoor settings where there are already ambient sources of heat or cooling, is difficult. You know, there's evidence to suggest that when temperatures rise, and they don't have to be in the triple digits, you know, even moderately elevated temperatures in the eighties and nineties can lead to a significant uptick in the risk of serious accident or injury or illness on the job. So, you know, these are the kinds of you know, what I'm calling subtle climate risks that are more pervasive than first meets the eye, and which you know, the data and the research that have come online in the past decade plus given so much better insight into g some.
We have a little over a minute left, so I want to make sure I get this end it because it's crucial. How do we make people care? We just went through an election where overwhelmingly what we learned was the only thing that matters is inflation in the economy. It's what polls are showing us how people feel about their economic situation. How do you get them to care about the temperature that kids take a test in when they can't afford to feed their family at the grocery store.
That's a great question. I don't know if I have a great answer to him.
But you know, one way that I've continued to think about this problem is, you know, by clarifying the links between something like climate change and the economy and making it, you know, maybe moving climate change as an issue out of what has historically been you know, an environmental policy issue per se into a more Hey, it actually matters for the broader operating you know, infrastructure of the economy. It matters for how we understand economic well being broadly, because shoot, that may be one way we make people to care a little bit more.
But I don't have a great answer, to.
Be honest, Yeah, I don't know either. It's something that I know a lot of people are thinking about right now. We really appreciate you taking the this afternoon, spending so much time with us. The new book Slow Burned The Hidden Costs of a Warming World. That's our g Sung Park, Assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, also an environmental and labor economist,
