Tom Saler: Climate change will amplify divide between rich and poor - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Tom Saler: Climate change will amplify divide between rich and poor

Tom Saler: Climate change will amplify the divide between rich and poor

In the early spring of 1776, as the embers of political revolution smoldered in America, the Scottish economic philosopher Adam Smith published a revolutionary idea of his own. Smith argued for a radically new system of commerce in which merchants were free to act in their individual self-interest. Their collective, uncoordinated actions were the “invisible hand” that Smith thought would lift humanity out of abject poverty and improve living standards.

For the most part, he was spot-on, at least in a material sense. It turns out, however, that some of those self-interested hands couldn’t be trusted to avoid becoming a little too self-interested. According to a paper published in the journal Science, internal models developed at Exxon (now ExxonMobil) revealed as early as 1977 that the burning of fossil fuels could have “dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.”

Other industrial sectors are believed to have recognized the danger even earlier, and while there were insufficient alternatives to fossil fuels at the time, sounding the environmental alarm 50 years ago might have attracted investment capital into finding solutions while providing political cover for climate-change skeptics.

There was little time to waste. Since the Industrial Revolution, the average global temperature has risen by almost 2° Fahrenheit and the rate is accelerating, though not necessarily in linear fashion. July 2023 was the hottest month in recorded history. Recently, water temperatures in the Florida Keys reached 101°F, roughly 13° above average.

Meanwhile, those self-interested hands are still at it, both here and in China, which remains the world’s most egregious polluter. In March, House Republicans approved an energy bill that sought to undo virtually all of President Joe Biden’s ambitious climate agenda. It might be noted that the oil and gas industry spent $124.4 million on federal lobbying efforts in 2022, bestowing its considerable largess on members of both parties.

More like global boiling

The term global warming is itself misleading, implying a welcome respite from snow and cold, and maybe a leisurely afternoon tossing down Margaritas at the seashore.

But don’t tell that to the 2.9 million U.S. agricultural workers sweltering and unprotected by Federal labor law, or Arizonians enduring more than 30 consecutive days of temperatures above 110 degrees, or the hundreds of millions of Americans breathing lung-damaging wildfire smoke, or families of the 61,672 Europeans who died last summer from heat-related causes, or the 143 million people worldwide “likely to be uprooted by rising seas, drought, searing temperatures and other climate catastrophes” over the next 30 years, based on a U.N. report.

The author O. Henry once observed that “the homing instinct survives even when the home is a park bench.” Yet extreme weather has one-third of Americans thinking about leaving home, though maybe not to steamy Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed a law banning municipalities from mandating water breaks for construction workers as of September, claiming the legislation would “provide a new hope to Texas businesses struggling under burdensome local regulations.”

In “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet,” author Jeff Goodell observed that “Life on Earth is like a finely calibrated machine, one that has been built by evolution to work very well within its design parameters.” And while acknowledging the ability of humans to adapt to a changing world, “extreme heat is a force beyond anything we have reckoned with before. It may be a human creation, but it is godlike in its power and prophesy.”

Feeling hot, acting sluggish

The economic impact of a seething planet is already evident. As temperatures rise, thinking becomes slower and worker productivity plunges. A study by The Lancet found that heat exposure in the U.S. agricultural, manufacturing and service sectors in 2021 caused the potential loss of 2.54 billion labor hours, up from 1.83 billion in 1990.

Less productivity translates to higher inflation and slower growth.

According to Oxford Economics, the current path of warming “has the potential to reduce global GDP levels by up to 20%.” The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago found that “climate change will harm the U.S. economy even with modest amounts of warming. The U.S. economy would stand to lose between 1% to 4% of GDP annually by the end of the century through effects to mortality, labor and the energy sector alone under a high emissions scenario.” For perspective, the U.S. economy grew by an average of 3.1% per year since 1948.

Thermal divide will grow between rich and poor

Besides restraining growth and triggering massive migrations, a scorched Earth will further amplify the divide between rich and poor.

“The lucky ones will look out the window at people fixing a power line or building a house in the heat with pity and sorrow and maybe a little fear,” writes Goodell. “And if they have any self-awareness at all, they will see the distance between themselves and the people who sweat to keep our world functioning. Because the first and most striking consequence of the human race’s trip out of (its design parameters) will be the widening of the thermal divide, the invisible, but very real line that separates the cool from the suffering, the lucky from the damned.”

For all that Adam Smith got right, the single-minded pursuit of self-interest does not always lead to a better or more humane world. Our fraught relationship with the planet — and all the lives that call it home — surely qualifies as such an ill-fated outcome. Talk to the hand.

Tom Saler is an author and freelance journalist in Madison. He can be reached at tomsaler.com