Hugh Bollinger / Tuesday, July 5, 2011

The 'lazy-bones' theory of climate change

MIT study says: One degree hotter, one percent poorer

By Reilly Capps (I'm a little busy just now sleeping on couches. This was originally posted in August 2009) Wanna visit a nice, well-off country this summer? The kind with indoor plumbing and a high tourist survival rate? Better bring a sweater. Of the 20 richest countries per capita, you can ski in at least 14. These are places like Sweden, Canada, and Australia. Only one really hot country, oil-slathered Qatar, slithers its way into the top 20. To visit a poor country, bring flip-flops, and prepare for pit stains. East Timor, Congo, Niger. Of the 20 poorest countries, only two -- Nepal and Afghanistan -- would ever really require wool socks. Most of the rest are large outdoor microwaves. You probably noticed this in elementary school, that cold-equals-rich and hot-equals-poor, and there's no great explanation for it. After all, the richest countries weren't always cold. Egypt, Greece and Persia once did a brisk business in world domination. What gives? Is this phenomenon just a recent historical fluke? An offshoot of the fact that, over the last 500 years, Japan and Europe and the former European colonies have exploited the natural resources of the poor? Not entirely. A study by economists at MIT shows that there is a solid correlation between temperature and wealth. And it should worry us about the future of our warming planet. The study took what you already knew, that hot countries are poor, and looked instead at temperature changes within those countries, measuring temperatures year by year, to see how an abnormally hot or cold year affected the country's economy. Astonishingly, it found that the hotter the year was, the slower the economy grew. On average, in poorer countries, the study says, "a 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature in a given year reduced economic growth in that year by about 1.1 percentage points." So, broadly speaking, hotter equals poorer. Why would this be? The study throws out all kinds of possibilities: poorer countries tend to be more agricultural than richer countries, and so a hot year can wilt the crops and ruin the harvest. That seems obvious. But, the study says, "temperature not only impacts agriculture, but also affects industrial output, investment, scientific research, and political stability." People may even be more likely to riot in the heat. It's true in America: the riots in Watts and Detroit were both in the hottest part of the summer. Meanwhile, North Dakota rarely riots. The simplest theory can be called the "lazy-bones" theory, which simply says that the hotter it is, the less you feel like working, and the more you feel like hammocking. This is a dangerous theory on account of the fact that it validates a lot of stereotypes. Why, in America, does the south tends to be poorer? And why, in Brazil, why does the hotter north struggle? "This stuff is not implausible," Ben Olken, an associate professor of economics at MIT and one of the study's authors, told NPR. "If you look back at the U.S. before the advent of air conditioning, there were times when the federal government would shut down. It was too hot out." The effect of temperature on economy, the study says, is only true for poor countries. In rich countries, a hot year doesn't really affect economic growth. Why not? Well, rich countries have that sweet A/C, for one. And, nowadays, we're not outside much. (Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said kids spend four minutes a day outside.) Plus, our GDP doesn't rely as much on agriculture -- they don't farm much in Norway. Whatever the reasons, this is one more piece of evidence that the economy and the environment are inextricably linked, and that global warming is certain to hurt poor countries the worst, hurting the people who can't afford to be hurt, hurting the people who always get hurt the worst. Looking into the future, it doesn't get better. "Extrapolated over 100 years, this implies that the median poor country’s income will be about 50 percent lower than it would be had there been no climate change," the study says. Poorer means sicker, shorter lives. When I was a kid watching pictures of the Ethiopian famine, I always wondered why they just didn't get on a bus and leave. Go somewhere nicer. I didn't know then that poor people can't afford buses. Now, as global warming hits the island of Madagascar, the eleventh poorest country, and wilts their crops and stops the rain and makes it too hot to work, where are those people going to go? There are no buses off an island. E-mail: reillycapps@gmail.com.

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The 'lazy-bones' theory of climate change

MIT study says: One degree hotter, one percent poorer

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