It is a tragic cliche at this point that climate change will affect the poorest and most vulnerable people the most. It is also undeniably true, with the increasing heat stress, flooding and altered precipitation patterns, agricultural pressure, and more falling most heavily on the people both least responsible and with the least resources to adapt and survive. This fact, though, does not mean the rich of the world are safe.
A new study underlines this fact, examining the impacts of temperature and precipitation variability and extremes in particular on the disruption to production and trade of goods around the world. They found, unsurprisingly, that it is the most poverty-stricken that face the greatest risk from such disruptions. But as the planet warms further, the increase in risk actually falls heaviest on those swimming in money rather than floodwater.
“In the next 20 years, climate change will increase economic risks from erratic weather,” said study senior author Anders Levermann, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, in a statement. “The highest risks remain with the poorest around the world. But the increase of economic risk is strongest for the wealthy, in countries like the US and the EU.”
There are some important details in the study, like how countries that are more self-reliant for food and other goods face larger risks since they can’t offset impacts with imports as easily — think North Korea, and you get the idea. Within countries, there is substantial risk variation, in particular in those where income inequality is highest. Over the past decade and today, the risks remain highest in poor countries and poor people within those countries; but looking ahead, the rich are the ones facing down the biggest losses.
“[H]igher resilience of higher incomes might be offset by increasingly adverse climate conditions,” the authors wrote in Nature Sustainability. In other words, as things get worse, the pedestals perched up highest start to wobble the most.
The bottom line of literally any economic impacts study these days — or really any climate impacts study — is that greenhouse gas emissions have to drop precipitously starting today to avoid things getting truly out of hand. And again, while the increase in risk appears to fall more heavily on those more well off today, that still doesn’t change the fact that the world’s poor will take the brunt of all this. But those in poverty don’t have even a fraction of the control over the global thermostat as the rich people in rich countries do, so maybe underscoring the large and growing hit to those particular wallets could help get things moving. Maybe.
“Consumers all around the world, regardless of their income, will thus face increasing challenges due to global warming,” Levermann said. “Without a transition towards carbon neutrality we will eventually not be able to meet these challenges.”