Slow burn The hidden costs of a warming world

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This unconventional debut study from Park, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, examines the less intuitive consequences of the climate crisis. Surveying research on the indirect effects of wildfire smoke, Park points to studies showing that on days with poor air quality, Israeli students performed 15% worse on tests and California farms were 6% less productive. Hotter weather has been correlated with numerous negative outcomes, Park reports, citing evidence that social media users curse more and judges give harsher sentences when the temperature increases. These burdens will not be distributed equally, Park warns, noting that in the U.S., poorer neighborhoods with more residents of color tend to be hotter than "wealthier, whiter areas within the same city" owing to a comparative lack of greenery. Park suggests ameliorative policies might include energy subsidies to help people without air-conditioning install cooling systems and making it easier to access credit for climate change--related investments, which could help lower-income individuals update their homes to deal with climate threats, or move to less affected regions. Discussions sometimes get bogged down in scholarly minutiae, as when Park offers a detailed investigation of the pros and cons of various methods for calculating heat deaths, but the unsettling research makes clear that climate change's effects will reverberate even further than commonly understood. It's enough to make readers break out in a sweat. (Apr.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---

Review by Library Journal Review

In this deeply researched book about the effects of climate change, environmental and labor economist Park (Univ. of Pennsylvania) warns that global warming's impact goes beyond the weather events in the news. He demonstrates the sweeping effects of climate change on health, education, and productivity by taking an economic approach to the analysis of even minor increases in the average temperature of the planet. His book spotlights research indicating how higher temperatures negatively affect worker productivity, conflict, violence, and student learning, achievement, and performance on tests. For example, increases in the number and size of forest fires not only cause disastrous damage to homes, property, and lives, they also create long-term damage thousands of miles away due to the spread of smoke, impacting the economy, health, and mortality. He argues that societies need to tackle these dangers and that it will take a globally coordinated approach to ameliorate them. VERDICT With gripping prose, this book encourages policymakers to consider the many hazards associated with the unavoidable increases in global temperature that the world faces. This is a call to arms addressing one of the most critical issues of contemporary times.--Rebecca Mugridge

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

Review by Kirkus Book Review

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. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

---