Mortality Consequences of Climate Change
The Art
The Science
What’s Alarming
The figure probes the relationship between temperature, income, mortality, and assumed adaptation efforts as the climate changes.
The lower left graph shows predicted mortality-temperature sensitivities for poorer, cooler regions, compared to hotter, wealthier regions in the upper right graph. The study notes that “increased frequency of exposure to higher temperatures creates incentives to investment in adaptive behaviors or technologies, as the marginal mortality benefit of adaptation is higher in hotter locations.”* (This leads, somewhat counter-intuitively, to lower temperature sensitivities to heat in warmer places.) But having the budget to invest in these adaptations is necessary to achieve these benefits. It is not surprising, then that, as can be seen, at all assumed temperature levels the poorest show the highest mortality rates.
*Valuing the Global Mortality Consequences of Climate Change Accounting for Adaptation Costs and Benefits, Carleton, Delgado, Greenstone, et al, Working Paper -No. 2018-51, Aug 2018, P 23
