Climate-driven temperature changes are on track to cause about 430,000 more deaths annually by 2050-with 10 times more deaths occurring in poor countries than in richer countries, according to a new report released on Monday.
How many of those lives can be saved largely depends on access to energy, particularly the electricity needed for cooling.
Yet, a new Climate Impact Lab report finds that many of the regions most impacted by extreme heat will also lack the resources to power the cooling needed to adapt.
‘Bangladesh is a clear example of why electricity access and electricity use are not the same thing. Nearly the whole country already has power access, yet people in the hardest-hit regions are not using much more of it, even as heat deaths there are projected to climb. Having a connection is not the same as increasing how much power gets used. That gap is what this report points to,’ said Ashwin Rode, director, Scientific Research, Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and fellow at the Climate Impact Lab.
Michael Greenstone, a co-founder of the Climate Impact Lab and the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago said air conditioning is a life saver, and climate change will no doubt lead to more AC adoption in today’s wealthy countries.
‘Our research finds, however, that in too many countries around the world people will not be able to respond in the same way. The result is one of climate’s great cruelties-lots of death in the very countries that have contributed the least to climate change,’ Greenstone said.
‘These findings are a clarion bell that many countries do not have much time to improve the functioning of their electricity markets so they deliver inexpensive and reliable energy and identify other successful adaptations that can save lives.’…
