Climate Change and Social Inequality

The Health and Social Costs of Global Warming

Merrill Singer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351594813
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

The year 2016 was the hottest year on record and the third consecutive record-breaking year in planet temperatures. The following year was the hottest in a non-El Nino year. Of the seventeen hottest years ever recorded, sixteen have occurred since 2000, indicating the trend in climate change is toward an ever warmer Earth. However, climate change does not occur in a social vacuum; it reflects relations between social groups and forces us to contemplate the ways in which we think about and engage with the environment and each other.

Employing the experience-near anthropological lens to consider human social life in an environmental context, this book examines the fateful global intersection of ongoing climate change and widening social inequality. Over the course of the volume, Singer argues that the social and economic precarity of poorer populations and communities—from villagers to the urban disadvantaged in both the global North and global South—is exacerbated by climate change, putting some people at considerably enhanced risk compared to their wealthier counterparts. Moreover, the book adopts and supports the argument that the key driver of global climatic and environmental change is the global economy controlled primarily by the world's upper class, which profits from a ceaseless engine of increased production for national middle classes who have been converted into constant consumers.

Drawing on case studies from Alaska, Ecuador, Bangladesh, Haiti and Mali, Climate Change and Social Inequality will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change and climate science, environmental anthropology, medical ecology and the anthropology of global health.

1

The physical and social dimensions of climate change

Sources of the scientific evidence on climate change

The scientific evidence on climate change is the product of the work of countless scientists from around the world who have been trained in numerous different physical scientific disciples, including climatology, astrophysics, biology, archaeology, physics, oceanography, meteorology, geology, atmospheric chemistry, and glaciology. These researchers have published thousands of studies documenting increasing surface, atmospheric, and oceanic temperatures; melting land ice and glaciers; diminishing snow cover; shrinking sea ice; rising ocean levels; ocean acidification; and increasing atmospheric water vapor. The vast majority of scientists who study climate-related issues, approximately 97 percent, are in agreement that the world is heating up and human activity is the main driver of this change and the related environmental alterations noted above (Cook et al. 2016). Other individuals who claim to be climate scientists or climate experts do not share in this consensus, but, as discussed in chapters 3 and 4, their credentials are often suspect and/or they are heavily financed by the greenhouse gas-emitting energy industry. Nonetheless, because of the deep pockets of their backers they have succeeded in confusing the public about the incredible level of agreement about climate change among climate scientists.

Climate scientists comprise a diverse group of people, each having an area of research focus. Examining some of the work of individual climate scientists reveals details of how climate science has built a broad, integrated understanding of our changing world and the forces driving this change. Wenhong Li, for example, an atmospheric scientist at Duke University, studies the relationship between long-term climate change and weather variability. She became fascinated by weather as a child in China, and came to the U.S. to study climate science. Her research on precipitation patterns in the southeastern United States offers some of the clearest evidence available of how global warming can influence a regional weather pattern, often in surprising ways. In 2007, Georgia suffered the worst drought in a century, but two years later suffered late-summer flooding. Using data from rain gauges dating from 1948, Li and colleagues found that through time there was increasing variability in precipitation in the regions. Rain patterns were becoming more erratic, a pattern being seen around the globe, and one known to be tied to climate change.

From 1948 to 1977, Li found there were just two unusually wet and two unusually dry summers—(“rainfall anomalies” that exceeded one standard deviation from the norm) in Georgia. By contrast, from 1978 to 2007, there were six unusually wet and five unusually dry summers. Using sophisticated statistical techniques to analyze the precipitation data, Li determined that both droughts and deluges had unquestionably increased in a statistically significant way. Further, Li and co-workers found a correlation of their data with data on the North Atlantic Subtropical High (NASH), an area of high pressure that forms each summer in the ocean near Bermuda, suggesting a direct tie to anthropogenic warming. In other words, human-induced climate change has caused a prevailing weather pattern to move closer in to North America. When that high-pressure area moves slightly to the north or south, the consequences are felt very acutely in the southeast’s regional rainfall compared to six decades ago. Li’s work predicts greater weather unpredictability as global warming continues.

Another climate scientist, Benjamin Santer, affiliated with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, found that the various causes of climate change (known as “forcings”) leave distinct signatures or patterns that climate scientists can identify and the signatures can tell us what is causing climate change. For example, if Earth’s warming is caused by an increase in the sun’s energy output scientists would expect to see warming from the top of the atmospheric column straight down to the surface. But if massive volcanic eruptions are a significant factor, dust from the volcano would cause cooling in the troposphere (the atmospheric layer closest to the surface) and heating in the stratosphere (the layer above the troposphere).

In fact, neither of those two profiles are found in Santar’s and other researchers’ data. Rather, what climate scientists find is a tell-tale warming of the troposphere and cooling of the stratosphere. This is the precise fingerprint that scientists since the 1960s predicted would occur from an intensified “greenhouse effect” as increasing amounts of heat-trapping CO² from fossil fuel emissions built up in the atmosphere.

Richard Seager, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, studies climate factors in southwestern U.S., an area he believes is soon likely to experience a condition of “permanent drought” that matches the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. In Seager’s assessment, the southwest is dry because, like other parts of the so-called subtropics to the north and south of the equatorial tropics, the atmospheric flow tends to move far more moisture out of the region than the amount that storms bring back into it. With increasing concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, the planet’s atmosphere will retain a growing level of moisture, in ever greater amounts as it warms. Evaporation from lakes and rivers will increase, soil is expected to become ever more arid, and plants will probably yield more moisture directly into the atmosphere.

Like people of the various science and social science disciplines, the climate scientists described above come from different national, regional, ethnic, and class backgrounds. What they share is a lifetime of research that has made it clear to each of them that Earth is warming because of human activity and that the climate and ecosystem changes this produces will have important and adverse impacts on human communities worldwide.

The human diseases of climate change

One of the adverse impacts of climate change that is already occurring is seen in an array of climate-influenced human diseases. The effects of weather (immediate) and climate (long-term trends) on human health are significant and multiple, and have a range of pathways, including heat, flooding, food availability, infectious disease, and geographic dislocation. Notably, climate change is not occurring at a time free of already heavy health burdens and significant vulnerabilities around the world. Climate change acts as a “stress multiplier” for many existing public health problems. In addition, as the planet warms, areas of the world will face new climate-related health threats, including new diseases. The impact of climate change on health varies by location and socioeconomic status; thus the existing social architectures of inequality mediate climate-related health problems. The poorest populations are the most vulnerable overall to the health effects of climate change, as are elders, children, and the ill. The more severe and rapid climate change occurs, the more unsettling to societies and burdensome to human health. Disruptions in social and infrastructural systems can increase overall health vulnerability. Exposure may not be to individual adverse effects of climate change but rather to serial or simultaneous multiple effects resulting in compounding or cascading health impacts.

One important way climate change threatens human health is through climate-sensitive infectious diseases. This occurs by: 1) potentially changing the spatial distributions infectious agents; 2) affecting their annual/seasonal cycles; and 3) altering disease incidence and severity. The climate sensitivity of pathogens is a key indicator that diseases might respond to climate change, but the proportion of pathogens that is climate-sensitive, and their characteristics, are not fully known. A study in Europe of a hundred human and 101 animal disease-causing pathogens found that 63 percent, at about equal levels of both groups, were climate sensitive (Morand et al. 2013). Also protozoa and helminths (worms), as well vector-borne, foodborne, soilborne, and waterborne pathogens were found to be associated with larger numbers of climate drivers, such as oscillations, extreme weather events, moisture, and wind. Zoonotic pathogens, those that infect humans and other species, were more climate sensitive than human- or animal-only pathogens. The pathogen with the highest sensitivity to climate factors was Vibrio cholera, the cause of the often deadly, diarrheal disease, cholera. Next most sensitive was the helminth, specifically a parasite known as the liver fluke, the source of liver disease. Third was, Bacillus anthracic—the pathogenic cause of anthrax—a bacteria that can prove fatal depending on infection type and available treatment. Fourth was Borrelia burgdorferi, the tick-borne bacteria that causes Lyme disease. This research predicts that with the increasing diverse impacts of climate change over time, these diseases and other pathogenic diseases like dengue and Zika will become increasing threats to human health.

Through its worsening of air quality and altered local and regional pollen production, climate change is also increasing the prevalence and severity of asthma and related allergic diseases. When exposed to warmer temperatures and higher levels of CO², plants grow more vigorously and produce more pollen than they otherwise would. Research suggests pollen counts could double by 2040. The burden from asthma and other allergic diseases is already significant. Globally, 300 million or more people have asthma, a quarter million people die from it annually. Other climate-sensitive respiratory allergies are even more prevalent, and diminish the quality of life of millions of people worldwide.

Fungus is a member of a large group of organisms that includes mushrooms and molds. Abundant worldwide, about 70,000 fungal species have been identified. The global food crisis is exacerbated by fungi infections that damage or kill crop plants, and, with climate change, the threat appears to be growing as seen in rising rates of potato blight, rice last, wheat stem rust, soybean rust, and corn smut.

Mold is a type of fungus that grows on plants and fibers and is most often associated with damp locations. Mold travels through the air as tiny spores. Mold is a common allergy trigger in which a person’s immune system overreacts when breathing in mold spores. In some people, mold allergy is linked to asthma. All of this is relevant because of the role of climate change in: 1) increasing temperature; and 2) sparking violent storms and flooding. The extensive flooding in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita created conditions ideal for indoor mold growth. Studies evaluating the levels of indoor and outdoor molds in the months following the hurricanes found significant mold growth. Climate change-related flooding presents a major threat for mold-related health problems. There are other diseases of climate change but it is evident that human health, especially for some, is increasingly vulnerable.

Extreme weather

One of the fundamental consequences of climate change is an intensification of damaging extreme weather events, such as the growing intensity of hurricanes. By any standard, 2017 was an historic hurricane season in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico with the devastating arrival of back-to-back hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, as well as seven other storm events. The season recorded both the highest total accumulated cyclone energy—a measure used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to index the activity of individual tropical cyclones/hurricanes and entire tropical cyclone seasons—as well as the greatest number of major hurricanes since 2005, the year of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. All ten of the season’s hurricanes occurred consecutively, the greatest number of sequential hurricanes seen in the era of satellite observation. Moreover, 2017 achieved distinction as the costliest hurricane season on record, with losses of over $315, primarily wrought by Harvey, Irma, and Maria. Additionally, the season was one of only six years known to weather recording to produce multiple Category 5 hurricanes. Irma’s treacherous landfalls on multiple Caribbean islands and Maria’s landing on Dominica made 2017 the second season on record with two hurricanes making landfall at Category 5 intensity. These patterns indicate the rising risk of extreme weather in the time of global warming.

One of the places hardest hit during the season was the island of Puerto Rico. The 2017 hurricane season was particularly punishing for Puerto Rico. First, it was hit by Hurricane Irma when its eye passed just north of the island. The storm, which devastated several Caribbean islands, knocked out power for one million people in Puerto Rico. Then came Hurricane Maria. On September 20, this powerful Category 4 hurricane with 150 mph winds made direct landfall, bisecting the island. Tens of thousands of people were left without electricity. Maria followed a course directly over Puerto Rico, hit at its near peak intensity, developed a width of 50- to 60-miles across, and passed just 25 miles away from the historic capital of San Juan, home to approximately 400,000 people. Hurricane Maria lashed the island with damaging winds, caused extensive flooding, crippled communication systems, demolished buildings, and damaged a dam that threatened residents downstream. In many places, there was still no water to drink, bathe in, or flush toilets even months after the hurricane. Dozens of remote communities were completely cut off in the unfolding and prolonged humanitarian disaster. Moreover, help was slow to arrive in places where the devastation reached apocalyptic proportions. People were forced to find ways to survive without medicines, lights, refrigeration, gas, air conditioning, and jobs. Damages surpassed $90 billion and the mortality rate was devastating. Over 200,000 Puerto Ricans were forced to flee their island home which remained in tatters. Pointing to the failures of the federal government in responding to the crisis, Oxfam America President Abby Maxman (quoted in Holmes 2017) asserted:

It’s really quite shocking how long and slow it has been, and what it’s taking to get back and move the recovery forward … . By any standard, three months where a majority of the population don’t have access to clean water or electricity is a sign that it’s been an exceptionally slow and really unacceptable level of response.

Also badly hit in 2017 was the U.S. Virgin Islands, which was struck by both Hurricanes Maria and Irma. St. John and St. Thomas were ravaged by Hurricane Irma. Fourteen days later, Maria hammered St. Croix, the largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The islands suffered vast ruin and deep desperation. Significantly adding to the brutal and long-enduring impact of the hurricane season was the damage to the tourism industry, which accounts for about three-quarters of the islands’ economy. While many small and mid-size hotels reopened by February 2018, most of the hotel rooms on the islands were still out of commission because the large resorts suffered the worst damage. Full recovery is expected to take at least two years (Allen 2018).

During the 2017 season, the Gulf Coast of Texas faced extreme rains that inundated the Houston area during Hurricane Harvey. Harvey dumped an estimated 27 trillion gallons of water on Texas and Louisiana and was one of the most damaging “natural” disasters in U.S. history. The amount of rain that poured onto parts of southeast Texas set a new record of 51.88 inches, which broke the former record of 48 inches set in 1978. It is likely that the Texas flooding exceeds other such event in the continental U.S. over the past 1,000 years. Tens of thousands of people were forced to evacuate their homes, with many losing everything they owned and very few possessing flood insurance. This means that families with flooded basements, water-logged furniture, and water-damaged walls have to pay out of pocket or assume more debt to repair their homes. The economic devastation of Hurricane Harvey may even pass Hurricane Katrina’s enormous cost.

There is evidence that the massive flooding caused by Harvey was made more likely by climate change. This is according to a study by Kerry Emmanuel (2017) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Emmanuel’s findings indicate that the kind of extreme flooding event seen with Harvey will become more frequent as the planet continues to warm. In the wake of Harvey, many researchers have pointed out that a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor and that, as a result, a warmer planet should produce more extreme rains. But Emanuel’s study goes beyond this general statement to support the idea that the specific risk of extreme rain events is increasing because of the ways humans have changed the planet, including the release of greenhouse gases. Based on climate modeling, Emanuel generated 3,700 computerized storms for each of three separate models that situated the storms in the climates seen during the years from 1980 to 2016. All of the storms were in the vicinity of Houston or other Texas areas. He examined how often, in his models, there would be about 20 inches of rainfall in one of these events. Harvey actually brought about 33 inches of rain to Houston. But in the tests performed under the conditions that prevailed 1980 to 2000, getting 20 inches of rain was an extremely rare occurrence. When Emanuel performed a similar analysis using projected climates for the years 2080 to 2100, the odds shifted toward a much greater likelihood of such events. Harvey’s rains in Houston became a once-in-a-100-years event and for Texas as a whole, the odds increased from once in 100 years to once every five and a half years. This also means, according to Emmanuel’s calculations, that Harvey was probably more likely in 2017 than in the era from 1981 to 2000 because of climate change. According to Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Stanford University who has focused on the science of attributing extreme events to climate change, “Harvey was a complex event with lots of contributing ingredients. This study breaks new ground by isolating the role that global warming played in upping the odds that a storm like Harvey produces very heavy rainfall” (quoted in Mooney 2017).

Rising oceans

Another expression of the effects of a warming planet on which huge quantities of water are frozen in land-covering ice sheets and glaciers is ice melt and sea level rise. There is strong concern that before its 250th birthday Bangkok, the capital city of Thailand, will be below the ocean. The coastal city of Bangkok is only between 1.6 and 6.5 feet above sea level. The central metropolitan area was built precariously on what was once protective marshland. Below the city is layer of soft clay that is highly compressible. Besides the natural land sub...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction
• 1. The physical and social dimensions of climate change
• 2. The rise and role of social inequality in the production of climate change
• 3. Maintaining inequality: The ideology of denial and the creation of climate change uncertainty
• 4. The polluting elite and the political economy of climate change denial
• 5. Anthropological lens on climate change
• 6. Changing world of the indigenous Alaskan Yupik and Iñupiat peoples
• 7. Water vulnerability and social equity in Ecuador
• 8. On the bottom rung of a low-lying nation: Social ranking and climate change in Bangladesh
• 9. Haiti: A legacy of colonialism, a future of climate change
• 10. Mali: Climate change, desertification, and food insecurity
• 11. The consequential intersection of social inequality and climate change: Health, coping, and community organizing
• Index