346 AAssignmentsReading 4 Ch 2&8 BRT

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On June 15, 2015, days before its official release, someone leaked a much- awaited paper authored by Pope Francis to the Italian press. The Vatican called the leak a “heinous” act and immediately sus- pended the journalist’s access to the Holy See.1 Much speculation ensued in the press about who had leaked the paper and why. Were conservatives inside the Vatican trying to undermine the papal message? Was it an effort to embarrass the Pope? Would such dirty tricks plague the pontiff throughout the remainder of his tenure?

The leaked document was an encyclical, a letter from the Pope concerning Catholic doctrine. Over the centuries, pontiffs have used encyclicals to highlight priority issues and to shape Church teaching. A message like this one can quickly radiate outward from Rome and make its way into sermons and homilies in thousands of churches around the world. The leaked encyclical was entitled Laudato Si’ (Be Praised) and subtitled On Care for Our Common Home. Colloquially, it was known as Francis’s “climate change” encyclical.

In the end, the public quickly forgot the leak, but not the paper’s content. Indeed, the encyclical’s message resonated widely. “Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods,” wrote

Building a Resilient Tomorrow: How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption. Alice C. Hill and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190909345.003.0009

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Francis. “Its worst impact will probably be felt by developing coun- tries in the coming decades. Many of the poor live in areas partic- ularly affected by phenomena related to warming . . . They have no other financial activities or resources which can enable them to adapt to climate change or to face natural disasters.”2 In other words, climate change will disproportionately affect the poorest communi- ties and exacerbate global inequality.

With the Paris Agreement just months from adoption, the Pope’s encyclical proved timely and shaped the debate across many different quarters. It echoed messages coming from the climate- justice movement, which brings together a diverse set of activists and nongovernmental organizations, many of them nonreligious, who call attention to the social and economic inequities of climate change. The Pope’s message also resonated with faiths outside the Catholic Church. Shortly before the encyclical’s publication, more than twenty faith leaders convened at the White House to meet with Obama administration officials. They included Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, and Hindus. Even representatives of the Evangelical community, which is highly influential in US pol- itics but generally skeptical of climate action, attended. The faith leaders at the meeting explained why they favored urgent climate action. As the Pope’s encyclical would assert days later, protecting the poor and vulnerable demanded it.

This chapter describes how climate change magnifies existing economic and social inequalities and identifies strategies that can help buffer against this effect. It starts by looking through a wide- angle lens, viewing the nexus of climate change and inequality from a global perspective before homing in on the United States. As is the case with other areas of climate resilience, nobody has all the answers on how to manage climate- exacerbated inequality. Developed and developing countries have much to teach one another on this issue.

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THE GEOGRAPHIC LOTTERY

Climate change will touch virtually every country in the world and region of the United States, but it will not affect every place equally. Looking around the globe, we can see hotspots emerging, places that are likely to suffer more than others. Small island states, in par- ticular, face existential risks. Sea- level rise threatens to swallow up much, even the entirety, of some island nations in the Pacific, such as the Marshall Islands and Kiribati. Moreover, droughts, floods, loss of fisheries, and salt water intrusion may force residents to abandon island countries well before these atolls disappear.3

According to the most recent research, warming temperatures will hit hardest in countries that fall along a wide arc that sweeps from Brazil in South America, through West and Central Africa, past the Middle East, and then down across South and Southeast Asia, ending in Australia. Countries in this arc are expected to suffer steeper declines in economic growth per person than other parts of the world.4 This is because they are already starting from higher baseline average temperatures than other countries. Researchers believe that the damage to economic growth will result from a complex combination of factors, including falling crop yields, lower worker productivity, and greater incidence of heat- related health problems.5

Superimposed on this “geographic lottery” is the existing pat- tern of economic inequality across and within countries, which makes matters worse. Indeed, one of the most disturbing aspects of climate change is that it will often affect the places that already happen to be poor and are therefore less able to build resilience most severely. Temperature shocks and their impact on economic activity offer the clearest illustration of this tragic irony. In general, rich countries tend to enjoy cooler average temperatures than do

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poor ones. The average annual temperature is about 52°F (11°C) in developed countries, while the typical poor country experiences an average temperature of 77°F (25°C).6 In practice, that means that in places like Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, more warming is expected to cause less damage to the economy than in hotter places. In very cold nations, moderate warming may even provide some economic benefits. Meanwhile, in countries such as India, Indonesia, and Nigeria, high temperatures are already stifling economic growth, and more extreme heat will mean even more damage to economic activity, slower growth, and therefore less ca- pacity to pay for investments in resilience.7

This geographic climate inequality shows up in countries that are big enough to span multiple climate zones. Take the continental United States. Experts expect climate change impacts to harm the economies of southern and lower midwestern states the most. Economic damage will result from a combination of coastal damage, wilting crops, higher spending on electricity to cool buildings, and more heat- related health impacts, among other things.8 Meanwhile, the economies of states in New England and the Northwest may actually benefit from moderately warming temperatures, as crop yields improve and people spend less money heating their homes.

Besides geography, gender inequality is another dimension compounded by climate change. Climate change impacts deprive communities of resources, and social prejudice and cultural norms can impose the bulk of that scarcity on women and girls, with devas- tating consequences. In one disturbing example, researchers sifted through reams of historic data on the economic and health impacts of typhoons in the Philippines.9 They found that children did not die at abnormal rates immediately after the storms; there were few “exposure deaths” during the typhoon itself. But, in the calendar year after the storm, more children died than would normally be the

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case. Most strikingly, girls died at higher rates than boys, especially if they lived in households where they competed with other children, particularly boys, for resources.

The backstory, supported by the researchers’ other findings, is not hard to fathom. After a devastating storm, families are left with less income, which translates into less money for health care, food, and education. When families privilege male children over their sis- ters, scarce resources go to the boys first. The girls are left to ab- sorb the shortfall, and in many cases, that proves fatal. Some 11,300 girls suffer such “economic deaths” in the Philippines each year, the scholars calculate.

A similar narrative has emerged around drought. Scholars studying Indonesian data found that girls born during years of plen- tiful rainfall tend to experience better health and mental skills as adults when compared to girls born during dry years.10 Girls born in wet years grew up to be taller, have better health as adults, and complete more years of schooling than those born in low- rainfall years. But the interesting thing is that the researchers couldn’t find this variation in men. Boys fare the same regardless of how much it rained the year they were born. As in the Philippines, what is likely happening in Indonesia is that in low- rainfall years, crops suffer, and family income declines. With fewer resources to go around, the boys get served first, and the girls are left with less, which sometimes means too little. These early inequities compound with time, rever- berating throughout the women’s lives and their communities.

INEQUALITY OF RESILIENCE

In the United States, some groups are much better prepared to cope with climate change impacts than others. That resilience depends

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on enjoying access to public and private safety nets, the ability to move, and social connectedness. These three things largely depend on households’ wealth and socioeconomic status, so access to them reflects existing patterns of economic inequality.

Safety nets are, of course, essential to enable people to deal with all kinds of disruption, including climate change. Traditional safety nets, such as the social security program in the United States, are provided by the government, and anyone can access them. Other safety nets are private, and access to these is unequal. Personal sav- ings, an example of a private safety net, provide a lifeline to pay for food, transportation, medical care, or housing during and after a cli- mate disruption. However, many Americans are poorly prepared in this regard. A 2018 report by the Federal Reserve found that four in ten adults in the United States would not be able to cover an unex- pected expense of $400 without borrowing money or selling some- thing.11 Another government study found that about 40 percent of the 44 million American renter households lacked access to $2,000 for evacuation expenses.12

Private insurance offers another private safety net that can prove critical to bouncing back. An insurance payout can enable a busi- ness or a family to get back to normal life more quickly. Here, too, the reality turns on wealth. Almost all homeowners in the United States report buying homeowner’s insurance, but less than half of people who rent have renter’s insurance and could therefore lose their possessions in a natural disaster.13

Access to transportation is a second crucial dimension of cli- mate resilience. The ability to get away from wildfires, flooding, heatwaves, and hurricanes can make the difference between life and death. Inequality plays a role here as well. If public transportation shuts down partially or completely, then a chasm opens between those with access to private transportation and those without. As

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Hurricane Katrina approached New Orleans, one in five households did not have access to private transportation. Unsurprisingly, those households tended to be poor.14 Meanwhile, a third of households in the city had access to two, and sometimes even three, private vehicles. It’s not hard to imagine which group ended up stranded as the city drowned.

Mobility is especially challenging for the elderly and for people with disabilities. When disasters of the kind that climate change will make more dangerous strike, the elderly and those with disabilities are more likely to find themselves trapped, injured, or dead. One statistic from Hurricane Katrina is tragically telling: Over 70 per- cent of Katrina- related deaths in New Orleans were among persons aged sixty and over, even though they comprised only 15 percent of the city’s population.15 Many could not evacuate because they lacked transportation.16 As author David Perry has noted, “Every natural disaster quickly becomes a story about disability.”17

But mobility in the age of climate change is not just about escaping an imminently approaching storm or wildfire. It’s also about having the option to change your permanent address as cli- mate conditions change. Inequality is relevant here as well. Given sea- level rise, wealthier residents will likely choose to abandon waterfronts and move inland to higher ground. In some areas, the value of flood- resilient properties will appreciate until they become unaffordable for many. Meanwhile, the prices of vulnerable coastal properties may plummet, or at least appreciate more slowly than homes uphill. As we saw in chapter 3, on markets, this may already be happening. While prices and rents climb in the more resilient, elevated areas, poorer residents will be stuck in soggy, flood- prone neighborhoods. “Climate gentrification,” as some scholars have called it, will exacerbate inequality and leave the poorest people to live in the riskiest places.18

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Also consider the climate risk borne by places where many of America’s poor live already, namely in public- housing complexes. Built in the 1950s, Tidewater Gardens is a public- housing com- munity in Norfolk, Virginia, a city that, as we have seen, is already impacted by sea- level rise. The median annual household income in Tidewater Gardens is $12,000. Not only is the community poor, it is located in one of the most flood- prone areas in one of the most flood- prone cities in the United States. The city has plans to demolish the buildings and redevelop them with flood- protection features. Residents will be temporarily relocated, but much uncertainty remains as to who will get new housing and at what cost.19

Tidewater Gardens is hardly an exception. Almost half a mil- lion federally subsidized rental and public- housing units (9 percent of the US public- housing units, and 8 percent of the federally sub- sidized rentals) lie in the combined 100- and 500- year floodplain (the area that has a 1 percent to 0.2 percent chance of flooding in any given year, respectively).20 Residents who are able to leave these communities and move to safer neighborhoods as climate change advances will likely be better off than those left behind.

Finally, social connectedness is critical for resilience, but in this case, income and wealth are not necessarily the only things that matter. In a famous study of Chicago’s deadly 1995 heatwave, soci- ologist Eric Klinenberg documented the experience of a pair of sim- ilar communities.21 The adjacent neighborhoods, Englewood and Auburn Gresham, were almost entirely African American. Both had similar proportions of elderly residents, and both had high levels of poverty, unemployment, and violence. Yet, Englewood proved to be a death trap during the heatwave, while Auburn Gresham turned out to be safer than many of the affluent neighborhoods in the city, with a mortality rate one- tenth that of Englewood’s.

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Klinenberg credits the contrast with differences in social connect- edness. Yes, Auburn Gresham was poor, but it had busy storefronts, restaurants, and sidewalks that, though modest, kept people in con- tact with each other. In Auburn Gresham, residents looked out for each other during the heatwave. In contrast, Englewood had lost residents and commerce over the years. Residents were afraid to go out into the unsafe, desolate streets, and neighbors did not know one another. Englewood had become a place in which it was much easier to die alone during a heatwave, especially if one were sick, isolated, or old. Similarly, Canadian public health authorities sifting through data about a deadly 2018 heatwave in Quebec discovered that most of the deaths were of men living alone, especially those suffering from physical or mental- health problems, or experiencing substance abuse.22 Social isolation kills, and the isolated are often poor or vulnerable.

STRENGTH IN COMMUNITY

While social isolation can prove deadly, social resilience can save lives. Women were less likely than men to die during the Chicago heatwave because women had stronger ties to friends and family. Latinos also did better than other groups despite their low incomes, partly because they lived in crowded apartments and dense neighborhoods where everyone was looked after.23 Social connect- edness makes a big difference during times of crisis.

Fostering social resilience requires promoting bottom- up, or- ganic, local networks of mutual assistance. The experience of neighborhoods like Auburn Gresham in Chicago suggests that safe public spaces and strong civic organizations promote the kind of connectedness that can help save lives during extreme climate

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events. However, building up trust in neighborhoods where it has weakened (or has never emerged) is no easy matter. There may be no “start- up kit” for social resilience.

In the meantime, governments need better ways to locate the most vulnerable members of communities, especially those who may be isolated, so they can receive assistance first. After the 1995 heatwave, Chicago authorities started collecting data about where the elderly, chronically ill, and otherwise vulnerable live, so city workers could check in on them. The city also developed a system of email, telephone, and text- message alerts to share emergency in- formation. France did something similar after the 2003 heatwave. When a heatwave occurs in France now, local authorities con- tact the elderly and the homebound to ensure their well- being. Technology can also help emergency personnel decide who should get attention first. Geospiza, a Seattle- based company, relies on arti- ficial intelligence to help city emergency managers find and protect their most vulnerable residents during a disaster. Computers scour and triangulate multiple databases to estimate, for example, which residents may be hearing impaired or use personal- care attendants. The program then notifies authorities, so they can check on these addresses first.

STRONGER BUT NIMBLER SAFETY NETS

In a world of escalating climate risks, the first line of defense for any community will continue to be social protection programs. In the United States, these include traditional programs such as so- cial security, unemployment insurance, nutrition assistance, and health insurance for the poor. These programs will acquire new importance when climate change impacts make displacement and

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economic shocks more common. It is essential that political leaders protect and reinforce existing safety nets and that everyone who needs these programs can access them.

In parallel, governments should develop a toolkit of temporary measures to deploy in the immediate aftermath of a disaster and give those affected a rapid injection of emergency cash to help them rebuild their lives. After Hurricane Katrina, for instance, financial authorities allowed New Orleans residents to withdraw money from their retirement accounts without incurring early- withdrawal penalties. This change unlocked thousands of dollars in a key mo- ment of need.24 The federal government also extended tax breaks to companies that hired residents of areas affected by the storm.

Another idea worth considering is insurance- powered safety nets. This involves coupling parametric insurance, a type of insur- ance that pays out quickly (see chapter 4) with existing systems for delivering assistance to the poor. Government entities in charge of social safety nets could purchase parametric insurance from the private sector and design the policy so that it triggers automatically when an extreme weather event of a certain magnitude strikes a certain location. Government agencies could then use the money from the insurance payout to deliver rapid payments to poor and vulnerable people in affected areas, using existing social- protection systems to deliver the aid.

This approach could prove useful for cash- strapped local and even state governments, especially since federal assistance often arrives with delays. Developing countries could also benefit from insurance- powered safety nets. Kenya’s government, for example, has considered combining a parametric insurance policy for drought with its Hunger Safety Net Program, which in ordinary times provides food- insecure families with regular cash transfers of $25 per month through biometric smartcards.25 If a drought gets

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bad enough to meet a certain threshold, the insurance policy pays out automatically, and the additional money is delivered to affected families through the Hunger Safety Net Program mechanism.

DECISION- MAKING WITH INEQUALITY IN MIND

In the years following Superstorm Sandy, New York City planners pondered how to make the city more resilient to the next super- storm. A few months after the storm, in the summer of 2013, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a $20 billion plan to safeguard the city from the impacts of climate change.26 Under the motto, “A Stronger, More Resilient New York,” the plan called for signifi- cant spending on infrastructure to protect vital structures and serv- ices. Six months later, Bill de Blasio replaced Bloomberg as mayor. The new mayor, who predicated his political campaign on making New York more affordable and less economically unequal, promptly announced his own plan, OneNYC, under the banner “A Strong and Just City.”27 De Blasio wrapped around Bloomberg’s resilience ideas a larger vision of investing in affordable housing, education, social services, and other elements focused on social justice.

The two mayors’ approaches highlight a central dilemma in building resilience. Who should benefit from resilience investments? Decision- makers’ instinct is often to put resilience dollars where they will avoid the largest economic losses. Because rich commu- nities have higher concentrations of valuable buildings and infra- structure, building resilience in those places will usually generate the highest bang for the buck when measured in terms of economic losses avoided. As one New York City planner told us, “If I wanted to avoid the most losses, I would put every resilience dollar I have

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to protect lower Manhattan.” But of course, this logic exacerbates economic inequality because it leads decision- makers to protect relatively small pockets of concentrated wealth with resources that could be spread to benefit many others. This is both politically and ethically unsustainable. Policymakers must use a different lens in making decisions about resilience.

One approach involves thinking about welfare losses. Disasters don’t affect everyone equally. A loss of one dollar is much harder for a poor family to absorb than it is for a rich one; helping a poor family prevent the loss of a dollar has larger benefits in terms of hardship and suffering avoided than does sparing a rich family the loss of that same dollar. Decision- makers need a method for assessing resilience investments that takes this difference into account. The method should encourage policymakers to choose investments that deliver large well- being benefits, not just avoid economic losses.

Some governments are exploring ways to apply this approach. After massive flooding hit the Indian city of Mumbai in 2005, economists at the World Bank looked at two different ways to cal- culate the costs of the devastation.28 Simply counting the economic losses— the cost of destroyed property and infrastructure— the experts pegged the total cost at an estimated 35 billion rupees. But that didn’t tell the whole story. Using a welfare- loss methodology, they estimated that the “well- being” losses— the economic losses adjusted by how much the loss of a rupee hurts a household’s well- being— were almost double the economic losses, about 60 billion rupees (roughly $860 million). To be sure, the methodology is com- plex, and it still needs testing before it can go mainstream. But there is no question that we need to think beyond the narrow lens of eco- nomic loss, or we risk making economic inequality worse as we try to build climate resilience.

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NO ELYSIUM

In the popular 2013 movie Elysium starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, the world’s elites flee to a majestic space station orbiting the earth after environmental and social collapse has ravaged the planet. The space station is replete with lush gardens, mansions, and ro- botic servants. But in real life, enclaves like Elysium don’t exist, at least not yet. Companies, including the largest and most powerful, must work together with the communities in which their headquar- ters, facilities, suppliers, and biggest customers are located to make the whole community resilient.

Dealing with inequality in a time of climate change doesn’t just mean protecting the most vulnerable. It also means ensuring that the rich and powerful don’t withdraw from society, thinking that private systems will shield them from harm even as the public sys- tems around them fail. Communities need businesses to keep run- ning, just as much as the people who own and lead those businesses need the communities in which they are embedded to be resilient. Companies can “climate proof ” their facilities, but they still need their employees to show up to work and their suppliers to deliver. They can’t do that if the roads are underwater, if workers’ homes have suffered damage, or if employees are too worried about their families’ safety to show up for work.

Iconic photos taken shortly after Superstorm Sandy drive the point home. One shows the headquarters of the Goldman Sachs investment bank, in lower Manhattan, shining brightly, virtually every floor lit, amid a forest of darkened skyscrapers.29 Another shows the same well- lit building surrounded by waist- deep black water, a partially submerged SUV floating in front of it (Figure 8). Goldman had invested in private power generators, and before the

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storm hit, had stacked 25,000 sandbags around the building. But the problem that still bogged down Goldman’s operations was how to get employees to work in a city whose transportation infrastruc- ture had largely stopped working. “We have groups in New York right now talking about that,” Goldman Sachs’s chief operations of- ficer Gary Cohn told the media at the time, “and there’s a bunch of conference calls trying to figure out how to get people where they need to be.”30

The aftermath of the 2011 Thai floods (see chapter 3) on markets provides an example of how businesses, governments, and local communities can work together to build resilience for everyone. After the disaster destroyed numerous factories owned by large Japanese corporations, the companies, the Japanese government, and the Thai authorities got together to figure out how to strengthen flood resilience. They developed strategies and action plans for flood prevention. The Japanese government funded a flood management

Figure 8 Goldman Sachs headquarters, New York City, October 2012.

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plan for the Chao Phraya River and provided technical assistance to Thai personnel to improve water management. Thai authorities backed the plan and worked to implement it. More of this kind of collaboration will be needed in a world impacted by climate change.

Local political leaders have an especially important role to play. They have the authority and legitimacy to bring together key stakeholders and lead an inclusive dialogue. Local leaders can also serve as the driving force in community- wide planning, with the fed- eral government providing support where possible. Crucially, the planning process must include the voices of all the key stakeholders in the community. This way, the process can benefit from local knowledge and ensure that the resulting plans enjoy widespread support.

Climate change will manifest itself unevenly across a world al- ready characterized by great disparities in wealth and income. Poor and vulnerable communities— often hit the hardest by climate change because of their geography and lack of resources to cope with disruption— will suffer most. Deploying a full range of tools and approaches will be critical if we are to prevent climate change from severely weakening America’s social fabric and worsening po- litical tensions and polarization.

PRESCRIPTIONS AND PROVOCATIONS

• Governments should bolster traditional social safety nets, as well as temporary safety- net measures that can be deployed in the aftermath of extreme events; federal and state governments should work with the reinsurance industry to pair social- protection programs with parametric insurance policies.

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• Mayors, with federal support, should regularly convene local private- sector leaders and other stakeholders to identify cli- mate risks and develop collaborative plans to protect supply chains, workers, and critical infrastructure.

• Governments and the private sector should work together to develop innovative solutions to locate isolated and vulnerable persons and ensure they have access to life- saving informa- tion and resources.

• Federal government agencies that provide international de- velopment assistance should expand efforts to help other countries in building climate resilience, especially with re- spect to food and water security, public health, gender equity, and disaster risk management.

• Governments should experiment with methodologies to help ensure that investments in resilience are made based on considerations of welfare impacts, not just economic losses.