Climate peril we overlook has already arrived [View all]

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By Nicholas Kristof / The New York Times

Our planet has just endured its hottest summer on record, with 2024 on track likewise to become the hottest year since recordkeeping began.

We see the impact of this heating in thousands of ways: The city of Phoenix this year endured 100 days of 100 degrees or hotter; some 1,300 Hajj pilgrims in Saudi Arabia reportedly died in the heat; Arctic ice is shrinking and far below average; and in some places, monkeys and bats have tumbled out of trees from the heat.

We tend to focus on the cataclysmic risks of climate change — polar ice caps melting, seas rising dramatically, our planet becoming uninhabitable — and those are real. But over the last couple of decades, we’ve accumulated evidence that the more mundane effects of heat are already upon us, impacting our daily lives. For example, more people fall off ladders on hot days than on cool days. They are more likely to die in those falls. They are also more likely to kill someone else.

Meanwhile, students learn less on hot days. They perform worse on exams. After a natural disaster, students are less likely to go to college. In other words, extreme weather damages far more than property, for it also is devastating to human capital.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/kristof-climate-peril-we-overlook-has-already-arrived/