How Our Climate Policy Could Make Us A Whole Lot Sicker

Too many retirees fainting in the heat.

No, it’s not a pitch for Dwayne Johnson’s next movie. It’s a possible proximate cause of social breakdown as the climate changes. Hear me out for a moment. My colleague Clay Risen, looking at how Big Oil is likely to plaster BS across the American landscape after nations agree on a climate treaty this December, predicts “a full-on xenophobic orgy this winter.” And while I tend to think of climate deniers as practitioners of self-love, the metaphor raises another issue. More fractured climate policy, and more giveaways to Big Coal and Big Oil, will mean we may not see winter as we know it for much longer.

Consider: America provides unsustainable but guaranteed healthcare for the elderly. America is getting hotter. American lawmakers have not summoned the courage (oops, I mean, the “political will”) to reform healthcare. As America gets hotter and Americans live longer, the health effects of climate change will harm most severely the people whose needs distort our overall healthcare economics: the poor and the old. Both groups will need more care. Both will get it. Who will pay for it? The taxpayer, with money that then becomes unavailable for climate mitigation. And so it goes…

Starker climate change means more storms, more extreme temperatures at both ends, and more strings of unbearably hot days. This means more pressure on the electric grid to pump out more A/C-  a process that building engineers can make more efficient all sorts of ways. It also means more pressure on emergency rooms and gerontologists, which we can’t so tidily relieve.

We all want seniors to spend their retirements in comfort and dignity. For that to happen, we need a sane healthcare cost structure and a livable economy. But Clay’s prognosis makes me worry that we’re throwing both prospects into the landfill.