The overheating of our planet, fueled by dirty energy usage, has led to changes in our climate, resulting in increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events. However, it has also led to more weather that is not considered extreme, such as thunderstorms — and these, too, are impacting people's lives, according to a new study, Phys.org relayed.
What's happening?
The study, published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, sought to understand the effects of increased non-extreme weather events on income inequality.
Ultimately, its authors determined that exposure to more thunderstorms had an outsized effect on wage earners, who make up the poorest segments of the population, leading to an increase in inequality.
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"These are events that, although not considered true extreme phenomena, still cause significant damage, and their frequency leads to an accumulation of damage over time," said Matteo Coronese, one of the authors of the study and a researcher at the Institute of Economics and the L'EMbeDS Department of Excellence of the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna.
Why is income equality important?
Time and time again, the effects of pollution and the resulting changes to our climate have been shown to most negatively impact the most economically disadvantaged segments of the population (despite those segments being the least responsible for the pollution in the first place). This is yet another example.
This is true on a country-by-country basis — as small, island nations that produce almost no pollution are being hit the hardest — but also within countries. The study focused on weather events only in the United States between 1991 and 2019 and showed that poorer areas were more negatively affected.
What's being done about this growing problem?
The authors provided clear and simple advice for how the negative effects of these weather events could be mitigated, writing, "We find evidence for a sizable shock-absorbing role of federal assistance."
"The study emphasizes that public intervention can play a crucial role: counties that receive federal aid immediately after one of the storms considered in our study do not experience significant losses in either wages or incomes," said Francesco Lamperti, another author.
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