Adapting to Climate Change: The Remarkable Decline in the U.S. Temperature-Mortality Relationship Over the 20th Century
Alan Barreca et al.
MIT Working Paper, December 2012
Abstract:
Adaptation is the only strategy that is guaranteed to be part of the
world's climate strategy. Using the most comprehensive set of data files
ever compiled on mortality and its determinants over the course of the
20th century, this paper makes two primary discoveries. First, we find
that the mortality effect of an extremely hot day declined by about 80%
between 1900-1959 and 1960-2004. As a consequence, days with
temperatures exceeding 90°F were responsible for about 600 premature
fatalities annually in the 1960-2004 period, compared to the
approximately 3,600 premature fatalities that would have occurred if the
temperature-mortality relationship from before 1960 still prevailed.
Second, the adoption of residential air conditioning (AC) explains
essentially the entire decline in the temperature-mortality
relationship. In contrast, increased access to electricity and health
care seem not to affect mortality on extremely hot days. Residential AC
appears to be both the most promising technology to help poor countries
mitigate the temperature related mortality impacts of climate change
and, because fossil fuels are the least expensive source of energy, a
technology whose proliferation will speed up the rate of climate change.
Nod to Kevin Lewis