Climate change is already having a very real impact on the world. Among the effects that have become visible include sea levels rising, glaciers melting, and heat waves intensifying. The impact that the changing climate is having on the world is becoming more and more evident with each passing day.
However, with some of the serious manifestations of the effects of climate change taking place in areas that are not densely populated or even occupied at all, realizing the true impact this crisis is causing can be challenging.
In an attempt to better define the true effects of climate change not just on the environment but on society as a whole, scientists at the Climate Impact Lab have been poring over mountains of data to figure out exactly what this phenomenon is doing to people on an everyday basis.
Speaking to The Guardian, Tamma Carleton, a postdoctoral scholar working at the Climate Impact Lab, said that one of the goals the lab has is to take the findings that have been documented in academic papers and figure out what they mean for policy.
Another goal for the lab is to work out just how much more dangerous the planet could eventually become if the current trends of climate change remain in place.
Among the more disturbing findings discovered by the researchers at the Climate Impact Lab is that climate change is affecting suicide rates.
Carleton estimates that over the course of the past three decades, the rising temperatures have played a role in the suicides of nearly 60,000 people in India. More specific numbers regarding the suicide rates in the United States and Mexico were not provided, but the lab says that the figures increased in those countries too as the temperatures soared.
Rising temperatures have also been observed to have an effect on worker productivity.
Anant Sudarshan, the South Asia director of the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute found that worker productivity rates at manufacturing plants in India also take a hit whenever it gets hot. Productivity can drop by up to 9 percent for every degree that the temperature rises, and on days when the heat is simply unbearable, some employees just don’t come in for work altogether.
The findings made by the Climate Impact Lab draw connections between societal problems and climate change pretty clearly. Problems caused by climate change are not just emerging in far-flung places, they are also happening in societies and affecting people, and these problems could worsen as the temperatures continue to climb.
