A future for the rich: The economic disparity of climate change (senior project)

When Hurricane Harvey hit with up to 130 mile per hour sustained winds classifying as a Category 4 storm, Juan Diaz, a retired school teacher, and his wife, Isabel, stayed in their house in south Houston, Texas. It was their third hurricane to live through, but this time it was what he called “a disaster” in comparison to the others.

The rain and wind broke down the fence on one side of his house. The building itself suffered roof damage and drain pipe issues. New damage continues to pop up from the hurricane that happened almost two years ago, but Diaz continues to just work to fix the problems. It’s all he can do, even though they were prepared for what might happen.

“We saw what happened in New Orleans, the water going [up] – even in the Houston area there was water flooding up to maybe meter and a half, six feet, something like that,” Diaz said.

Despite living through Ike, Diaz was still worried as he sat through the storm. He questioned at what moment would bring disaster, and what might bring something worse.

“I was worried because electricity was cut, water was cut, but since Ike I bought the generator so about the electricity I wasn’t so worried,” Diaz said. “...But still, the worries about the hurricane, how long it’s going to be or how much it’s going to be or how much damage… and you don’t know when it’s going to be your time.”

Diaz experienced a severe weather storm and is still rebuilding from what was left afterwards. These storms are likely to getmore intense in the future according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, leading to more experiences like the one Diaz recalled.

Human induced climate change will begin to affect the U.S. economy according to the most recent U.S. fourth national climate assessment released in November 2018, pressuring impoverished communities and leaving room only for the affluent to successfully thrive. Hurricane Harvey, Irma and Maria together cost 6 billion dollars according to the federal report. The term “climate change” is often used as a way to refer to the changes caused by humans that is mainly a result of the combustion of fossil fuels released into the atmosphere that traps heat, which causes the planet to warm leading to other effects according to Andrew Dessler, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M.

Dessler wrote a textbook on climate change that includes the economic impacts people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Dessler pointed to the commonalities most people share as an example of how people might be affected in their daily life by a dramatically changing climate, such as food, access to affordable air conditioning, and the ever changing need to prepare for natural disasters.

“We rely on food production, we rely on energy consumption, so directly things like agriculture are affected by weather,” Dessler said. “If the climate changes the weather is going to change how much you pay for food … there’s a million ways that climate change affects the economy.”

Justin Benavidez, assistant professor of agricultural economics for the A&M AgriLife extension service, grew up in Amarillo, TX where he now works after graduating from A&M in 2018 with a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics. He remembers seeing cotton growing over a decade ago through the panhandle but now it is only growing in Amarillo and on north, extending into Oklahoma.

“It’s great that we have that environment, but just because it’s moving north doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s making us more money,” Benavidez said. “It actually is being driven by the fact that we have less water availability.”

In Texas alone, there are over 18 million livestock, poultry, or products of either animal that rank at number one in the U.S. according to 2012 data from United State Department of Agriculture (USDA). Cotton and cottonseed production has a quantity of 1.6 million, also ranking number 1 per commodity in the U.S. and 17 in the world. These commodities clearly have a significant economic impact in the state.

Amarillo is considered a heavy irrigation district, pumped from the slow to recharge Ogallala Aquifer. According to an analysis from The Denver Post, the aquifer shrank twice as fast over the past six years compared with the previous 60 from overuse. This is risking up to $35 billion in crops a year.

“We historically have pumped out more every year than has been replaced, and there’s a lot of efforts to slow that or to kind of even it out,” Benavidez said. “It’s a difficult process because the aquifer covers a lot of different states and so we’re all pumping out of the same resource pool, so as water changes and the availability changes again.”

There is an incentive to grow drought tolerant plants, but even resilient fish have disappeared in the area, showing the aquifer being depleted has more problems than irrigation efforts but may not even be able to support the heartiest of life with its limited availability.

“If we’re trying to scale back our water usage to match the recharge rate that’s one of those things that’s driving us to grow a more drought tolerant plant like cotton,” Benavidez said. “Because rain in the panhandle is a little uncertain.”

Climate change might cause heavier rains in some areas and lighter rain in others, affecting the economics of producing food in it’s first step. These changes in weather will require alternate planting and processing dates for farmers according to Benavidez.

“It doesn’t necessarily guarantee a problem with the ag economy, what it does guarantee is changes in the agricultural economy,” Benavidez said. “And with any change there’s going to be some people who benefit and some people who will probably lose just because it’s a change of what our traditional production practices have been.”

According to the book “Climate Change Mitigation and Agriculture”, edited by Eva Wollenburg, Alison Nihart, Marja-Liisa Tapio-Biström and Maryanne Grieg-Gran, agriculture has often been excluded from carbon markets. Despite this, the overlap of adaptation and mitigation practices carbon payments could potentially contribute to farmer’s food security and resilience to climate change. Market development and access, investments, regulations and policies are just a few examples of incentives that are essential for sustaining mitigation efforts.

Although farmers will be greatly affected by climate change, Dessler the poorest people will be the most. During Hurricane Katrina, the people who were able to afford to leave New Orleans were those with money and resources. According the the U.S. Census, 28 percent of people in the city were living in poverty before the hurricane and of those poor households 54 percent did not have a vehicle. Those who have to take care of a infirmed relative, did not own a car, or did not have access to monetary support could not leave according to Dessler.

“Those are the people, largely, who died,” Dessler said. “Those are the people who couldn’t relocate because they didn’t have to resources, they didn’t have the education to find a job in another city. So climate change really does seek out the poorest people and hit them harder.”

Dessler said if nothing is done about climate change, things would get worse for everyone, including the affluent. It's already close to impossible for people to live in the current environment while at or below the poverty line. Once climate change effects begin to alter the economy they will not be able to afford the cost of living at all.

“If you have a lot of resources you can pay to minimize the impact of climate change,” Dessler said. “… If you’re poor, you become a refugee. You become a Katrina refugee and you have to move to a new city and try to find a job and hope that someone will let you sleep on the floor. Reed Arena, for example, we had people staying there.”

Resources are not only limited to those who are poor, they also affect the elderly. Diaz said he wished there was a possibility for finding room for a storm damage savings in his budget, but living off of a retirement salary limits the ability to save money for emergencies or disasters.

“That would be ideal, to have a savings or some money for just in case,” Diaz said. “When you work you maybe have like over 60K a year, but when you retire it goes down like 10, 15 percent. So really there’s a big difference from when you work from when you retire… there is no extra money to buy new paint, new things.”

Hurricane Katrina hit high poverty, low income states the hardest. Poverty was one of the major contributing factors to personal physical safety during Hurricane Katrina, as those who were poor were largely without transportation. According to the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities, 54 percent of poor households in New Orleans did not have a vehicle in 2000. This number was even higher in the elderly, 65 percent of which did not have motor transportation. Poverty made it difficult to escape from the hurricane that took 1,833 lives, almost half of which were over the age of 74, because there was a lack of access to resources others may have taken for granted, such as a form of transportation.

Sam Brody, director of the Center for Texas Beaches and Shores and professor of marine sciences at A&M-Galveston and College Station, is a lead author on a nationwide joint study of urban flooding. According to Brody, low income communities are less likely to receive federal aid in the case of urban flooding because of an economic input threshold designed to trigger aid.

“There have been cases in Houston where thousands of homes have been flooded but they’re all low income,” Brody said. “Even though thousands of homes were flooded there was no disaster aid available for those victims.”

Through his research, Brody was exposed to those who were affected by urban flooding. His observations have come from working internationally and comparing the U.S. to other countries in regards to their economic and political systems.

“Those kinds of examples over time tend to exacerbate the disconnect,” Brody said. “But I don’t think it’s a flood issue per say, it’s an American economic cultural issue.”

Brody also said those who have more economic resources are at a greater advantage to survive human induced climate change. Although he does not necessarily aim to emphasize that climate change or flooding events cause inequality, he does recognize it as an issue that is systematic to U.S. culture.

“In my observation there is no systematic objective to say ‘Hey, let’s hurt these vulnerable people,’” Brody said. “It’s just a result of the system.”

Brody said the economic issues that come from climate change will fall on the poor, although food issues will be one of the problems associated with climate change that assistance will be provided for when necessary.

“If you are poor and at times not white in this country, you’re at a disadvantage for everything,” Brody said. “So that shouldn’t be any different for flood issues, although flood issues is one of the few that this country subsidizes with insurance and individual assistance and recovery aid, but even so, if you’re poor you’re at a disadvantage.”

His observations from the field of urban flooding research are not uncommon. Kevin J. O’Brien’s 2017 book “The Violence of Climate Change” shares common sentiments with Brody. O’Brien states that climate change is real, caused by humans, and connected to hurricanes, droughts and floods. These severe weather events have lead to scarcity of resources and threats to the natural world that affect people’s lives, thus equaling violence created by humans that hurts humans.

“Climate change has been created by generations of decisions from privileged people who seek to make themselves safe and comfortable, who contribute disproportionately to the problem of climate change while tending to avoid its worst effects,” O’Brien wrote.

According to his book, the average U.S. citizen emits 17 tons of carbon dioxide and other climate changing gases a year, where as the average for a global citizen is only 5 tons. The weathlist in the U.S. have contributed up to 70 tons a year, concluding that the wealthiest have the opportunity to contribute the most to climate change while being the least likely to be affected by it.

Climate change may present economic opportunities for some groups, organizations, entrepreneurs, or individuals while also representing an overwhelming negative impact to others according to Ann Bowman, professor at the A&M Bush School of Government and Public Service with a focus in public policy, the environment, land use and economic development.

“I think the sum total of the changes will be far more negative than they have been in terms of it’s impact rippling through the economy,” Bowman said. “While it does create new opportunities for some firms to, what, invent new devices or create new systems, things like that, just [with] the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere you’re going to have tremendous effects in terms of weather for example, and then weather will have an effect on the economy.”

If there are more droughts, forest fires, sea level rise or other natural disasters, Bowman said there will be negative economic effects.

“If we’re going to have more droughts in some part of the country and more forest fires in other parts and more sea level rise and more flooding, those impacts I think on balance will be negative in terms of the economy, in terms of the kinds of economic consequences of these events,” Bowman said.

Policy action is a challenge for representatives whose jobs rotate on election cycles. Bowman said that when worrying about an election, policy that aims to make changes by 2050 for example does not hold as much weight in comparison to other issues on the table for politicians presently.

According to the book, “An Introduction to Climate Change Economics and Policy” by Felix R. FitzRoy and Elissaios Papyrakis, generous investment in renewable technology in combination with knowledge transfers will be required to disengage economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions and environmental degradation. If greenhouse gas emissions continue in “business as usual” style, billions of the most vulnerable members of present and future generations will have threatened chances of survival, creating an unjust human rights issue.

“It needs to be a little more forward thinking and long term,” Bowman said. “There’s certainly things that can be done to mitigate. The question is really mitigation or adaptation. Do we try to mitigate the effects of climate change or do we simply try to adapt to them?”

The long term future benefits of even drastic world wide reductions of emissions would, over time, be modest in terms of net costs according to “An Introduction to Climate Change Economics and Policy.” Short term costs would be greater as people adapt to changing habits and customs as such change would face psychological and political barriers.

“Economics can help to minimize the costs of achieving this goal, but cannot replace the ethical judgements required,” wrote FitzRoy and Paprkis.

Bruce McCarl, distinguished professor of agricultural economics at A&M, said there would be a different impact between using the two ways to react to climate change effects: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation would require reducing emissions and finding methods to stabilize the human impacts to climate change, where as adaptation would mean higher prices for food, gas, and other commodities. This leaves the rich to survive as prices continue to skyrocket from scarcity.

“You can see these climate change impacts,” McCarl said. “From the impacts of the climate itself changing through to the impacts where we might make food and energy more expensive in doing mitigation through to where the adaptation possibilities may be less accessible to lower income people.”

There are ways for people to begin taking action in climate change individually rather than fully depending on the system to change. The David Suzuki Foundation, an environmental action organization, recommends ten different steps to successfully make a difference as a person on the climate change crisis. Much of what they recommend may also save money, such as riding a bike or ride share programs for commuting, using renewable energy sources when possible, and reduce energy use. Eating a climate friendly diet and consuming fewer products will also help reduce human impacts of climate change. Through transportation, water use, and general environmental damages of industrial farming, there are significant effects on the environment from what humans consume. By choosing to consume less people will also waste less, keeping unnecessary trash out of landfills and helping reduce their carbon footprint.

The foundation also recommends using political action by calling representatives and voting during elections to make an active difference for those representing the population in matters where decisions will be made about climate issues. Dessler also said this is essential to participate in to battle climate change because individual action cannot be the sole answer to reducing emissions and human impacts of a worldwide problem.

“Ultimately, the only thing that’s going to solve this problem is sort of concerted global action, individual action will not get us there,” Dessler said. “So you need to have policies, international global negations to get emissions down. That requires electing people who view that as a priority, not who view it hostilely.”

Looking to Washington and large corporations, Dessler said there is little incentive for them to pay attention to the effects of climate change or care about having a smaller human impact.

“People in Washington … they care a lot more about their election in two or four years,” Dessler said. “If you’re the CEO of a company, you don’t care about climate change, you care about what your quarterly income statement, how much your stock price is doing. Their attitude is if this destroys the planet in 100 years but it caused my stock price to go up 10 percent tomorrow, you know, in 100 years I’ll be dead, so who cares.”

Recently, young generations have raised concerns about climate change, whether it be Greta Thunberg working to raise awareness about the need for action or climate change walkout strikes around the world. Dessler said it’s important for younger generations to vote and take action.

“It’s up to you,” Dessler said. “My generation has failed.”