By Scott Patterson, Jennifer Hiller, and Alyssa Lukpat
Extreme heat can trigger irrational behavior that can add up economically, said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School and author of “Climate Schock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet.”
“Car crashes go up, road rages go up, domestic violence and assaults go up,” he said. A major risk of long-lasting heat waves is that they can help push ecosystems toward tipping points, such as melting glaciers, that might be impossible to reverse, leading to widespread economic harm.
Quoted in: “Weeks of Extreme Heat Strain Small Businesses and Economy” by Scott Patterson, Jennifer Hiller, and Alyssa Lukpat, Wall Street Journal (15 July 2023)