From lower test scores to higher crime rates, what are the costs of a warming world? The consequences of a hotter planet have already begun. In Slow Burn, R. Jisung Park encourages us to view climate change through a different lens: one that focuses less on the possibility of mass climate extinction in a theoretical future, and more on the everyday implications of climate change here and now. 

When wildfires blaze, what happens to people downwind of the smoke? When natural disasters destroy buildings and bridges, what happens to educational outcomes? 

Park explains how climate change operates as the silent accumulation of a thousand tiny conflagrations: imperceptibly elevated health risks spread across billions of people; pennies off the dollar of productivity; fewer opportunities for upward mobility. 

R. Jisung Park is assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The environmental and labor economist has been investigating and writing about the economics of climate change for more than a decade.

This event is part of our event series Amerikahaus Book Talks. 

Photo: R. Jisung Park ©Morgan Rogers Burns