Via Campus Reform:

Newly published research uses science to lump the issues of climate change and economic inequality for political lobbying.

A study published last week by professors at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that climate change will reduce the income of an average person by 23 percent and increase global inequality by the year 2100. The study followed a previous UC Berkeley study published just a month earlier, proposing changes to climate policy.

“[Climate change] is causing major trauma for almost half the world’s population that’s much poorer than we are.”    Tweet This

The results of the study find that climate change will increase global inequality majorly, alleging warming is beneficial for colder countries such as Europe, which tend to be more advanced and rich, but more harmful for hot countries such as Africa and South Asia, which tend to be poorer; thus allegedly widening the global inequality gap by roughly 77 percent.

“These results provide the first evidence that economic activity in all regions is coupled to the global climate and establish a new empirical foundation for modelling economic loss in response to climate change, with important implications,” the study abstract reads. “If future adaptation mimics past adaptation, unmitigated warming is expected to reshape the global economy by reducing average global incomes roughly 23% by 2100 and widening global income inequality, relative to scenarios without climate change.”

UC Berkeley associate professor of public policy Solomon Hsiang, campus professor of environmental and resource economics Edward Miguel, and Stanford University assistant professor of earth system science Marshall Burke, were reported to have led the research.

“[Climate change] is causing major trauma for almost half the world’s population that’s much poorer than we are,” Hsiang said. “We should know that’s what these actions are doing.”