Tallying the costs of Europe's heatwaves

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**Kimberly Adams** (0:25)
The economic costs of heatwaves, especially in places that aren't used to them.
From Marketplace in Washington, I'm Kimberly Adams. Across Europe, heatwaves are becoming more frequent, lasting longer, and pushing temperatures into the triple digits in some places. The heat has been slowing trains, straining power grids, and making it harder for people to work, which all comes at an economic cost. Joining me now to discuss this is Elizabeth Robinson, the Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Dr. Robinson, welcome.

**Elizabeth Robinson** (1:01)
Thank you so much.

**Kimberly Adams** (1:02)
When we talk about heatwaves, like the one that you all have been having in Europe, where do the biggest economic costs show up?

**Elizabeth Robinson** (1:10)
What we're seeing is people finding it much harder to work, so we're less productive, we might be working fewer hours.
Then the other area where we can look at costs is in terms of excess deaths. When people lose their lives in a heatwave, we can put something that might be termed a value of a statistical life or the value of how much we would generally want to spend to prevent a fatality. And so, for example, in June of this year in the UK, estimates have been anywhere from half a billion pounds to two billion pounds when we talk about lost output. And then in terms of when we put some cost to excess death, that's in the region of about six billion pounds.

**Kimberly Adams** (1:52)
Who is the hardest hit when these heatwaves occur?

**Elizabeth Robinson** (1:55)
We're very much looking at the elderly, the people over 65, or it's people with pre-existing conditions who are already vulnerable. Maybe they have kidney disease, maybe they have heart disease or compromised lungs. And then if we look at the working population, it's people who are in physically demanding jobs or who are working in high exposure sectors, so outside people in construction, say, or agriculture. There's also people who work in what we might call the gig economy, so people who choose whether to take on an individual job. So if we think about, say, a cycle career.

**Kimberly Adams** (2:30)
You mentioned some of the long-term consequences in terms of excess deaths, but what are some of the long-term economic changes you're seeing coming as a result of these heatwaves in Europe?

**Elizabeth Robinson** (2:43)
Certainly, we are seeing that there's long-term impacts on economic growth. So it's not just that it's a blip. We're seeing adaptations.
So people are thinking really hard about how we can adapt to our ever-changing climate. And so some of that is relatively straightforward. So in terms of the hours we're working, whether there's flexibility in when we work and where we work. Of course, there's questions about installing air conditioning, whether that's in offices or at home or whether looking for opportunities for passive cooling.
And we're going to have to really start seriously thinking about things like in agriculture.
For example, in the UK, we know that we really should be growing more fruits and vegetables. But then you have to have individuals who pick those fruits and vegetables. And then if the weather is increasingly hot, is it safe for those people to be outside fruit picking? And so what are the alternatives?

**Kimberly Adams** (3:34)
Elizabeth Robinson is a professor of environmental economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Elizabeth, thank you so much.

**Elizabeth Robinson** (3:43)
Thank you.

**Kimberly Adams** (3:44)
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