Unchecked Climate Change Will Be Hell On Outdoor Workers
HuffPost
A new analysis forecasts the number of U.S. outdoor sector workdays and annual earnings that could be lost if the world fails to slow global warming.
As temperatures in the Pacific Northwest soared above 110 degrees in late June, workers in Oregon flooded the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Division with safety complaints. In Klamath Falls, roofers worked in blistering heat and thick smoke from nearby wildfires “with little to no shade and no breaks for a long period of time,” one complaint read. At a job site in Clackamas, workers reportedly installed fencing without access to fresh water and with only a total of 35 minutes of breaks throughout the day. The devastating heat wave, which killed more than 100 people in Oregon alone, offers a sobering glimpse at what lies ahead for outdoor laborers. Without an aggressive global effort to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, extreme heat will wreak havoc on construction, agricultural, extraction, delivery and other outdoor sectors, warns a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists. The report, published on Tuesday, concludes that if climate change continues unchecked, the number of days outdoor workers in the U.S. are exposed to hazardous heat could quadruple by mid-century. Up to $55.4 billion in annual earnings would be put at risk. And it would come with dire inequities ― of the approximately 32 million outdoor workers in the United States, more than 40% are non-white.More Related News