“ALWAYS pack a sweater,” one local businessman advises visitors to Singapore, “because the best thing about our weather is the air conditioning.” Singapore’s first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, would have agreed—he considered the air conditioner the greatest invention of the 20th century. Another Singaporean politician once remarked that if it had not been for artificial cooling, local workers would be “sitting under coconut trees” rather than labouring away in high-tech factories.
Singapore is rich enough to keep its indoor spaces cool. Neighbouring Indonesia is not. Economists used to think that rich countries’ greater cooling power would enable them to limit the damage to their economies from the higher temperatures brought by global warming. A cross-country comparison published in 2012 found that higher temperatures did not seem to sap growth in rich countries, but did in poor ones. It is hard to compare the impact of temperature on growth in hot and cold countries directly, since there are too many variables to control for. Instead, the study compared growth...Continue reading
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