The climate crisis is fundamentally about inequality — we highlighted how it affects genders differently, how poor countries are the worst impacted by the crisis despite contributing little to it, etc.

However, there’s one other aspect that has been under the radar in all of the climate discussions and it’s the privilege that wealthy folks have to sort of “blanket” themselves from the effects of the changing climate and global warming within a society – social stratification and all.

The fact that rich people can evade the consequences of climate change and global warming (cocooned in their air-conditioned apartments and offices with financial instruments move to a new part of the world at the slightest disaster) while the poor, who constitute a larger part of these communities, struggle under the deteriorating climate, is a situation worth considering and addressing.

Heatwaves are devastating communities and for many of the households living in poverty, air conditioning is out of reach for them and they simply cannot afford the high upfront costs of air conditioners. Also, the effects of heatwaves (dehydration, heat exhaustion, heart attacks) become more likely as a result.

For people living in poverty, this means more exposure to dangerous living conditions. Already, there have been instances when people died due to heat-related complications.

This means the planet will just keep on getting hotter unless there’s a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels and investment in cooling systems that use alternatives to hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). HFCs are used as refrigerants in air conditioners and refrigerators to treat hot air and they trap heat in the atmosphere (several thousand times more effectively than CO2), making them a major contributor to climate change.

What can be done to save the situation? Some countries are already taking steps to protect the most vulnerable from heatwaves.

For example, Ahmedabad, a city in India, after a deadly heatwave in 2010, developed a comprehensive heat plan, which has since been scaled up across the country.

Similarly, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the United States began the process of setting the first national heat standard last October to improve protections for outdoor workers such as those in agriculture or construction, who are more vulnerable to heat stress.

Communities need to be proactive in the climate crisis and the two examples cited above are some of the ways it can be achieved. The poor have it much worse than the rich in terms of adaptation by virtue of their financial capacity and settlement location and this needs to be taken into consideration when addressing climate-related issues.