Fighting effects of climate change ‘will help poor’

Oxford Tackling climate change will reduce poverty by cutting heating bills and providing jobs, a report concludes. Installing insulation and investing in public transport to reduce car numbers would both help.
The report, Tackling Climate Change, Reducing Poverty, says that the poor are likely to be worst affected by rising temperatures because they tend to live in less energy-efficient housing, have less access to insurance against floods, and have less money to adapt to higher prices of fuel and food. The authors of the study, by Oxfam and the New Economics Foundation, base their findings on work by organisations including Friends of the Earth.
Andrew Simms, the foundation’s policy director, said: “A well-designed programme of national environmental transformation that creates jobs, makes better homes as well as healthier food and better transport systems, provides a historic opportunity to solve longstanding and deeply entrenched problems of poverty and social injustice.”