Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Climate change poses significant risks to the global labour force, as rising temperatures undermine both work capacity and health. This study investigates the feedbacks between temperature extremes and labour productivity and the role of increased energy consumption as a form of adaptation over the long run. We find that climate-induced labour impacts generate considerable losses and rising adaptation costs even under a moderate (SSP2) warming scenario, with global GDP falling by 2.9% per year by 2100. Results are robust in showing how the negative effect on labour significantly penalises highly exposed economies in the Global South, where exposure to rising temperature is highest and adaptive capacity is most limited, with annual GDP losses of-5.9% by 2100. High-income regions of the Global North, facing milder thermal stress and lower vulnerability, gain about 1.8%. Because the heat penalty falls on outdoor labour, which has no cooling channel, outdoor-intensive economies (India, Sub-Saharan Africa) lose the most. Energy-intensive adaptation partially reverses these losses by an amount that grows with energy use, offsetting 18-40% of GlobalSouth’s loss and flattening the heat-productivity slope by about 29%, but remains bounded by each region’s thermal balance and installed cooling stock. Critically, adaptation response exhibits diminishing returns on additional energy, possibly leading to maladaptation pathways: unconstrained adaptation proves not being cost-effective in most of the cold-relief North and hot but energy-rich Southern economies. Adaptation through energy-intensive cooling solutions is therefore best understood as a targeted instrument with a region-specific optimal level.</p>