There is, of course, little sympathy from these quarters for complaints from New York about how damn cold it is. Why exactly kids can’t go to school when it’s -17°C or two feet of snow falls is a mystery to me. But the weather in New York City was cause for another interesting little debate with Anna about societal differences between the US and SwedenWhat else did you expect? You will also find gross overgeneralizations, but I think there is an interesting point to be made here nonetheless..

The thesis: That there is an inverse correlation between the level of social services provided by a society and the average minimum winter temperature.

The argument: Let us assume that both Sweden and New York, as societies, have the same tolerance for homeless death rates. It’s probably a very low number, near zero. Any spree of deaths would result in an immediate uproar.

Let us also assume that there is an exponential rise in homeless deaths as the temperature drops. Far more homeless are at risk at -20°C than -10°C, say.

New York rarely reaches -20°C, so being homeless in NYC rarely means you are at risk of dying from the cold. Not so in Sweden. If you were truly homeless in Sweden, good luck surviving the winter.

There are two possible solutions: The first is an ad hoc one, as implemented by Mayor Bloomberg: Go hunting for the homeless and bring them in from the cold, so they do not have to withstand these extremes in temperature. This is probably the cheapest and most efficient way to prevent homeless deaths if it is rarely this coldAnna recoils at my use off the word “efficient” in the context of managing human suffering..

Not so if you know it always gets this cold. In that case, it is more efficient to institute a system that alleviates homelessness in the first place instead of permanently treating the symptoms of homelessness on an ad hoc basis. In other words, both American homelessness and the Nordic welfare system are perfect examples of climatic adaptation. It explains why Canada has a more generous welfare system than the US. And it explains why the communist revolution happened in Russia. How’s that for a theory?

I’ve seen this kind of macro-economic measuring of opportunity costs elsewhere: In Washington DC, the one snowstorm that hits every three years completely paralyzes the city for a week, because there are no snowplows to speak of. The cost: a week’s worth of man hours. In Sweden, that cost is paid upfront. Highway driving in a snowstorm leads to an awesome sight: Huge snowplows, driving in tight formation at high speed (think chopper scene in Apocalypse Now, with the Ride of the Valkyries at full volume) scream through the falling snow, followed by a peloton of cars. Last year, I actually managed to drive from Norway (where it was damn cold) back to Sweden at near the speed limit in just this kind of weather.

Homework question: Why is the inverse not true? Why does the likelihood of extremely hot summers causing elderly deaths through heat exposure not seem to affect the level of social services? For the same reason that freak heat waves do not spur (French) authorities to create ad hoc cooling solutions for the elderly?