The paper explores the unexpected consequences of road construction projects in rural India. While constructing roads to connect labor markets in remote areas is often seen as a positive development, this study reveals a significant drawback. The research finds that such road projects inadvertently lead to an increase in harmful crop fires, which have detrimental effects on both air quality and human health. The paper draws attention to the need for a more comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted impacts of rural infrastructure development, highlighting the importance of considering environmental consequences alongside economic benefits when planning such initiatives in developing regions.

This paper investigates the health impacts of fossil fuel-driven energy production by exploiting a unique Colombian electricity pricing policy. This policy triggers increased thermal energy production when wholesale electricity prices exceed a pre-determined scarcity price, resulting in heightened local pollution levels. Comparing municipalities near high-capacity thermal plants to those near low-capacity plants, the study reveals a significant increase in cardiovascular-related emergency room mortality (56%) and respiratory-related morbidity (9%) in areas with heightened thermal energy production. These findings translate into substantial health costs, estimated at 996 million USD, considering lives lost and increased healthcare expenditures. The study’s focus on Colombia contributes valuable insights into the health consequences of fossil fuel-based energy production in lower-income countries, shedding light on the global

Remotely sensed land surface temperature measurements are used to explore the distribution of the United States’ urban heating burden. Drawing on urban temperature anomalies during extreme summer surface temperature events from all 1,056 US counties with more than 10 developed census tracts, we find that the poorest tracts (and those with lowest average education levels) within a county are significantly hotter than the richest (and more educated) neighborhoods for 76% of these counties (54% for education); we also find that neighborhoods with higher Black, Hispanic, and Asian population shares are hotter than the more White, non-Hispanic areas in each county.

Using hourly measures across a full year of crowd-sourced data from over 1000 indoor and outdoor pollution monitors in California, we explore the temporal and spatial relationship between outdoor and indoor particulate matter (PM) concentrations. We find that an increase in outdoor PM concentration of 10% leads to an average increase of 4.2–6.1% in indoor concentrations. We also provide evidence showing that penetration rates are associated with building age and climatic conditions. Since people spend a substantial amount of each day indoors, our findings have significant implications for government policies to improve public health through reductions in exposure to ambient air pollution.

There is a long-standing debate over whether new roads unavoidably lead to environmental damage, especially forest loss, but causal identification has been elusive. Using multiple causal identification strategies, we study the construction of new rural roads to over 100,000 villages and the upgrading of 10,000 kilometers of national highways in India. The new rural roads had precisely zero effect on local deforestation. In contrast, the highway upgrades caused substantial forest loss, which appears to be driven by increased timber demand along the transportation corridors. In terms of forests, last mile connectivity had a negligible environmental cost, while expansion of major corridors had important environmental impacts.