Nobel laureates, technological pioneers, and innovative entrepreneurs are unequally distributed across the globe. Their density increases in regions toward the North Pole, toward the South Pole, and very close to the Equator. This geographic anomaly led us to explore whether stressful demands of climatic cold and climatic heat (imposed necessities) interact with economic wealth resources (available opportunities) in modulating creative culture—defined here as includingboth inventive idea generation and innovative idea implementation. Controlling for societal intellectualization, industrialization, and urbanization, results indicated that higher thermal demands, primarily cold stress and secondarily heat stress, hinder creativity in poorer p...