Effects Of Climate Change On The Economy – Mapping the Potential Economic Impact of Climate Change: Two Options Scientists and economists are predicting which parts of the United States could be most affected by climate change. A new study examines each county to quantify the potential costs of global warming.
Potential economic damage occurs at the regional level in a scenario where greenhouse gas emissions continue at current levels. Green indicates areas where there are economic opportunities. To view an interactive version of this map, click here. Hsiang, Kopp, Jina, Rising et al./Science Hide caption
Effects Of Climate Change On The Economy
Potential economic damage occurs at the regional level in a scenario where greenhouse gas emissions continue at current levels. Green indicates areas where there are economic opportunities. To view an interactive version of this map, click here.
How Will Acting On Climate Change Affect The Economy?
Climate scientists agree that there is too much warming this century and that such warming will cause economic problems for the United States, but economists are unsure by how much. Now a group of researchers and economists are writing in the upcoming journal
, said that at least one could see which parts of the country were most likely to be affected.
Researchers start with history: How did heat waves and droughts affect the economy in the past? They then applied this metric to various future warming scenarios — from mild to moderate — and mapped the effects region by region in the United States. They found that continued warming at the current rate could result in a 3 to 6 percentage point warming of the country’s gross domestic product by the end of the century – the warmer, the worse the economy.
Lead researcher Solomon Hsiang admits the numbers aren’t convincing by scientific standards, but they don’t really represent the bottom line. “I think the most striking message is that the impact of climate change on the United States is not the same everywhere,” said Hsiang, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Where you are in the country is important.”
The Missing Risks Of Climate Change
Colder places like New England could see economic growth—for example, through lower heating costs. But already hot spots like the South and Midwest can suffer major damage to their local economies due to high electricity costs, poor growth or mass migration from the region.
It may not be so surprising, but Hsiang went a step further: climate change will redistribute wealth, driving out workers, businesses and agriculture from the hardest-hit areas and sending them mainly to the north and you – the west of the country – relocated. Hsiang again said exactly how much is hard to predict. But he said that’s part of the new research: “When you start looking at climate change,” he said, “then it starts to affect all these parts of the economy, and that makes it hard to predict the future.”
It is less predictable that more people will die if heat waves worsen, which has an economic cost. However, it is very difficult to imagine what new technologies might emerge to help people adapt to climate change, generate clean electricity or remove carbon from the atmosphere.
Why this type of training when there are so many uncertainties? Even if that were true, the costs of climate change amounting to 6 percentage points or more of the country’s GDP would be exacerbated by the economy, which will grow many times by 2100.
Inequality Is Decreasing Between Countries—but Climate Change Is Slowing Progress
“A year ago, it could account for all the losses from anthropogenic global warming and more,” said Ted Nordhaus, an analyst at the energy and environment group The Breakthrough Institute. “For citizens of wealthy societies, the massive infrastructure and technological power is leading to a dramatic decline in living standards.” He said the downside of future predictions is that they scare people unnecessarily.
But Duke University economist Billy Pizer says such research at least brings a broader threat into focus. “It’s important to think: Are we talking about something the size of a breadbox or the size of an elephant or the size of a mouse?” he said. “And I think getting the scales right is very important, and I think that’s what this book does.”
And there continues to be a long effort to determine the so-called “social cost of carbon” (carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas). What will this large carbon burden mean for the economy, and should polluters pay this price now?
The administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama struggled to recognize the social costs of coal, aiming to charge polluters for every ton of carbon they emitted.
The Impact Of Climate Change On The Global Economy
However, Donald Trump’s administration says it is not interested in the social costs of coal or moving away from coal-based fuels, arguing it would hurt the economy. Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field said yes, the loss to the economy would be costly, but compared it to the space program in the 1960s. “It’s very expensive,” he said. “But it also shows a tremendous amount of creativity and innovation that really puts America on the path to preparing for the 21st century.”
An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Stanford’s Chris Field as the economist. He is a climate scientist. According to a new study from Stanford University, the gap between the economic performance of the richest and poorest countries is now 25 percent greater than it would be without global warming.
An analysis by Noah Diffenbaugh and Marshall Burke shows that the warming that has already occurred – 1 degree Celsius or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit worldwide above pre-industrial levels – has increased economic inequality worldwide.
A new study from Stanford University shows that global warming has increased economic inequality since the 1960s. Temperature changes caused by growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have affected advanced countries, cold countries such as Norway and Sweden, while slowing economic growth in warm countries such as India and Nigeria.
Economic Impacts Of Climate Change
“Our results show that most of the poorest countries are much poorer than they would have been without global warming,” said climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh, lead author of the study published in April. Day 22 in peer review
The study, conducted with Marshall Burke, an assistant professor of systems engineering at Stanford University, found that between 1961 and 2010, global warming reduced per capita wealth in the poorest countries by 17 to 30 percent. The gap between the group of countries with the highest and lowest economic productivity per capita is now about 25 percent larger than it would be without climate change.
Although economic inequality between countries has decreased in recent decades, research suggests that the gap would have narrowed faster without global warming.
The study builds on previous research in which Burke and the authors analyzed 50 years of annual temperature and GDP measurements for 165 countries to estimate the effect of temperature changes on economic growth. They show that in warmer-than-average years, growth is faster in colder countries and slower in warmer countries.
Socio Economic And Climate Change Impacts On Agriculture: An Integrated Assessment, 1990–2080
“Historical data clearly shows that plants are more productive, people are healthier, and we perform better at work when temperatures are not too hot or too cold,” explained Burke. “This means that in cold countries a little warming can help. The opposite is the case in former hotspots.”
In the current study, Diffenbaugh and Burke combined Burke’s previously published calculations with data from more than 20 climate models developed by research institutions around the world. By using climate models to isolate how much each country has already warmed due to human-caused climate change, scientists can determine the economic consequences of each country’s warming. It’s not hot.
The map on the left shows countries where GDP per capita increased or decreased as a result of global warming between 1961 and 2010. The map on the right shows the same information from 1991, after economic data became available for additional countries. (Image credit: Noah Dieffenbaugh and Marshall Burke)
To account for uncertainty, the researchers calculated more than 20,000 units of each country’s annual economic growth rate excluding global warming. The statistics in the book capture the results produced by thousands of different methods.
Social Dimensions Of Climate Change
“For many countries, whether global warming has helped or hurt economic growth is a matter of fact,” Burke said. Tropical countries in particular have temperatures that are anything but ideal for economic development. “There is absolutely no doubt that they were harmed.”
It is not clear how warming has affected growth in countries with Mediterranean latitudes, including the United States, China and Japan. For these and other temperate countries, the analysis shows economic effects of less than 10 percent.
“Some of the largest economies are close to the ideal temperature for economic productivity. “Global warming has not pushed them off the mountaintop, but rather toward it in many cases,” Burke said. “But severe warming in the future will push them away