Some believe that wealth creation should be the paramount goal of a nation. In Canada, many of those people are corporate or political operatives opposing effective actions to mitigate climate change. A 2024 publication by The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) may give pause to climate science revisionists.
A paper by economics professors Adrien Bilal of Harvard and Diego Känzig of Northwestern asserts that climate change will have a devastating effect on world economies. It estimates that the macroeconomic damages from climate change are six times larger than previously thought.
A 1°C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world GDP… Our results imply a Social Cost of Carbon of $1,056 per ton of carbon dioxide. A business-as-usual warming scenario leads to a present value welfare loss of 31%. Both are multiple orders of magnitude above previous estimates and imply that unilateral decarbonization policy is cost-effective for large countries…
Political rhetoric defending economic interests undermines effective climate action. But those efforts are counterproductive in anything more than the short-term.
Writing for the MIT Technology Review, widely published science writer David Appell explained the overwhelming evidence of global warming:
There are few scientific facts in the global warming debate that are as widely established as this–even staunch skeptics stopped arguing this point about a decade ago. Simple thermometer readings show it, like these from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The melting of glaciers, the shifting of species, the simplest of climate models–all provide evidence. The warming of the Earth is beyond dispute.
Globe and Mail contributor John Rapley examined how the scientific consensus has been shifting. Scientists believe the threat is now larger and more imminent that has previously been reported:
They found that previous estimates of climate change considerably underestimated the macroeconomic damage of extreme weather, which not only hits productivity but also depletes capital. Once this is factored in, what emerges is a world economy that would be 31 per cent poorer by the end of this century.
Moreover, they argue, the damage has already begun. Had there been no global warming since 1960, they reckon the world economy would be 37 per cent bigger than it is today…
Climate change will knock one-third off world economy, study shows
[2021] IPCC Working Group 1 report is a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse‑gas emissions from fossil-fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk. Global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible.
Categories: Climate Change
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