As governments negotiate a global climate treaty while navigating a global economic downturn, policymakers and the public are asking: What are the costs of climate change?
 | Waves batter a train as it passes along the coastal railway line at Dawlish in Devon, England. Climate change impacts could harm more than a fifth of global GDP if nothing is done to halt greenhouse gas emissions (Photo: Reuters) |
Climate change is the most significant, reckless market failure the world has ever seen. Since the Industrial Revolution, we have polluted without paying for it because we did not value the environment and the climate, racking up a colossal ecological debt.
What is that debt, and what will it cost to balance the books? Is it even possible to calculate? How do we figure out what happens to Vietnamese farmers when Tibetan glaciers shrink because trees are felled in the Amazon?
Which sectors of the economy and society will be hit hardest? Water supply, agriculture, infrastructure, forestry, fisheries, tourism, health, and energy are all key areas. What will be the costs of inaction on climate change to these building blocks of human society?
 | Picture Gallery (click on the image to start)See how the climate change balance sheet stacks up. Count the costs of climate change and the costs of protecting the climate. (Graphic: Asian Development Bank) |
The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, published in 2006, is the most influential attempt yet to draw up a climate change balance sheet. It concluded that, in a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario, the total costs of climate change would be equivalent to losing between 5 and 20 percent of global GDP “now and forever”.
In 2007, the UN climate panel estimated the costs of adaptation strategies in agriculture, coastal zones, forestry, fisheries, health, infrastructure, and water supply sectors combined could reach 44 billion dollars to 166 billion dollars per year by 2030.
These are conservative estimates, many now say, because more recent climate science predicts more rapidly increasing temperatures and a greater likelihood of catastrophic climate changes. Alex Bowen, senior economist on the Stern team, tells Allianz Knowledge that: “the impacts of unrestrained climate change would be higher than 20 percent of global GDP.”
How will we support the 50 percent growth of the world population from six to nine billion people by mid-century, if we simultaneously lose more than a fifth of the world’s wealth? See below how unrestrained climate change will erode some of the foundations of human society.
editor: James Tulloch
publishing date: June 9, 2009
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global warming
as student how can i contribute on preventing the global warming?simply,to avoid myself for being part of many people who continue to destroy our planet.