Climate change will damage the economies of countries whether they are rich or poor, hot or cold, by the year 2100, economists said in a new report.
The report suggested that wealth and cooler temperatures are no protection from climate change’s economic toll if major policy changes are not adopted.
For example, Dr Kamiar Mohaddes, a co-author and professor of economics at Cambridge University, shared that in the UK, when the hottest day (ever) recorded a few days ago, infrastructure came to a halt.
If climate-change-causing greenhouse gas emissions are not drastically lowered, the average global temperatures will increase by 4 deg C by 2100.
The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to keep the earth’s temperature rise well below 2 deg C, striving for 1.5 deg C. But even that would require a radical reduction in climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions, a landmark United Nations report found.
The economists’ research focused on the US due to its varied climates, and found that ignoring the Paris accord’s goals would affect industries from manufacturing to agriculture, costing the US more than 10% of its GDP per capita.
Adhering to the Paris Agreement goals could hold the loss in the US to under 2%, the report said.
US President Donald Trump vowed in June 2017 to pull the US out of the international agreement, dealing a major blow to the effort to affect climate change.
The earliest that could happen is November next year (2020).
The report also suggested that while some countries are likely to adapt to climate change, they are unlikely to act in time to ward off all the negative effects to their economies.
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Source: The Straits Times, 22 August 2019