Tag: costs

bookmark_borderThe Cost of Climate Change: USD 178 trillion

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“Time is no longer running out to act on climate change; it’s up,” reports Deloitte. Unchecked climate change could cost the global economy USD 178 trillion over the next 50 years. “The human costs would be far greater: a lack of food and water, a loss of jobs, worsening health and well-being, reduced standard of living.”

Time is no longer running out to act on climate change; it’s up. Download the report.

Time to act—accelerating to zero

With global emissions continuing to rise over the last two decades, we have squandered the chance to decarbonize at our leisure. The global economy needs to execute a rapid, coordinated, sequenced energy and industrial transition that will play out in distinct phases.

* Bold climate plays: Coordination and collaboration set the stage for decarbonization by formulating policies and frameworks for a low-carbon future.
* Accelerating to net zero: Deep investment across systems instigates structural economic adjustments. The decline of emissions-intensive industries would create growing pains for some economies.
* Turning point: Investment in structural economic adjustment is almost complete. Economies would realize the dividend of the transformation and experience net positive growth.
* Low-emission future: Interconnected, low-carbon systems underpin a clean economy that would grow at an increasingly faster rate than its carbon-intensive alternative.

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

bookmark_borderThe Cumulative Costs of Climate Change

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“The crisis carries a profound warning. As climate change brings more frequent and intense storms, floods, heat waves, wildfires and other extreme events, it is placing growing stress on the foundations of the country’s economy: Its network of roads and railways, drinking-water systems, power plants, electrical grids, industrial waste sites and even homes. Failures in just one sector can set off a domino effect of breakdowns in hard-to-predict ways,” as reported by The New York Times in the article Texas Blackouts Point to Coast-to-Coast Crises Waiting to Happen.

“We are colliding with a future of extremes,” said Alice Hill, who oversaw planning for climate risks on the National Security Council during the Obama administration. “We base all our choices about risk management on what’s occurred in the past, and that is no longer a safe guide.”

“Sewer systems are overflowing more often as powerful rainstorms exceed their design capacity. Coastal homes and highways are collapsing as intensified runoff erodes cliffs. Coal ash, the toxic residue produced by coal-burning plants, is spilling into rivers as floods overwhelm barriers meant to hold it back. Homes once beyond the reach of wildfires are burning in blazes they were never designed to withstand.”

“I am extremely concerned by the lack of emergency-management expertise reflected in Biden’s climate team,” said Samantha Montano, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy who focuses on disaster policy. “There’s an urgency here that still is not being reflected.”

A White House spokesman, Vedant Patel, said in a statement, “Building resilient and sustainable infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather and a changing climate will play an integral role in creating millions of good paying, union jobs” while cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

“All these issues are converging,” said Robert D. Bullard, a professor at Texas Southern University who studies wealth and racial disparities related to the environment. “And there’s simply no place in this country that’s not going to have to deal with climate change.”

bookmark_borderAir Quality And Asthma

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A report published in JAMA entitled “Association of Changes in Air Quality With Incident Asthma in Children in California, 1993-2014” confirms air pollution increases childhood asthma incidence.

“Conclusions and Relevance: Among children in Southern California, decreases in ambient nitrogen dioxide and PM2.5 between 1993 and 2014 were significantly associated with lower asthma incidence.”

“There’s been a concerted effort in California over the period of this study to reduce motor vehicle emissions in general and diesel emissions in particular,” John Balmes, an environmental health professor at the University of California, says. “And I think this study shows that it’s paying off.”

When LA’s Air Got Better, Kids’ Asthma Cases Dropped NPR

Deaths and Ailments Attributed to Climate Change and Pollution

bookmark_borderTrade War! What Is It Good For?

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By Daniel Brouse

International Economics 101
What do you think of when you hear the term “trade war”?
The costs and benefits to society are very similar to traditional warfare.
1) Financial Cost. A war is expensive. In a trade war, huge tariffs are placed on the purchase of imports. A tariff is a sales tax paid for by the citizen. Quite often this tax can be as high as 45% or the product even banned altogether. The tax is paid by the citizen to their government. The financial loss from the in-efficiency of paying large taxes is a tremendous burden on the country’s own citizens. In addition, there are usually large costs to the private sector. These costs can include high interest rates, inflation and loss of value to liquid assets. The standard of living declines.
2) Casualties / Loss Of Life. Millions of people are maimed or die in a trade war. The easiest examples in recent history would be the impacts on baby formula or pharmaceuticals. Hundreds-of-thousands of children, as well as, adults in need of medication died because these items were targeted in trade wars. Another example is maiming children by targeting vitamin A (causing childhood blindness.) Typically, trade wars impact the most vulnerable first — babies, the sick and the elderly.

bookmark_borderAir Pollution Deaths

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A report from the World Bank found: Air pollution has emerged as the deadliest form of pollution and the fourth leading risk factor for premature deaths worldwide. Those deaths cost the global economy about US$225 billion in lost labor income in 2013, a new study finds, pointing toward the economic burden of air pollution.

The Cost of Air Pollution: Strengthening the economic case for action, a joint study of the World Bank and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), seeks to estimate the costs of premature deaths related to air pollution, to strengthen the case for action and facilitate decision making in the context of scarce resources. An estimated 5.5 million lives were lost in 2013 to diseases associated with outdoor and household air pollution, causing human suffering and reducing economic development.

While pollution-related deaths strike mainly young children and the elderly, premature deaths also result in lost labor income for working-age men and women. The report finds that annual labor income losses cost the equivalent of almost 1 percent – 0.83 percent — of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in South Asia. In East Asia and the Pacific, where the population is ageing, labor income losses represent 0.25 percent of GDP, while in Sub-Saharan Africa, where air pollution impairs the earning potential of younger populations, annual labor income losses represent the equivalent of 0.61 percent of GDP.

When looking at fatalities across all age groups through the lens of “welfare losses”, an approach commonly used to evaluate the costs and benefits of environmental regulations in a given country context, the aggregate cost of premature deaths was more than US$5 trillion worldwide in 2013. In East and South Asia, welfare losses related to air pollution were the equivalent of about 7.5 percent of GDP.

“Air pollution is a challenge that threatens basic human welfare, damages natural and physical capital, and constrains economic growth. We hope this study will translate the cost of premature deaths into an economic language that resonates with policy makers so that more resources will be devoted to improving air quality. By supporting healthier cities and investments in cleaner sources of energy, we can reduce dangerous emissions, slow climate change, and most importantly save lives,” said Laura Tuck, Vice President for Sustainable Development at the World Bank.

Deaths related to ambient air pollution have risen in heavily populated, fast-urbanizing regions, while deaths related to cooking and heating homes with solid fuels have remained constant despite development gains and improvements in health services. Diseases attributed to both types of air pollution caused 1 in 10 deaths in 2013, or more than six times the number of deaths caused by malaria.

“This report and the burden of disease associated with air pollution are an urgent call to action,” said Dr. Chris Murray, Director of IHME. “Of all the different risk factors for premature deaths, this is one area, the air we breathe, over which individuals have little control. Policy makers in health and environment agencies, as well as leaders in various industries, are facing growing demands – and expectations – to address this problem.”

About 90 percent of the population in low and middle income countries are exposed to dangerous levels of ambient air pollution. The World Bank works with developing countries and development partners to reduce pollution by supporting monitoring and analysis, regulatory reforms, and investments. In 2016 for example, the Bank committed US$1 billion to help China improve air quality by reducing emissions of specific air pollutants from industrial, transport and rural sources in the province of Hebei, and by increasing energy efficiency and clean energy through innovative financing in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region (also known as Jing-Jin-Ji region) that covers the capital area and neighboring provinces.

bookmark_borderEPA: Climate Change Report

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WASHINGTON –The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today released one of the most comprehensive analyses to date on the economic, health and environmental benefits to the United States of global climate action. The peer-reviewed report, “Climate Change in the United States: Benefits of Global Action,” examines how future impacts and damages of climate change across a number of sectors in the United States can be avoided or reduced with global action. The report compares two future scenarios: a future with significant global action on climate change, where global warming has been limited to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and a future with no action on climate change (where global temperatures rise 9 degrees Fahrenheit). The report then quantifies the differences in health, infrastructure and ecosystem impacts under the two scenarios, producing estimates of the costs of inaction and the benefits of reducing global GHG emissions.

“Will the United States benefit from climate action? Absolutely. This report shows us how costly inaction will be to Americans’ health, our environment and our society. But more importantly, it helps us understand the magnitude of benefits to a number of sectors of the U.S. with global climate action,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “We can save tens of thousands of American lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars, annually in the United States by the end of this century, but the sooner we act, the better off America and future generations of Americans will be.”

The report examines how the impacts and damages of climate change across a number of sectors in the United States can be avoided with global action. The findings include:

• Global action on climate change reduces the frequency of extreme weather events and associated impacts. For example, by 2100 global action on climate change is projected to avoid an estimated 12,000 deaths annually associated with extreme temperatures in 49 U.S. cities, compared to a future with no reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This is more than a 90 percent reduction from what we would expect with no action.

• Global action now leads to greater benefits over time. The decisions we make today will have long-term effects, and future generations will either benefit from, or be burdened by, our current actions. Compared to a future with unchecked climate change, climate action is projected to avoid approximately 13,000 deaths in 2050 and 57,000 deaths annually in 2100 from poor air quality. Delaying action on emissions reductions will likely reduce these and other benefits.

• Global action on climate change avoids costly damages in the United States. For nearly all of the 20 sectors studied, global action on climate change significantly reduces the economic damages of climate change. For example, without climate action, we estimated up to $10 billion in increased road maintenance costs each year by the end of the century. With action, we can avoid up to $7 billion of these damages.

• Climate change impacts are not equally distributed. Some regions of the United States are more vulnerable than others and will bear greater impacts. For example, without action on climate change, California is projected to face increasing risk of drought, the Rocky Mountain region will see significant increases in wildfires, and the mid-Atlantic and Southeast are projected to experience infrastructure damage from extreme temperatures, heavy rainfall, sea level rise, and storm surge.

• Adaptation can reduce damages and costs. For some sectors, adaptation can substantially reduce the impacts of climate change. For example, in a future without greenhouse gas reductions, estimated damages from sea-level rise and storm surge to coastal property in the lower 48 states are $5.0 trillion dollars through 2100. With adaptation along the coast, the estimated damages and adaptation costs are reduced to $810 billion.

The report is a product of the Climate Change Impacts and Risks Analysis (CIRA) project, led by EPA in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Pacific Northwest National Lab, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and other partners. The CIRA project is one of the first efforts to quantify the benefits of global action on climate change across a large number of U.S. sectors using a common analytic framework and consistent underlying data inputs. The project spans 20 U.S. sectors related to health, infrastructure, electricity, water resources, agriculture and forestry, and ecosystems.