Climate Change Could Cut the Economy in Half. We're Not Ready for It.

[Brenda]

Later this century, sometime toward my teenage son’s late middle age, climate change might torch 50 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. I’ll say that again. Sometime around 2070–2090, climate change could be doing so much damage to ecological and human systems, and the links between them, that the global economy could contract by half. (For comparison: The U.S. economy shrank by roughly 30 percent in the Great Depression.)

This projection may sound exaggerated to the point of being implausible. Yes, two entire regions of Los Angeles burned to the ground last week. Yes, preliminary estimates of the cost of this one disaster range from $40 to $250 billion. But U.S. GDP is roughly $27 trillion; global GDP $107 trillion. Wouldn’t the U.S. and world economies be orders of magnitude more gigantic by 2070? Surely climate change couldn’t wipe out all that wealth?

Even understanding the credentials behind the study, many people will still find this figure implausible. Why is that? Humanity is entering a climate regime that has no precedent in our species’ history. The last time there was this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the oceans were so much higher that the eastern coastline of what would become North America ended about one hundred miles west of where it is currently. The Arctic, now largely a frozen wasteland, was a lush pinewood populated by giant camels. And our economy is adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere faster than any other phenomenon in geological history has ever done. It is absurd to imagine that severely damaging the climate would not severely damage the economy, which relies on a stable climate, even in the coming decades.

Our economy looks impervious to climate change because economics, finance, and governments deliberately separate or “decouple” our ecology and the economy in their calculations: The value of what is known as “nature” and the costs of its destruction are not included in the prices we pay for things. What happens to the climate system—to everything the economy cordons off as “nature” or “natural resources”—is considered “externalities.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/190566/climate-change-cut-50-percent-gdp-growth

Good article but once again here is a writer vastly underestimating the time frame! The damage is happening now and societal and habitable systems will be destroyed way before your time frame of 2070-2090!

[Moostache]

1. Its NOT wrong, and the current actions are NOT accidental...

The "plan"? It has always been massive genocide - the death of approximately 5 BILLION people who live in regions that are resource rich and cash/technology/military poor.

India
SE Asia
Africa
Russia
Eastern Europe

All are the first to go...
If thats not enough, the billionaires care less if you live or die as long as they go on...

It is not for nothing that otherwise intelligent or at least coherent people go along on this suicide run.

[Lulu KC]

4. Suicide/homicide

Front page news on a massive scale.

[Think. Again.]

2. I absolutely agree with you!

Each and every new warning or study that comes out stresses the point that the ecosystem break down is happening much faster than previously predicted.

Without immediate action, the near future is virtually doomed to horrendous, unpredictable occurances that we simply can not be prepared for.

Glad I never had children.

[Brenda]

3. Me too

Hell is coming.

[Irish_Dem]

5. The plan has been 100% decided upon by the politicians and oligarchs.

The oligarchs refuse to spend one penny on climate change prevention or damage/repair.

All costs will be passed to the consumer.

The rich believe they are immune and this is one of the reasons they are hell bent
on stealing all the world's resources. They want a big cushion for the hard times to come.