How we underestimate the costs of climate change, and why it matters now

Cities, states and businesses are still feeling the shock. The coronavirus has stolen more than 138,000 lives and obliterated budgets. Had the U.S. better prepared for the fallout, some of the impacts would have been less severe.

Countries in Asia, for example, accustomed to managing fast-moving viruses after their experiences with SARS, have fared much better than the United States, which leads all countries with 3.43 million COVID-19 cases.

Costs from climate will likely have similar effects, and sooner than we think. Understanding—or better yet, predicting—what we could face in the future is crucial for making the case for policy action today, not after calamity strikes.

Calculating climate costs is daunting

To make these calculations, economists rely on Integrated Economic Assessment models to estimate future costs of climate change. These models are complex tools that link emissions projections to climate and ultimately societal impacts, measured in metrics such as the costs of poorer health outcomes, lost labor, damage to infrastructure, agricultural losses and death. Economists can then value the economic cost of a changing climate in dollar amounts.

The estimated costs from prominent models vary, but they all emphasize how much we currently underestimate climate damages. One recent study focuses on just a few sectors, (agriculture, crime, coastal storms, energy, human mortality and labor), and finds that damages will cost about 1.2% of gross domestic product per +1°C on average.

4 ways the right policies can help us confront wildfires

Even so, estimating outcomes is exceedingly challenging, and many assessments have been leaving out or significantly underestimating several of the serious consequences of climate change on lives and livelihoods.

For example, some economists argue that integrated assessment models do not capture the potential for tipping points adequately, where impacts from climate change can either accelerate abruptly, or become irreversible, leaving us in an unprecedented scenario -- perhaps much like the unprecedented times we are experiencing right now. Integrated economic assessment models do their best to reproduce the world’s climate, economy and systems as they exist and function today. Even so, they are ill suited to estimate what will happen in a world where our climate system is pushed past a breaking point.

In addition, there are many intangible impacts that cannot be evaluated solely using economic costs – among them, the loss of cultural heritage, or the trauma of losing your home, getting hospitalized, or losing a loved one.

Every economic model under-values the costs of climate change

What is clear: the damage estimates from these models do not adequately value future well-being and non-monetary factors. Simply put, no matter the model, the numbers it produces are more likely than not too low.

We’ve seen this play out in other major disasters.

The California Wildfires, Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and even the Mississippi river flood of 1927 not only resulted in direct catastrophic economic losses to the residents of those areas, they also contributed to trauma, loss of stability and displacement from those communities. Losses that weren’t quantified in damage assessments. Even less well-known disasters resulted in monumental damages. The 2006 California heat wave, for example, cost $5.4 billion, while an outbreak of West Nile Virus in Louisiana cost an estimated $207 million.

We know that climate change is going to be expensive. And it will likely be more expensive than we are able to estimate. That knowledge should prod policymakers to take action now—before it’s too late.

Inaction brought the entire world economy to its knees in a matter of weeks during a pandemic that scientists warned us would come.

Climate change is already starting to wreak havoc on the planet. We don’t have time to wait while the federal government is stymied under the Trump administration’s inaction—and in some cases—proactive rollbacks of climate protections. Just as they have in the pandemic, state and local leaders can and should lead the way to prepare for an uncertain and costly climate future.

tmoran July 23, 2020 - 12:21

How we underestimate the costs of climate change, and why it matters now

Cities, states and businesses are still feeling the shock. The coronavirus has stolen more than 138,000 lives and obliterated budgets. Had the U.S. better prepared for the fallout, some of the impacts would have been less severe.

Countries in Asia, for example, accustomed to managing fast-moving viruses after their experiences with SARS, have fared much better than the United States, which leads all countries with 3.43 million COVID-19 cases.

Costs from climate will likely have similar effects, and sooner than we think. Understanding—or better yet, predicting—what we could face in the future is crucial for making the case for policy action today, not after calamity strikes.

Calculating climate costs is daunting

To make these calculations, economists rely on Integrated Economic Assessment models to estimate future costs of climate change. These models are complex tools that link emissions projections to climate and ultimately societal impacts, measured in metrics such as the costs of poorer health outcomes, lost labor, damage to infrastructure, agricultural losses and death. Economists can then value the economic cost of a changing climate in dollar amounts.

The estimated costs from prominent models vary, but they all emphasize how much we currently underestimate climate damages. One recent study focuses on just a few sectors, (agriculture, crime, coastal storms, energy, human mortality and labor), and finds that damages will cost about 1.2% of gross domestic product per +1°C on average.

4 ways the right policies can help us confront wildfires

Even so, estimating outcomes is exceedingly challenging, and many assessments have been leaving out or significantly underestimating several of the serious consequences of climate change on lives and livelihoods.

For example, some economists argue that integrated assessment models do not capture the potential for tipping points adequately, where impacts from climate change can either accelerate abruptly, or become irreversible, leaving us in an unprecedented scenario -- perhaps much like the unprecedented times we are experiencing right now. Integrated economic assessment models do their best to reproduce the world’s climate, economy and systems as they exist and function today. Even so, they are ill suited to estimate what will happen in a world where our climate system is pushed past a breaking point.

In addition, there are many intangible impacts that cannot be evaluated solely using economic costs – among them, the loss of cultural heritage, or the trauma of losing your home, getting hospitalized, or losing a loved one.

Every economic model under-values the costs of climate change

What is clear: the damage estimates from these models do not adequately value future well-being and non-monetary factors. Simply put, no matter the model, the numbers it produces are more likely than not too low.

We’ve seen this play out in other major disasters.

The California Wildfires, Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and even the Mississippi river flood of 1927 not only resulted in direct catastrophic economic losses to the residents of those areas, they also contributed to trauma, loss of stability and displacement from those communities. Losses that weren’t quantified in damage assessments. Even less well-known disasters resulted in monumental damages. The 2006 California heat wave, for example, cost $5.4 billion, while an outbreak of West Nile Virus in Louisiana cost an estimated $207 million.

We know that climate change is going to be expensive. And it will likely be more expensive than we are able to estimate. That knowledge should prod policymakers to take action now—before it’s too late.

Inaction brought the entire world economy to its knees in a matter of weeks during a pandemic that scientists warned us would come.

Climate change is already starting to wreak havoc on the planet. We don’t have time to wait while the federal government is stymied under the Trump administration’s inaction—and in some cases—proactive rollbacks of climate protections. Just as they have in the pandemic, state and local leaders can and should lead the way to prepare for an uncertain and costly climate future.

tmoran July 23, 2020 - 12:21

This post originally appeared on Climate 411 A new report highlights the Trump administration’s dangerous efforts to obscure the real costs of climate change, while a major court decision firmly rejects the administration’s approach. A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent agency tasked with providing objective nonpartisan information to policymakers, confirms what we’ve […]

This post originally appeared on Climate 411 A new report highlights the Trump administration’s dangerous efforts to obscure the real costs of climate change, while a major court decision firmly rejects the administration’s approach. A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent agency tasked with providing objective nonpartisan information to policymakers, confirms what we’ve […]

The post More confirmation that the Trump administration has been disregarding the true costs of climate pollution appeared first on Market Forces.

A new report highlights the Trump administration’s dangerous efforts to obscure the real costs of climate change, while a major court decision firmly rejects the administration’s approach. A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent agency tasked with providing objective nonpartisan information to policymakers, confirms what we’ve known for years: that the […]

Written by Heather Toney

This is the written testimony of Heather McTeer Toney, National Field Director, Moms Clean Air Force. It was delivered to the the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee during a hearing on “Sweltering in Place: COVID-19, Extreme Heat, and Environmental Justice” on Tuesday, July 14, 2020: Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member Lucas, and members of the committee, ...

Before COVID-19 became an all-consuming global priority, business and investor attention to environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance was surging, and thought leaders like Alan Murray (no relation) were redefining corporate leadership to include addressing big issues like climate change, and putting purpose on par with profit. The Business Roundtable’s updated statement on the purpose […]

Before COVID-19 became an all-consuming global priority, business and investor attention to environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance was surging, and thought leaders like Alan Murray (no relation) were redefining corporate leadership to include addressing big issues like climate change, and putting purpose on par with profit. The Business Roundtable’s updated statement on the purpose […]

To restore Louisiana’s coast, we need a suite of large-scale restoration projects across the coast working together to deliver maximum benefits to reduce land loss, restore ecosystems and maintain healthy and diverse habitat. In our “Restoration Project Highlights” series, we take a deeper look at specific projects from our list of Priority Projects, highlighting why they’re needed and hearing local perspectives on their importance. At their essence, many canals are artificial waterways constructed to allow boats to come inland. In ...

Read The Full Story

The post This Giant Lock Complex Could Help Restore Wetlands in the Bayou Region appeared first on Restore the Mississippi River Delta.

To restore Louisiana’s coast, we need a suite of large-scale restoration projects across the coast working together to deliver maximum benefits to reduce land loss, restore ecosystems and maintain healthy and diverse habitat. In our “Restoration Project Highlights” series, we take a deeper look at specific projects from our list of Priority Projects, highlighting why they’re needed and hearing local perspectives on their importance. At their essence, many canals are artificial waterways constructed to allow boats to come inland. In ...

Read The Full Story

The post This Giant Lock Complex Could Help Restore Wetlands in the Bayou Region appeared first on Restore the Mississippi River Delta.

For Indigenous people of the Amazon, the tragedy of COVID-19 is an all too familiar story

As we are seeing everywhere, COVID-19 relentlessly exposes the greatest inequities and injustices of our society. In Brazil, Indigenous people die of the virus about twice as often as the general population.

As news of the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the Panará territory, Akà, leader of the Indigenous Panará people, recorded a message for his friends expressing his concerns: “Why have the white people done what they’ve done with us, Indigenous people? I’m very concerned, for myself and for my people. We are waiting to see if [COVID-19] will get to our territory. If it gets here, it is going to finish us off.”

A history of death and loss

Hardly a day went by when I was living with Akà without someone recalling the cataclysmic wave of epidemics that nearly exterminated the Panará. The disease arrived when the government built a road through the center of the Panara’s isolated Amazon forest territory in the early 1970s.

“First, an old woman died. Then everyone got fever and cough, chest pain and sore throat. It was hard to breathe. We managed to bury some of the dead, then so many died. We were so sick and weak, we couldn’t bury the dead anymore,” Akà recalled.

His story is neither new nor exceptional. Essentially all of the 450 Indigenous peoples of the Amazon are survivors of the genocide that began in the 1500s, when Portuguese and Spanish colonizers unleashed war, enslavement and – most lethal of all – new viral diseases that laid waste across the region, killing millions.

COVID-19 is only the most recent chapter of a very long story.

The compounding crises facing Indigenous peoples today

COVID-19’s disastrous effects on Indigenous peoples are intimately bound up with increasing Amazon deforestation and rampant invasions of Indigenous territories and protected areas.

Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro is equally willing to flout his own government’s policies on the pandemic as he is to ignore the science that shows the Amazon near an irreversible tipping point. At a time when the Amazon is at high risk of a record-breaking fire season.

A little more deforestation would change much of the forest into scrub brush and radically reduce rainfall. This mass loss of forest would release tens of billions of tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere.

The consequences would be catastrophic for the planet.

Deforestation: Solved via carbon markets?

COVID-19, fires and Bolosnaro’s active encouragement of illegal land-grabs, mining and logging on Indigenous territories are very seriously threatening one of the greatest advances for the climate and human rights of the last century.

What’s at stake

The Indigenous people of the Amazon who survived the opening of the frontier since the 1960s, have won official recognition of – and, largely, control over – their territories. Along with the protected areas inhabited by traditional peoples, these territories now represent half of the Amazon – think half the size of the continental U.S. west of the Mississippi.

Akà and the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon are a fundamental reason why Brazil was able to reduce Amazon deforestation 80% between 2004 and 2014.

So whether Akà and the indigenous peoples of the Amazon are overrun by illegal loggers, miners and land-grabbers and decimated by COVID-19 affects us all. We should support them however we can.

Get involved

United for a Living Amazon (União Amazônia Viva) is a major regional initiative that provides direct support for Indigenous peoples to combat COVID-19.

SOS Amazônia has launched a campaign on behalf of a broad grassroots coalition of Indigenous and traditional peoples, the Union of the Peoples of the Forest, to directly support local communities affected by COVID-19.

The Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil is also taking donations to support local communities.

tmoran July 21, 2020 - 03:18

For Indigenous people of the Amazon, the tragedy of COVID-19 is an all too familiar story

As we are seeing everywhere, COVID-19 relentlessly exposes the greatest inequities and injustices of our society. In Brazil, Indigenous people die of the virus about twice as often as the general population.

As news of the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the Panará territory, Akà, leader of the Indigenous Panará people, recorded a message for his friends expressing his concerns: “Why have the white people done what they’ve done with us, Indigenous people? I’m very concerned, for myself and for my people. We are waiting to see if [COVID-19] will get to our territory. If it gets here, it is going to finish us off.”

A history of death and loss

Hardly a day went by when I was living with Akà without someone recalling the cataclysmic wave of epidemics that nearly exterminated the Panará. The disease arrived when the government built a road through the center of the Panara’s isolated Amazon forest territory in the early 1970s.

“First, an old woman died. Then everyone got fever and cough, chest pain and sore throat. It was hard to breathe. We managed to bury some of the dead, then so many died. We were so sick and weak, we couldn’t bury the dead anymore,” Akà recalled.

His story is neither new nor exceptional. Essentially all of the 450 Indigenous peoples of the Amazon are survivors of the genocide that began in the 1500s, when Portuguese and Spanish colonizers unleashed war, enslavement and – most lethal of all – new viral diseases that laid waste across the region, killing millions.

COVID-19 is only the most recent chapter of a very long story.

The compounding crises facing Indigenous peoples today

COVID-19’s disastrous effects on Indigenous peoples are intimately bound up with increasing Amazon deforestation and rampant invasions of Indigenous territories and protected areas.

Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro is equally willing to flout his own government’s policies on the pandemic as he is to ignore the science that shows the Amazon near an irreversible tipping point. At a time when the Amazon is at high risk of a record-breaking fire season.

A little more deforestation would change much of the forest into scrub brush and radically reduce rainfall. This mass loss of forest would release tens of billions of tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere.

The consequences would be catastrophic for the planet.

Deforestation: Solved via carbon markets?

COVID-19, fires and Bolosnaro’s active encouragement of illegal land-grabs, mining and logging on Indigenous territories are very seriously threatening one of the greatest advances for the climate and human rights of the last century.

What’s at stake

The Indigenous people of the Amazon who survived the opening of the frontier since the 1960s, have won official recognition of – and, largely, control over – their territories. Along with the protected areas inhabited by traditional peoples, these territories now represent half of the Amazon – think half the size of the continental U.S. west of the Mississippi.

Akà and the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon are a fundamental reason why Brazil was able to reduce Amazon deforestation 80% between 2004 and 2014.

So whether Akà and the indigenous peoples of the Amazon are overrun by illegal loggers, miners and land-grabbers and decimated by COVID-19 affects us all. We should support them however we can.

Get involved

United for a Living Amazon (União Amazônia Viva) is a major regional initiative that provides direct support for Indigenous peoples to combat COVID-19.

SOS Amazônia has launched a campaign on behalf of a broad grassroots coalition of Indigenous and traditional peoples, the Union of the Peoples of the Forest, to directly support local communities affected by COVID-19.

The Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil is also taking donations to support local communities.

tmoran July 21, 2020 - 03:18

Written by Dominique Browning

We stand with Portland moms who linked arms to protect the protestors and got teargassed by federal troops. We stand with moms everywhere, fighting for Justice in Every Breath.

This post was authored by Ruben Lubowski, Chief Natural Resource Economist at EDF, and Alexander Golub, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Science at American University. For companies that are large emitters of greenhouse gases, uncertainty about policies to address climate change can be a real challenge. But our new paper in the journal Energy shows how […]

This post was authored by Ruben Lubowski, Chief Natural Resource Economist at EDF, and Alexander Golub, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Science at American University. For companies that are large emitters of greenhouse gases, uncertainty about policies to address climate change can be a real challenge. But our new paper in the journal Energy shows how […]

This post was authored by Ruben Lubowski, Chief Natural Resource Economist at EDF, and Alexander Golub, Adjunct Professor of Environmental Science at American University. For companies that are large emitters of greenhouse gases, uncertainty about policies to address climate change can be a real challenge. But our new paper in the journal Energy shows how […]

(Correction: This blog previously referred to a Blue Green Alliance estimate that the Clean Cars rollback would cost 200,000 jobs. That estimate was for the proposed rollback. We have now included the Trump administration’s own analysis of the final rollback, which found it would cost as many as 140,000 job-years.) The legal battle over America’s […]

(Correction: This blog previously referred to a Blue Green Alliance estimate that the Clean Cars rollback would cost 200,000 jobs. That estimate was for the proposed rollback. We have now included the Trump administration’s own analysis of the final rollback, which found it would cost as many as 140,000 job-years.) The legal battle over America’s […]

The legal battle over America’s Clean Car Standards is now in full swing. EDF and a broad coalition that includes 23 states from all regions of the country recently filed court documents defending both state and national clean car standards against attacks from the Trump administration. The Trump administration recently finalized a rule that would […]

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns we have just 30 years to reduce emissions to the point where we have no impact on the climate. The scope of this challenge is daunting — requiring total transformation of our energy, transportation and food systems — as are the human, financial and business risks of climate […]