Climate change has serious consequences for the environment and people and is a major threat to economic stability. A new assessment reviews innovative, integrated research that underpins the economic case for strong near-term climate action.
Economic studies analyzing the costs and benefits of ambitious and rapid climate action have struggled to build a strong case due to methodological difficulties in trying to quantify all climate impacts. A new analysis looks at a pioneering approach to project economic impacts along climate mitigation pathways, finding that near-term emissions reductions are globally economically optimal, with central estimates for the “optimal warming” around 1.8-1.9°C by 2100.
Cost-benefit analyses of climate change impacts generally fall in one of two groups. The first group uses statistical methods to relate climate and weather patterns to economic productivity. While there have been improvements in this area, such methods remain a “black box” – it is not possible to easily relate economic productiveness to heat- or drought-related mortality. The second group adds up various climate impacts calculated in a more transparent and detailed manner, but is unable to quantify all impacts as well as all the interactions between them over time.
Read more at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
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