Climate change to cost trillions, say economists

By Richard Ingham PARIS (AFP) — Estimates vary widely on the costs of damage from climate change, easing these impacts and taming the carbon gas stoking the problem, but economists agree the bill is likely to be in the trillions of dollars. Figures depend on different forecasts for greenhouse-gas emissions and the timeline for reaching them. In addition, key variables remain sketchy. How will rainfall, snowfall, storm frequency and ocean levels look a few decades from now? How will they affect a specific country or region? And how fast will nations introduce low-carbon technologies, carbon taxes and other policies that alter energy use? Despite these uncertainties, economists share a broad consensus: climate change will ultimately cost thousands of billions of dollars, a tab that keeps rising as more carbon enters the atmosphere. “The cost of climate impacts goes up with the delay on emissions mitigation,” said Sam Fankhauser of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE). “On the cost of adaptation, there’s a timing issue. For instance, there’s no point building sea walls now if the sea levels are only going to rise gradually over the next 50 years. But we do know that costs of adaptation will go up non-linearly, in other words exponentially, with the degree of warming that we have.” …

Climate change to cost trillions, say economists via The Oil Drum