Paris climate policy will cost a sizable fraction of 21st century prosperity
Two new, explosive, peer-reviewed papers show net-zero/1.5°C :
Benefit $4.5 trillion/year
Cost $26.8 trillion/year
Total loss is $1,800 trillion over the century
We must do better
🧵 + refs
New special issue of peer-reviewed journal 𝘊𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘌𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘤𝘴
First climate economic article shows cost and benefit of 1.5°C target
worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2…
worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2…
Climate benefit of 1.5°C policy is less than 0.5% of global GDP by mid-century and 3.1% by 2100
This is an overestimate, as it assumes change from absurdly high damage (RCP8.5) to 1.5°C
Based on new meta-analysis, 39 papers w/61 published estimates
worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2…
Climate benefit of 1.5°C non-trivial
Economic costs are larger every year of this century
+ Cost wildly too small as paper assumes perfect climate policy with global, single, increasing carbon tax
In real life 2x higher or more
worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2…
Second climate economic article shows more realistic costs of 1.5°C and its close cousin Net-Zero by 2050
worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2…
Paris climate policy benefit low
Theoretical cost higher
Realistic cost of 1.5°C much higher again
worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2…
Paris climate policy benefit low
Theoretical cost higher
Realistic cost of 1.5°C much higher again
Realistic cost of Net-zero by 2050 even higher
worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2…
MIT paper only shows consumption costs, but authors shared GDP losses
They also shared their GDP development over century in 2007 US$ (roughly like UN SSP2)
Adj to 2023 US$ using BEA Table 1.1.9
worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2…
All figures are undiscounted
Since costs come before benefits, any discounting makes the benefit-cost ratio over the century even worse
Without discounting, each dollar delivers less than 17¢ of climate benefits
With 5% discounting it is less than a dime
We need to do better:
Green R&D is the way to dramatically cut the cost of going green
If we can innovate green energy to be cheaper than fossil fuels 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘴𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩
e.g.
cambridge.org/core/books/sma…
bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/1…
Paris climate policy will cost $27 trillion each year throughout the 21st century
Each dollar delivers just 17¢ of benefits
Our politicians need to do better
worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2…
worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2…
promises are far more wasteful than useful
I wrote a WSJ oped, detailing the new peer-reviewed studies that show
Paris climate promises could cost $27 trillion each year this century
wsj.com/articles/net-z…
archive.vn/DueaA
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