Climate Change

[drplokta]

We keep seeing scary-looking estimates of the cost of climate change -- most recently an estimate here that it could be costing the UK £42 billion per year by 2080. What all these estimates have in common is that, while they look scary, they are in fact extremely small numbers, and indicate that we should do nothing about climate change.

Let's take that £42 billion per year by 2080 as an example. The UK's GDP is currently a little over £1 trillion per year. But if we assume 2% real growth in the economy per year over the next 74 years, then in 2080 it will be over 4.3 billion, and that £42 billion per year will be less than 1% of the economy, or equivalent to delaying economic growth by less than six months. Put another way, the effect of climate change will be to reduce average growth over the period from 2.00% to 1.99%, so it doesn't seem worth spending more than .02% of current GDP, or £200 million per year, to do anything about it.

Comments

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

Except that some countries not going to be able to cope with the cost of Global warming's effects on them. Bangladesh is going to disappear underwater if we get any significant rise in sea level.

The cost to us is only part of the problem. The effect, our not doing something about our contribution to the problem, has on other peole is rather more significant.

[armb.livejournal.com]

And if some small fraction of Bangladeshis decide that having their country destroyed is essentially the fault of The West, that's potentially a lot of recruitable suicide bombers etc. among the refugees.