Global Warming Will (Eventually) Worsen World Economic Conditions

It turns out that climate change is both real and man-made--and may cost the world quite a bit. According to the Copenhagen Consensus Center, "Climate change is real and man-made...After year 2070, global warming will become a net cost to the world, justifying cost-effective climate action." Reported earlier by The Guardian, the findings show how important it is to take action now in order to mitigate costs.

In this latest effort, Richard Tol and other researchers combined climate and economic modeling to estimate the costs of climate change. Their findings, unfortunately, were less than optimistic.

Tol and the rest of the consensus center have determined that the emission of greenhouse gases is contributing to the significant rise in global warming. They projected that after the year 2025, climate change will begin to have less of an annual economic benefit, and will in fact become a drag on the global economy. This makes it more important than ever to take action. The CCC recommends that there should be an effort to stabilize global temperatures by 2025 in order to avoid any negative economic effect worldwide. They believe stabilization should remain about 1°C warmer than 1900. Tol predicts that if nothing is done to increase stabilization efforts, the average global surface temperature will warm by approximately 3.6°C by the year 2100.

However, the Earth is already committed to temperatures beyond the 1°C threshold. In addition, any further human greenhouse gas emissions will contribute to going beyond 1°C, and thus will begin to have negative effects on the global economy.

"Most countries benefitted from climate change until 1980, but after that the trend is negative for poor countries and positive for rich countries. The global average impact was positive in the 20th century. In the 21st century, impacts turn negative in most countries, rich and poor," according to the report.