In 2018, several reports that highlighted the dangers of climate change were released and gained significant media attention. One of these was the US Climate Report, which warned that increasingly severe climate change will have extreme negative impacts on human health, environmental health, and the economy. Last week, the New York Times published an article that dives deeper into the economic implications of climate change.
With damages to infrastructure from increasingly severe storms and agricultural land lost to drought, it's easy to see how climate change is already having huge economic costs. One way to address these costs is with a price on carbon, which will disincentivize the emission of climate-change-causing greenhouse gases while also generating funds that could be used to pay for things like resilient infrastructure and a more efficient and reliable power grid.
There are several factors that must be considered when discussing how to address the economic costs of climate change, including permanence of those costs, when we will incur those costs, and who will bear the greatest buden of these costs. This New York Times article takes a close look at those factors and more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/upshot/how-to-think-about-the-costs-of-climate-change.html
Image from: Jonathan Bachman/Reuters
