Moody’s Analytics says climate change could cost $69 trillion by 2100

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/moodys-analytics-says-climate-change-could-cost-69-trillion-by-2100/2019/07/02/f9fb94ac-99cb-11e9-916d-9c61607d8190_story.html

by Steven Mufson
July 3, 2019

The consulting firm Moody’s Analytics says climate change could inflict $69 trillion [$69,000,000,000,000] in damage on the global economy by the year 2100, assuming that warming hits the two-degree Celsius threshold widely seen as the limit to stem its most dire effects.

Moody’s says in a new climate change report that warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, increasingly seen by scientists as a climate-stabilizing limit, would still cause $54 trillion in damages by the end of the century.

The firm warns that passing the two-degree threshold “could hit tipping points for even larger and irreversible warming feedback loops such as permanent summer ice melt in the Arctic Ocean.”

The new report predicts that rising temperatures will “universally hurt worker health and productivity” and that more frequent extreme weather events “will increasingly disrupt and damage critical infrastructure and property.”

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The report also says that rising temperatures will allow mosquitoes, ticks and fleas to move to new areas, resulting in more sick days. It would also raise public and private spending on health care.

Labor productivity will take a hit, especially among outdoor workers, including those working in agriculture.

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But the scenarios only go through 2048. The Moody’s report says “the distress compounds over time and is far more severe in the second half of the century.”

“That’s why it is so hard to get people focused on this issue and get a comprehensive policy response,” Zandi said. “Business is focused on the next year, or five years out.”

He added: “Most of the models go out 30 years, but, really, the damage to the economy is in the next half-century, and we haven’t developed the tools to look out that far.”

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Separately, the chief economist of Equinor, the Norwegian oil company previously known as Statoil, has written a report that looks at three scenarios for climate change and its impact on global economies, especially on energy.

Only one of those, the report said, would lead to a sustainable path, but that path comes with enormous challenges. To reach that set of targets by 2050, “almost all use of coal must be eradicated,” oil demand would need to be halved, and natural gas demand trimmed by more than 10 percent. Renewables as well as carbon capture and storage or utilization would have to increase sharply, helped by continuing advances in technology.

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