The Monetary Cost of Climate Change
When people hear about climate change the first thing on their mind is rarely the cost. I’m not talking about the moral cost, I’m talking about the cold hard cash that we’re throwing down the drain every day.
Though this may come to a surprise to many since nobody ever really talks about it, it is a very real issue that is going to have a large impact on our future costs of living, our job markets, and the way that we all go about our daily lives. Just a few things that are going to be impacted are:
- Our cost of fossil fuels
- The costs of natural gasses
- The price we pay for food
- The jobs available for the everyday person
- New technology and energy sources
According to N.H. Stern in his book Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change these are all topics we’ll be forced to deal with if we don’t change our ways soon. Well, most of these are problems except two.
In this review, N.H. Stern wrote “The evidence shows that ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth. Our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century. And it will be difficult or impossible to reverse these changes. Tackling climate change is the pro-growth strategy for the longer term, and it can be done in a way that does not cap the aspirations for growth of rich or poor countries. The earlier effective action is taken, the less costly it will be” (2018)
This paragraph is so important because this is coming straight from the United Kingdoms government saying that no matter what it’s going to cost money to fix, the price just depends on when we take action.
The only good thing to come out of climate change would be the jobs that would be able to be produced because of it. Today the world faces very different unemployment rates in different countries, according to CIA.gov countries like Cambodia have rates as little as .3%, while Syria faces an epidemic of 50% of its citizens being unemployed.
Aside from the jobs created, another impact that we will be left with is the new technology this tragedy brings us. We all know it’s slowly, actually quite quickly, getting hotter which means it won’t be long until new sources of technology come around to help combat the greenhouse gasses that are being produced by the second.
Though those two are good, they sadly can not completely negate the bad that is coming from this. While more people will have jobs, they’re certainly going to need them when the price of not only meat, but also plants go up because of the difficulty to raise them now. Thats not to mention the costs of transportation in the future. Without fossil fuels we’re going to have to rely on other sources of energy to get us one place to the other which aren’t going to come cheap to the average consumer.
Stern, N. H., & Great Britain. (2007). The economics of climate change: The Stern review. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
