Doing nothing about global warming would cost America dearly for the rest of this century because of stronger hurricanes, higher energy and water costs, and rising seas that would swamp coastal communities, says a new study by economists at Tufts University. The study concludes that it would be cheaper to take aggressive action to cut greenhouse gas emissions than it would be to suffer the consequences of a changing world. "The longer we wait, the more painful and expensive the consequences will be," the report states.
WASHINGTON - Doing nothing about global warming would cost America dearly for the rest of this century because of stronger hurricanes, higher energy and water costs, and rising seas that would swamp coastal communities, says a new study by economists at Tufts University.
The study concludes that it would be cheaper to take aggressive action to cut greenhouse gas emissions than it would be to suffer the consequences of a changing world. "The longer we wait, the more painful and expensive the consequences will be," the report states.
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The Senate in early June will consider legislation to set a declining limit on emissions and establish a market for pollution permits that would reward companies that reduce pollution. The system is designed to reduce total U.S. emissions by 66 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.
"Most of the debate we expect will be about how much it will cost to implement the bill. This report provides the other side of the ledger - how much it will cost if we don't act," said Dan Lashof, director of the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that commissioned the study.
The Tufts study includes a "bottom-up" analysis of the economic impacts in four categories and says that by 2100, annual costs would be $422 billion in hurricane damage; $360 billion in real estate losses, with the biggest risk on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, particularly Florida; $141 billion in increased energy costs; and $950 billion in water costs, especially in the West. (The estimates are expressed in today's dollars.)
That adds up to an annual loss by 2100 of 1.8 percent of gross domestic product, or GDP, the sum of the nation's output of goods and services.
The study's "business as usual" scenario, in which greenhouse gas emissions continued at an increasing rate, was taken from the high end of likely outcomes of inaction described by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year. The Tufts study also incorporated some later scientific findings.
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