Climate Change will Cost Trillions

The economic ramifications of continuing the 20th century’s economic model, where unsustainable extraction and pollution conveys competitive advantage, are coming into sharp focus. Citigroup now projects a staggering $72 trillion global cost tied to man-made climate change during the 21st century. This is an almost incomprehensible scale of economic damage that is equal to losing four years of the United States’ entire gross domestic product.

The agriculture and food manufacturing industries also confront similar staggering economic consequences. The industrial fast food complex is directly tied to a global obesity and diabetes epidemic that now costs $2 trillion annually, or almost 3 percent of world gross domestic product. If this cost remains constant it will represent $170 trillion in economic cost through the rest of the 21st century.

These staggering economic costs don’t even take into account human suffering and premature death. A telling example is that 4,000 people per day, or 1.6 million per year, are estimated to die prematurely in China due to air pollution. This is a morbidity population that is 33 percent larger than the entire population of San Diego. In terms of the morbidity rate tied to our food system, in the U.S. alone over 75,000 people die each year due to diabetes.

Consumers, markets, politics and sustainable economics

The scale of the numbers tied to unsustainable human and environmental impacts are now too large to be wrong or ignored. Continued purchases of fossil fuels in the quantities now being consumed is an exceedingly poor economic decision. Health research now documents that sugary drinks are the 21st century’s tobacco, in terms of negative human health and cost consequences. The question is why consumers and the political system are comparatively unresponsive to numbers that can only be described as staggering.

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