Economic damage from climate change six times worse than thought – report

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By Oliver Milman, The Guardian. 

Excerpt: The economic damage wrought by climate change is six times worse than previously thought, with global heating set to shrink wealth at a rate consistent with the level of financial losses of a continuing permanent war, research has found. A 1°C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world gross domestic product (GDP), the researchers found, a far higher estimate than that of previous analyses. The world has already warmed by more than 1°C (1.8°F) since pre-industrial times and many climate scientists predict a 3°C (5.4°F) rise will occur by the end of this century due to the ongoing burning of fossil fuels, a scenario that the new working paper, yet to be peer-reviewed, states will come with an enormous economic cost. A 3°C temperature increase will cause “precipitous declines in output, capital and consumption that exceed 50% by 2100” the paper states. This economic loss is so severe that it is “comparable to the economic damage caused by fighting a war domestically and permanently”, it adds. “There will still be some economic growth happening but by the end of the century people may well be 50% poorer than they would’ve been if it wasn’t for climate change,” said Adrien Bilal, an economist at Harvard who wrote the paper with Diego Känzig, an economist at Northwestern University.... 

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