Climate security

Climate Change’s Giant Impact on the Economy: 4 Key Issues

...When we think about the economic damage from a hotter planet, it’s important to remember that not all costs are equivalent, even when the dollar values are similar. There is a big difference between costs that are high but manageable versus those that might come with catastrophic events like food shortages and mass refugee crises.

Consider three possible ways that climate change could exact an economic cost:

• A once-fertile agricultural area experiences hotter weather and drought, causing its crop yields to decrease.
• A road destroyed by flooding because of rising seas and more frequent hurricanes must be rebuilt.
• An electrical utility spends hundreds of millions of dollars to build a more efficient power grid because the old one could not withstand extreme weather.