A draft of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been seen by French news agency AFP, and it says that the impacts of climate change will be devastating and will be felt sooner than previously thought.
Climate change is already taking a toll on the global economy, and forecasts predict worse to come by mid-century, according to a draft report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), seen exclusively by AFP.
Here are some of the report's findings on economic impacts:
- Global -
Climate-boosted extreme weather events -- cyclones, droughts, flooding -- have already sapped both short- and long-term economic growth, especially in developing countries.
- Average global economic damage due to floods over the last several decades has averaged $50 billion (42 billion euros) to $350 billion annually, depending on methods of calculation
- In a worst-case scenario, if Earth's temperature rises four degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, global GDP could decline 10 to 23 percent compared to a world without warming
- Expected damages for 136 major coastal cities were calculated at between $1.6 trillion and $3.2 trillion by 2050 in a worst-case scenario without adaptation
- Storm surges enhanced by sea level rise threaten more than 40 percent of coastal nuclear power plants worldwide
- Nearly 14 percent of the world's sandy beaches face severe erosion by 2050 under a moderate greenhouse gas emissions scenario
The report will not be released officially until next Februrary but I expect to see more about it over the coming months. It seems both comprehensive and extremely worrying.
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