I hate to say this, but no duh. This is
what environmentalist have been saying for as long as I remember. It is about
time someone else is catching on.
Karen
____________________
Karen Bograd
Administrative Services Manager
Phoenix Resources Recycling
(919) 787-0883
kbograd@no.address
We Shred ... Then
Recycle!
From: GreenYes@no.address [mailto:GreenYes@no.address] On Behalf Of Gary Liss
Sent: Friday, May 23, 2008 3:46 PM
To: crra_members@no.address; GreenYes@no.address; zwia@no.address;
ZERI-US@no.address
Cc: Steve Coyle; Gary Liss
Subject: [GreenYes] How much it
will cost if we don't act on global warming
Apologies for Cross-Postings
Date: Fri, 23 May 2008 10:57:55 -0700
Subject: Study cites high cost of global warming, says action would be cheaper
From: Steve Coyle <steve@no.address>
Study
cites high cost of global warming, says action would be cheaper
Renee Schoof - Sacramento
Bee May 23, 2008
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. 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. The study projects that the
average temperature will increase by 13 degrees Fahrenheit in most of the United States and 18 degrees in Alaska in the next 100
years, intensifying heat waves, hurricanes and droughts. The report also
forecasts stronger hurricanes as a result of higher sea surface temperatures;
sea level rises of 23 inches by 2050 and 45 inches by 2100 that would inundate
low-lying coastal areas; and higher air-conditioning bills in the Southeast and
Southwest that wouldn't be offset nationally by lower heating bills in the
North.
The authors of the Tufts study also used a revised version of the model
used by Nicholas Stern for his 2006 assessment of the cost of inaction on a
global scale. Using that model, the Tufts economists found a U.S. loss of
3.6 percent of GDP by 2100. There have been more than six studies of the cost
of reducing U.S.
greenhouse gas emissions as outlined in the bill that will be debated in the
Senate. All use different assumptions and have different outcomes. None of
these studies looked at the costs of not acting, said Eileen Claussen,
president of the Pew
Center on Global Climate
Change, which recently examined some of these studies. The Pew Center
economists found that many of the studies of the costs of reducing emissions
disregard cost-saving technologies and programs. They also said that all models
of the costs predict that if the measures outlined in the bill were put into
effect, the economy would continue to grow. The costs would be felt as a
reduction of future growth.
Frank Ackerman, an economist at Tufts who was one of the main authors of that
study, said the impact of climate change would be worse than what his numbers
showed "because of the human lives and ecosystems that will be lost and
species that will be driven into extinction - all these things transcend
monetary values." Scientists already can observe signs that the Earth is
warming, including diminishing summer ice in the Arctic
Ocean, drier conditions in the West and more severe droughts and
storms, Lashof said. Most of the dangerous changes that are predicted can be
avoided, he added, "but our window of opportunity is closing very
rapidly."
Gary Liss
916-652-7850
Fax: 916-652-0485
www.garyliss.com