'Economic Costs of Climate Change ‘Will Affect Every American’by Haider Rizvi
NEW YORK - Independent economists and environmentalists are warning of dire consequences for the U.S. economy if policy makers fail to take urgent action on climate change.
“Climate change will effect every American economically in a significant and dramatic way,” said Matthias Ruth, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Integrative Environmental Research.
In a new study released this week, Ruth observed that further delays in tackling climate change would not only cause greater damage to the U.S. economy, but would also raise the future cost of dealing with natural disasters.
The authors of the study, entitled “The U.S. Economic Impacts of Climate Change and the Costs of Inaction,” say their efforts to analyze the economic research done in the past and pull in other relevant data make the study the first of its kind.
The costs of climate change inaction is likely to be much higher than the required spending on cuts in carbon emissions, the report’s authors said, adding that the United States can expect to lose hundreds of billions of dollars in damage to its infrastructure, agriculture, and manufacturing sector if more isn’t done soon to slow climate change.
“We’re making billions of dollars of infrastructure investments every year and often without taking impacts of climate change into account,” said Ruth, stressing there was a “strong need for action across all sectors.”
The report concludes that the real economic impact of climate change is “fraught with hidden costs,” which will vary regionally and will put a strain on public sector budgets.
For example, the combined impacts of storms on the United States since 1980 have surpassed $560 billion. Hurricane Katrina alone accounted for nearly $200 billion in economic losses.'
Lees verder: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/18/4657/
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