The Economist on Global Warming

This week's issue of the Economist contains a survey of climate change in which the writers argue for mitigation. First economists have calculated that although there would be some benefits due to increases in temperature (e.g. Russia can develop many currently uninhabitable lands) the summation based on climate economists is from a loss of global output by 0.1% to 3%. Africa and India are especially vulnerable to hotter temperatures because so many people are dependent on highly vulnerable agriculture systems.

The costs of mitigating the rise in temperatures is dependent on the cost of implementing energy saving techniques and how fast mitigation is implemented. Companies stand to lose substantial amounts of money if machinery needs to be changed to energy efficient ones before the end of their useful lives. The calculations for mitigation are from 0.2% to 3.2% lost in global output.

Mitigating climate change is not just a consideration of the costs of global warming versus the cost of prevention. Ethics need to be considered also. Global warming is caused in large part by the developed world however the damage will likely fall unpropotionally to undeveloped countries. Although there are some critics that argue spending money mitigating global warming could be better spent developing undeveloped countries, other economists believe that it is not the likely outcomes of global warming that are worrisome it is the outlying possibilities that we need to fight to prevent. Similar to-cost benefit analyses on terrorism: the outside possibilities massive floods and droughts are so catastrophic that prevention is required.