UN: Climate Change May Cost $20 Trillion
UNITED NATIONS - Global warming could cost the world up to $20 trillion over two decades for cleaner energy sources and do the most harm to people who can least afford to adapt, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warns in a new report.
Ban’s report provides an overview of U.N. climate efforts to help the 192-nation General Assembly prepare for a key two-day climate debate in mid-February. That debate is intended to shape overall U.N. policy on climate change, including how nations can adapt to a warmer world and ways of supporting the U.N.-led negotiations toward a new climate treaty by 2009, U.N. officials said Wednesday.
The treaty, replacing the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012, could shape the course of climate change for decades to come. The Kyoto pact requires 37 industrial nations to reduce greenhouse gases by a relatively modest 5 percent on average.
Much of the focus has been on the United States, the only major industrial nation to reject the treaty, and on fast-developing nations such as China and India. Many are looking to next year, when a new U.S. president takes the White House. The leading contenders in both political parties favor doing more than the voluntary approaches and call for new technologies that President Bush espouses.
In his 52-page report, Ban says that global investments of $15 trillion to $20 trillion over the next 20 to 25 years may be required “to place the world on a markedly different and sustainable energy trajectory.” Today, the global energy industry spends about $300 billion a year in new plants, transmission networks and other new investment, according to U.N. figures.
Srgjan Kerim, a Macedonian diplomat and economics professor who is president of the U.N. General Assembly, told The Associated Press that cutting greenhouse gases alone will not be enough to pull island nations, sub-Saharan Africa and other particularly vulnerable parts of the world back from the brink of irreversible harm.
“Cutting emissions is a very important dimension, but that’s not enough for this equation,” Kerim said in an interview this week. “Inventing new technologies, renewable energies, investing more in research and development, is also a very viable way and remedy for resolving the problem.”
In December, under the auspices of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 186 nations that attended a climate meeting in Bali, Indonesia, agreed on a “Bali Roadmap” of principles to craft a successor to the Kyoto treaty.
Last year, a Noble Prize-winning U.N. network of climate and other scientists warned of rising seas, droughts, severe weather and other dire consequences without sharp cutbacks in emissions of the industrial, transportation and agricultural gases blamed for warming.
That network, called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, advised that emissions should be reduced by 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
“Climate change and its implications is a broader process, more profound than negotiations among member states,” Kerim said. “So our aim, our goal is to support that process, not to replace it.”
Kerim said he wants to encourage partnerships between businesses and governments, and that he would refrain from encouraging nations to assign blame _ and added responsibility _ to the United States and other rich nations for their historical pollution.
“To approach the issue must be a forward looking way,” he said. “We have to now try to find a way out. And to find a way out, you don’t look in the rear mirror which shows you the back of your car.”
British billionaire Richard Branson, who has decided to invest heavily in “biofuels” along with his Virgin brand of several hundred companies, will be a special guest at the assembly meeting, Kerim said.
“He was one of the first who reacted and who said that he’s prepared to finance projects for clean energies and technologies,” Kerim said.
Like Ban, who told the AP in December that his No. 1 priority is persuading the world to agree to new controls on global warming gases before the end of 2009, Kerim calls the challenges of climate change “my flagship topic.”
In his report, Ban warned that global warming would probably affect women more than men. “The challenge of climate change is unlikely to be gender-neutral, as it increases the risk to the most vulnerable and less empowered social groups,” he said.
Annie Petsonk, a lawyer for the advocacy group Environmental Defense, said global warming will most affect poor people and minorities, because the wealthy can spend more to adapt. “Women in poorer communities are going to face greater challenges protecting their children from the spread of diseases, polluted water, water shortages and so on,” she said.
© 2008 Associated Press
There are times I think that maybe if human beings are wiped out the planet would be better off. We don’t deserve it.
As cynical as this may be, climate change can be made market-viable, and therefore popular, with a CARBON TAX.
Tax carbon emissions to a punitive level, and you will watch the entire global industry come up with zero emissions technology in the blink of an eye.
The USA had zero military capacities in 1940, and 3 years later the young military-industial-complex was in full swing. There is NO reason we cannot adapt. Hydrogen economy, maglev rail freight and transit. Hell, there could be methane capture of the peat bogs in Russia and the Arctic. Turn the most threatening source of emissions into a catalyst to energize a sustainable future.
We have the capacity, we just don’t have the will.
The U.S.A. is going to be a future leader on reducing emissions, but it won’t be voluntary. The U.S. is going to collapse, so that is something you should wrap your minds around and plan for accordingly.
“Many are looking to next year, when a new U.S. president takes the White House.” —When you see such nonsense as this in print, of course published by the corporate press, then it is obvious that there is a deception in play as the corporate government trys to pretend that they are not responsible and that all the current problems stem from a “rogue” administration. Those evil, corporate government scumbags are so stupid that they will be clapping each other on the back as their centuries of criminal manipulation and organization implodes, much like you see those dopes on the balcony at the stock exchange clapping every morning, even when losses are significant.
Better start spending it. It’s a bargain when compared to the money humanity uses for weapons of war.
dlnelson7: “There are times I think that maybe if human beings are wiped out the planet would be better off. We don’t deserve it.”
My friend, you’re probably a decent enough person, but that’s the kind of apathetic, jackass thinking that’s going to make it impossible to survive this mess. Go find a child and try explaining to her why you think she doesn’t deserve to live.
That’s roughly equal to the US “defense” budget for the same time period. And you would actually get useful things at the end of it rather than stockpiles of weapons, a destroyed environment and millions dead. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.
When most are thinking of the future of their children, the context tends to be how to provide for them the same material comforts that we have consumed and enjoyed, as if this constitutes a kind of security or even ’survival’ of the family line.
Not many parents are setting good examples of thrift, never mind ecological awareness.
What a load of crap….
Gargantuan investments ARE NOT NEEDED to prevent climate change. That idea is simply capital trying to create a perception in people’s minds that capital is needed to solve the world’s problems. The truth is that capital is NOT needed because CAPITAL ACTUALLY CREATES THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS.
What IS NEEDED is elimination of the 90% waste in US-style economic activity. Such a change amounts to an economic revolution, with people working much less (i.e. 15 hours/week and economic adjustment to compensate), and people shifting to different kinds of work (local small scale farmers, craftsmen and mercahnts), much more productive and much less wasteful/destructive (this requires little new investments). The capitalists will face huge losses on their current investments - but that’s life. This is just the way it is going to be. The capitalists are backed into a corner, and have no way to escape.
It would help stimulate the world economy, a New Deal or wartime type endeavor.
I don’t see how it will effect women more than men or poor folk more than wealthy. Extinction is an equal opportunity event. The posters above might just get what they are wishing for.
I love my kids, but sometimes I wish they didn’t have to live through the future now in front of them. Then again, maybe their generation will straighten this mess out and they will supersede the WWII folk as the “greatest generation”.
Cost Cost Cost… money money money… bah. That’s retarded. As if money is more important than Global Survival. Who cares how much it costs! In fact, if saving the planet cost EVERY single dollar in the world, it would STILL be worth it. Money is really meaningless. A man-made nothing. The whole idea of economics is stupid and wrong headed. One of the dumbest things we ever did as a species. People live and die from how much money they have. Money is put before people over and over again. Most wars are fought because of money… greed.
Why invite Richard Branson? His contributions so far involve pushing cheap airlines (a major contributor to greenhose gas production) and starting to push space flights for the public (which will add enormmously to the problem), and biofuels (greatly increasing environmetal damage and reducing food production). The biofuel thing in itself would be a reason he shouldn’t be there, since biofuels are no more a solution than “clean coal” and nuclear power. All three proposals, from the corporations, are designed to do business as usual while appearing to address climate change (http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/Climate_change/).
Yeah, I think money is so important for the development.
mrpickwick:
I agree Branson looks like a guy trying to make a buck from anything he can latch on to while keeping his name in the headlines. I disagree with lumping nuclear in with “clean coal” and biofuels.
Nuclear power is taking off all over the world, both for energy independence and reduction of greenhouse gases. Nuclear has its very unique set of hazards and problems, but it is not a fraud. It is the “most dense” power source available, generates no GHGs, and France, Canada and other countries are finding it cost competitive with fossil fuels.
If all of the world powers ganged up and initiated a massive program to develop clean energy, with wind, solar, geo-thermal and tidal, we could shut down every coal fired plant in the world within five years and it would not come close to ten trillion dollars to do it.
And as several have stated, it doesn’t matter what it costs, you can’t eat money.
The chance of most countries changing there fuel production to clean energy, which involves closing plants, job loss, mines closing because nobody wants coal, more job loss.
Most goverments wouldnt put that much effort in and antway a mass extinction might save the planet for species to come.
And again…and again…and again…it is going to be the little guy who is going to pay while the rich continue to ignore what is happening. In the end, they will pay the ultimate price too: annihilation.
The funny thing is, __(if anything about this could be considered to be funny)__ is if we had a MASSIVE effort to develop clean energy, millions of new jobs would be created.
Since the only ones who have the funds to initiate such a program are the neo-cons, insurance companies, oil and mining corporations, etc, they would profit from the program.
If they fund it, they own it, they reap the profits by selling the end product.
They’d also get huge tax breaks and everything would go on as before, except the pollution of our atmosphere and oceans would greatly decline.
I notice that once again nobody even mentions the ongoing population explosion which is driving overconsumption and environmental degradation. The U.S. population trippled in the last 100 years, and the world’s population quadrupled in that same time period, with no end in sight. As long as we continue to ignore this rhino in the living room, all our efforts to arrest global climate change will fall short. For example, all the projected reductions in green house gases and fuel consumption expected to result from the recently passed increase in CAFE standards will be more than offset by the population growth between now and 2020…and that’s assuming those CAFE standards are met.
That is true. It won’t be overpopulated by 2020 I bet.
Without people to raise the crops, it will still be overpopulated by 2020. Part of the def for the word means there isn’t enough food to go around. With only a few million survivors fighting over the remaining stored soylent green, over the radioactive fallout from 2012, who is going to be foolish enough to raise food that will be captured by the hoards at harvest time? Even if they tried would the crops survive the climate extremes? Right now worst snow in 50 years in China, just a hint of more extremes. How much methane from Russia bogs is needed in the atmosphere to cause explosion of climate change? We’ve already got enough CO2 to make it dinosaur party time.
By not being overpopulated, I bet there won’t be any left by 2012. The methane is the key and that problem will mot be addressed.
Would the Arctic bogs catch fire like an oil well? Has that happened in a limited way?
I can imagine even a natural cause like a lightning strike setting off an expanding circle of methane as the gas is released in tipping point quantities. A large area of connected bogs would burn, say a state sized area?
What effect would that burning have on the atmosphere? What does methane release when it burns? Does it release CO2 plus lots of smoke? Would the first effect would be a minor area cooling from the smoke-haze and extra CO2 for the rest of the atmosphere. Does that sound right? Are there websites where these kinds of question could be posed to climate scientists? Or, are these questions too new?