The Economic Impact of Climate Change

One of the problems with any discussion of climate change these days is that there is very little good information about the potential effects of climate change on the economy. Without such information, how can we decide what actions to take to slow or mitigate climate change’s economic impacts? Some politicians continue to deny that climate change even exists. I think its because acknowledging the problem would mean that we’d have to do something about it, and any fix is going to cost a lot of money. So we continue to avoid dealing with climate change….

In an effort to shed some light on the potential economic impacts of climate change, an independent, non-partisan group of business people and politicians has prepared an economic risk analysis of climate change. The group examined all of the current research findings available. The final document, called the Risky Business report, describes some of the potential impacts of climate change, region by region.

A key takeaway message from the report is that whether its an increase in sea level, changes in temperature or rainfall, or increased tornadoes/hurricanes, different regions of the country are going to be affected differently. You can access the Risky Business report here to see how your region of the country is likely to be affected.