How much will it cost?

Most environmentalists start with sustainability as a first principle.  We recognize that our economy, laws, and social structures can take all sots of forms, but – bottom line – they ultimately must respect ecological reality or they won’t last.  Within this worldview, the question of whether we can afford to stabilize carbon emissions and curb climate change is bizarre – we can’t afford not to.  We shouldn’t cut emissions in a way that is needlessly disruptive or costly, but the first priority needs to be to get off the self-destructive path we’re on (and to make the transition in a way that doesn’t shaft our poor or marginalized neighbors, here at home or around the world).

Still, fear of the costs of curbing emissions still remains an obstacle for some folks – if they admit the science and the need for action, they are afraid they will confront massive costs, and so they simply refuse to acknowledge the reality of climate change.  

An article in this week’s Business Week offers a helpful way for think about this, reviewing different approaches to calculating the costs of limiting carbon emissions:

"If you listen to opponents of action against climate change, the American economy will be brought to its knees by such efforts….Yet a new analysis from McKinsey & Co. not only pegs the price tag for making substantial cuts at just a few billion dollars, it also shows that at least 40% of the reductions bring actual savings to the economy, not costs."

The article also quotes Stephen Schneider, a climatologist from Stanford University, exploring what one of the harshest estimates of costs -- $20 trillion – really means when spread over the next 100 years:

"Schneider ran the numbers, assuming the economy grows at about 2% per year. The seemingly huge $20 trillion price tag works out to "a one-year delay in being 500% richer," he says. In other words, paying the price to reduce climate change would mean Americans would have to wait until 2101 to be as rich as they otherwise would have been in 2100. To Schneider, that's a minuscule price to pay for saving the planet from the dangers of global warming. "Are you out of your mind? Who wouldn't take that?" he says."

So, next time you run into a climate change denier – and you get the sense that it’s because they just can’t deal with the implications of climate change being real – share this news: yes, we have to change; yes, it will cost a lot; but no, it doesn’t have to be crushing.