Climate Crisis: A Price Tag on An Emergency

A new study published has proffered figures regarding the cost of the climate crisis to life and property, with the numbers painting an alarming, albeit unsurprising picture

Photo by Matt Palmer on Unsplash

The general populace has been somewhat cognizant, for some time, of the effects that climate change has had upon people and infrastructure across the globe.

However, figures tallying such nation transcending devastating effects have been absent from the mainstream.

That is, until now at least.

Tallying A World On Fire

According to a novel estimate, extreme weather, occurring as a result of the climate crisis, every hour for the prior twenty years has cost $16 (£13m).

In the recent prior decades, floods, droughts, storms, and heatwaves have devastated property and taken numerous lives, with global warming increasing said incidents' intensity and frequency.

Published in the journal Nature Communications, this study is the premier global figure calculation of an increase in costs being directly attributable to human-caused global warming.

Despite the figure altering year to year with the range existing from $230bn to $60bn, the study uncovered average costs, covering 2000 to 2019, of being $140bn (£115bn), with the most up-to-date data indicating that 2022 has incurred costs of $280bn.

It should be noted, however, that the estimates given are notably higher than those from computer models, due to them being dependent upon alterations in average global temperatures as opposed to the ever-increasing extreme temperatures being witnessed in the world.

Breaking Down the Findings

The years pertaining to the highest climate costs, overall, were 2003, when Europe experienced a heatwave, 2008, when Myanmar was struck by Cyclone Nargis, and 2010, when a heatwave hit Russia along with Somalia enduring a drought.

While one-third of damage costs were formed from property and other assets being decimated, Two-thirds were from lives lost. Storms, for example, Cyclone Nargis and Hurricane Harvey, were at the helm of two-thirds of climate costs, with 10% from droughts and floods and 16% from heatwaves.

Regarding property damages, they were higher in 2017 and 2005 when the US, a nation with high property values, was hit by hurricanes.

Moreover, the work found that the figure of people impacted by climate crisis-induced extreme weather was 1.2 billion over the prior twenty years.

On the other hand, it should be noted that researchers have stated that a data deficiency, especially from low-income nations, means that the figures presented were likely to be markedly underestimated.

Furthermore, extra climate costs; pertaining to sea level rise and crop yield decline, were not included in the calculation.

The Study

Regarding the study itself, researchers generated the presented estimates by combining losses economic data and how much global warming has exacerbated extreme weather events.

To calculate how much more often global warming generates extreme weather events, hundreds of attribution studies have been developed. As such, the fraction of damages caused by human-developed heating is able to be estimated.

Said fractions were applied by researchers to the associated damages documented in the International Disaster Database, which assembles accessible data on all disasters in which equal to or greater than 10 fatalities occur, 100 people were impacted, or the nation in question declares a state of emergency or called for international assistance.

Furthermore, the analysis equipped the statistical life lost value of $7m which is an average of the figures utilised by the UK and US governments.

Commenting on the delicate nature of assigning a value to a human life, New Zealand’s Victoria University of Wellington Prof Ilan Noy, who undertook the study with their colleague Rebecca Newman, said;

“A lot of people are very uncomfortable with the idea that we put a price tag on a life… But this is very standard economic practice and comes about because, ultimately, we need to make decisions about [the value of] investments in various things.”

Moreover, Noy commented that only regarding infrastructure economic damage would markedly skew the price estimates to rich nations, in spite of much of the damage from extreme weather events manifesting in poorer nations.

Applications & Looking To The Future

Going forward, the researchers have stated that their methods are able to be utilised in order to calculate the amount of funding required for a loss and damage fund, established in 2022 at the UN’s climate summit Cop27, whose purpose is to fund the recovery of poorer nations from extreme weather disasters.

In addition, individual disaster-specific climate costs can be identified rapidly, thereby allowing funds to be delivered faster.

From the World Bank, and not a part of the study team, Dr Stéphane Hallegatte

“The key message is that climate change is visibly increasing global economic losses from disasters. This has been a topic of controversy, with some claiming that climate change effects are negligible compared with other factors like economic growth and urbanisation… This study looks at the attribution for the physical event — it’s much simpler, robust, and it provides a convincing case. It is an emerging field and uncertainties are really large. One lesson of the study is that global research centres — mostly located in rich countries — need to work more on what is happening in poorer countries.”

Along the lines of Dr Hallegatte, while this study is novel and requires a greater level of dissection and review, it at least serves to acknowledge the very substantive effect that extreme weather and, by extension, the human-induced climate crisis has upon the world, especially those in economically poorer nations.

With such knowledge, the appropriate regard can be given to the crisis, by key actors across the globe, along with efficient and effective calculations being able to be made for those nations and states that require aid in addressing such severe situations, putting their wants and needs in the spotlight.

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