Strict Curbs on Global Warming Would Buoy World Economy: Study

Stringent limits on global warming would bolster the world economy by averting tens of trillions of dollars in damage this century from heat waves, droughts and floods, a U.S. study said on Wednesday.

The report, among the first to assess the economics of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, said the toughest temperature curbs would benefit 90 percent of the world’s population, especially in poor nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

The world’s biggest economies - the United States, China, and Japan - would also gain if the world achieves the toughest targets, according to the study led by researchers at Stanford University and published in the journal Nature.

Russia, Canada, and Nordic countries, where rising temperatures could boost farm output and limit deaths from winter cold, would be among a few nations to [not benefit] economically from tough curbs on global warming, the study said.
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“The results should be interpreted with caution,” Bob Ward, of the London School of Economics and Political Science, told Reuters.  He said it was unlikely that “the impacts of future global warming can be simply extrapolated”.

The authors acknowledged many uncertainties about the future economy.  Wider use of air conditioning in the tropics, for instance, might lift worker productivity and GDP as it has already done in nations such as Singapore, Burke said.


The study also omitted some big potential benefits, for instance if a 1.5C ceiling could avert a thaw of Greenland or Antarctica that would drive up sea levels and swamp coasts.

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