United Nations Warns Failure to Act on Rising Carbon Emissions Will Be Extremely Costly
ByThe United Nations has found that the failure to confront a growing climate problem will only make solving it more expensive in the future, the New York Times reported.
According to a draft of a U.N. report, nations that do not try to limit their carbon emissions will only face economic disruption down the line. The report also stated the problem could become impossible to fix after some 15 years of continued failure to address rising carbon emissions.
One solution the report offered was sucking gasses out of the atmosphere and storing them underground to sustain the Earth. However, such technology is not believed to exist for such a high capacity and, if it did, it would more than likely be incredibly expensive.
"Without explicit efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the fundamental drivers of emissions growth are expected to persist," read the report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), according to Bloomberg News. Reaching the necessary levels "will require large-scale changes of the global energy system as well as cuts in GHG emissions over the coming decades."
The report estimated controlling global temperatures would cost the global economy four percent of its output by 2030. To reach that goal, the IPCC proposed reductions of 40 percent to 70 percent in heat-trapping gasses by 2050. World leaders would need to increase shares of renewables, nuclear power and carbon capture and storage threefold.
The report is the third of a three-part study on global climate change, the largest one the IPCC has ever put together. The first was published Sept. 17 and the second and third are slated for March and April releases. After careful line-by-line revisions, the entire report is expected out in October.
"It's a work in progress, and we look forward to discussing it when it's been finalized in April," Jonathan Lynn, an IPCC spokesman told Bloomberg News.
According to the report, if nations were to continuously neglect fighting climate change, it could cost the global economy up to six percent of its output by 2050 and 12 percent by 2100.
A draft of the second installment of the three-part study was leaked online in Nov. and is expected to be finalized in March. The third part is expected to be finished by April and the whole study is slated for an October release.