The Cost of Business as Usual
by Barry Piacenza
Climate Change Economics LLC - January 24, 2010
- Let's do nothing - climate change is expensive, it will go way.
- Who cares - it can be somebody else's problem.
- What does not kill me today doesn't matter.
- The ostrich approach never works - the bird gets cooked.
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There are some people including a few scientists and economists who believe that climate change is not a
reality, or an issue to be immediately solved. By this time in the evolution of the climate change science
I would've thought that human conceptual thinking would've moved beyond such a primitive Neanderthal thought
processes. Science clearly has shown that there is a problem, it is real and it needs to be approached now
not later. Economists who believe this is a 50 year from now problem and that we can wait that long to
implement solutions are living in a delusional dream.
What is the total real estate asset base of New York, London, Shanghai, Miami, Amsterdam, and other major
cities not only in the Western world but all over the globe that would be flooded? What is the cost of human
migration from ever-increasing deserts, and loss of drinking water due to glacial melt on a global basis?
If this were an alleged international terrorist plot to destroy the above cities international agencies
would be attacking the issue straight away.
There are always those that would say that the barbarians won't attack Rome how could they get over the mountains,
let's just continue to party on and enjoy the Coliseum. We all know how that story ended. Do we really want to
leave the legacy that the second Middle and Dark Ages started in the 21st century?
We believe our technology will save us. It is so fragile that any planetary catastrophe could wipe it out
instantaneously. We would be no better off than in the first century BC while our technology is useless.
HARD COSTS AND LAND MASS LOSS
The estimated real estate loss from hurricane Katrina was $25 billion. Total residential real estate value
in United States is estimated at approximately $20 trillion.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency provides the following-
Zero ( 0 )feet to 4.9 foot rise in sea level would result in 22,393 +- square miles of land lost in the
United States. A sea level rise of between 4.9 ft and 11.5 ft would add an additional 12,909 +- additional
square miles of land lost.
Total Estimate 35,302 +- Square Miles of Land Lost.
Source- EPA Maps of Lands Vulnerable to Sea Level Rise - Titus and Richman
http://epa.gov/climatechange/effects/coastal/slrmaps_vulnerable.html#table1
Comparative Analysis – Size of the country in Square Miles
States of the United States
- Maine - 33,128 Square Miles
- South Carolina - 31,117 Square Miles
- West Virginia - 24,231 Square Miles
- Maryland - 10,455 Square Miles
- Vermont - 9,615 Square Miles
- New Hampshire - 9,283 Square Miles
- Massachusetts - 8,262 Square Miles
- New Jersey - 7,790 Square Miles
- Hawaii - 6,459 Square Miles
- Connecticut - 5,006 Square Miles
- Delaware - 2,026 Square Miles
- Rhode Island - 1,213 Square Miles:
Source: http://chestofbooks.com/reference/Bepler-Handy-Manual-Of-Knowledge/Principal-Countries-Of-The-World-Their-Population-Area-In.html
The United States Environment Protection Agency as the lead agency produced a Report - U.S. Climate Change Science Program
Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.1 Coastal Sensitivity to Sea Level Rise: A Focus on the Mid-Atlantic Region. Figure 2.4
below is a composite of the best available data regarding inundation by the sea given the parameters as mentioned in the
legend on Figure 2.4. This is one example; a compilation of techniques including Lidar and other sensory capabilities
were utilized to produce this final product which shows the level of inundation from various sea level rise scenarios. An
extrapolation of this technique on a global basis would be able to provide a very accurate view of inundated areas on a
planetary scale. This technique combined with Dasymetric mapping would provide insight to Geo spatial distributions for
disaggregate population densities based on land use, and land use cover information or remote sensing images (Sleeter and
Gould, 2008; Chen 2002) . This technique holds promise for better analysis of population, or other socio-economic data, to
report statistical summaries of sea level rise impacts within vulnerable zones. These advanced techniques would provide
accurate mapping of land loss, populations impacted, costs and multipliers. Such an analysis would clarify for policymakers
the actual costs of ignoring the science of climate change. It should be clear by now that climate change is the most severe
and most important set of issues facing mankind in the 21st-century. It can change nation states, their economies and
political states of being; Climate Change is the ultimate 21st-century regime changer.
Figure 2.4 The estimated minimum sea-level rise scenarios for inundation modeling in the mid-Atlantic region given the
current best available elevation data.
This short editorial illustrates the fact that the Cost of a non solution needs to be clearly illustrated. The costs of a
non-solution or weak solution will be higher than finding and implementing an agreement.
The strategic economic loss to the United States alone of 35,302 +- Square Miles of Land Lost makes a point. The United
States is only one nation state on the planet. As Illustrated here the calculated loss does not include any other land mass
loss on the planet. It is not provided in this editorial simply due to the fact that we have been unable to find figures to
accurately provide a planetary loss. Hence the reason for the request that immediately the economic and climate change
communities work together on a global basis to calculate such a loss utilizing advanced tools.
Hence the total loss to economies worldwide has yet to be calculated.
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Still want to do business as usual?
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