Global economic growth could plummet by 50% between 2070 and 2090 from the catastrophic shocks of climate change unless immediate action by political leaders is taken to decarbonise and restore nature, according to a new report.
The stark warning from risk management experts the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) hugely increases the estimate of risk to global economic wellbeing from climate change impacts such as fires, flooding, droughts, temperature rises and nature breakdown. In a report with scientists at the University of Exeter, published on Thursday, the IFoA, which uses maths and statistics to analyse financial risk for businesses and governments, called for accelerated action by political leaders to tackle the climate crisis.
Their report was published after data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) showed climate breakdown drove the annual global temperature above the internationally agreed 1.5C target for the first time in 2024, supercharging extreme weather.
The argument that climate catastrophe can’t sustain enough economic growth seems like it’s missing the forest for the trees.
Most people like having things. Degrowth for it’s own sake wasn’t ever going to get traction.
It’s the blinders the super rich wear.
Really concerned about years 2070-2090 and economic growth.
All of our modeling doesn’t account for enormous (potentially catastrophic) confounding and compounding variables which are too hard to estimate because we have a rudimentary understanding of the system. One example is the fact forests have already stopped absorbing carbon (something all our climate goals depended on).
What I’m saying is that the 2070-2090 window will in reality probably end up starting in 2030 or 2040. Remember, we weren’t supposed to exceed 1.5c for another 10-15 years, but we’re already there. At the end of the day we’re talking chimps attempting to understand a system many orders of magnitude more complex than we’re capable of understanding anytime soon… and our entire civilization is structured around the thing causing its own destruction.
Like this
Wow, thank you for this. It is so depressing but full of fantastic information.
and our entire civilization is structured around the thing causing its own destruction.
Very well summarised.
Note: The title was just corrected. It’s 50% of GDP not growth.
According to this report, 50% fall of WORLD GDP because climatic catastrophes means, no food, water, medicine,infrastructure, help, nothing. Society breaks dow , totally.
And you get famine, thirst, diseases, wars, and many millions or billions deaths.
Important note: it’s just a report, an Important one though,if correct. These are (educated) predictions, but nonetheless, just that.
Yeah, I keep telling people that Millennials trying to retire (lol), should expect and plan for the market to drastically change but I can’t get a single person to take me seriously.
Even if the market keeps going up like the boomers had we aren’t gonna be able to retire like them at all, if the economy crashes on top of it, are we all gonna be homeless?
Well yeah, why do you think we’re all buying prepper books and guns? Gotta get ready to be the old guy in the water wars.
Yeah, fuck your children and their offspring! Come to think about it, fuck the next generations, they deserve the climate wars, amirite?
Yeah! Lets pretend that we have some idea what’s going to happen with fucking eCoNOmY in 50 years when there is high probability of new world war in the next 5. Better act concerned fast! Spare me with your good citizen bullying mate.
Economic growth is what got us here.
Consumers: doesn’t matter, have to buy that new gadgets the influencer told me to buy!
Companies: doesn’t matter if the products are being bought, will continue to pollute, baby!
Both: why should I change my ways?
Banks: middle to long term loan? Very high interest rate or just not available.
Government: don’t look at us, budget cuts
Companies: panic
Influencers: extra smiles and bullshit as the noise of societal decay grows louder outside
It pisses me off when people go with the “it’s really about the super rich and nothing I do has any impact” while meat production alone is ~20% of emissions, depending on the model for the impact of methane.
It is about the super rich. It’s not correct that nothing ordinary people do has any impact, but the impact of one day of my life vs one day of Taylor Swift’s life differs by multiple orders of magnitude.
Cool. Except the number of the middle class people also exceeds the number of billionaires by several magnitudes.
As a die hard meat eater and frequent mocker of vegetarians and vegans over the years (not defending that), I have to say meat free food is getting pretty damn delicious…
That growth is disproportionately benefiting the ultra wealthy so this is good news. I’m sure they will change their ways and not retreat to their NZ bunkers.
I have every reason to think the wealthy will not bear the brunt of this. It’s going to be the working poor turning into the dying poor.
In case you are not aware of the World 3 model, now you are:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jiec.13442
This is a modern update and recalibration of the MIT developed, Club of Rome “Limits to Growth” model, originally done in the 1960s.
Recalibration 23 is the most recent update of basically the same underlying model; in extremely simplified terms, they replaced the older, extremely difficult to quantize ‘pollution’ metric with CO2 levels.
Going by it, we are basically right now at the peak of world industrial output, world food production and world human population.
By 2075, the world will have about 3 billion less people, mainly from famine deaths.
by 2050, world industrial output will be back to where it was in about 1965.
Here’s the Human Welfare Index (HWI), basically an expanded Quality of Life kind of metric:
Firstly, note that the BAU and Recal23 models track the trend of actual HWI well, but are overestimates.
Even those overestimates have HWI dropping to roughly Great Depression / WW2 levels by 2050.
I bet you won’t stop eating meat though.
*bet they won’t stop corporations from selling meat though
No amount of personal choices will fix systemic issues, if meat is legally sold and easily accessible then people who are allowed to buy it will.
“Stop selling such tasty meat! I have to eat it all!”
This unironically.
If I can go get a cheeseburger for like $10 im gonna go get them sometimes because they taste good.
Notice how I’m not eating penguins, panda and other endangerd animals? It’s because it’s illegal to farm and sell their meat, and I can’t go eat these animals that we have been disallowed from farming and eating.
If we want to fix systemic problems it requires systemic changes.
No amount of shaming individuals and baby rage will fix systemic issues.
