The economic losses due to global warming and the climate crisis could be six times worse than previously thought, a new study has found.
Conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the research has not yet been peer-reviewed.
The data, reported by the Guardian, shows that a 1°C increase in global temperature will lead to a 12% decline in world gross domestic product (GDP), a decline considerably higher than previously thought.
It also found that a 3°C temperature increase will cause “precipitous declines in output, capital and consumption that exceed 50% by 2100”.
The paper highlights that the economic loss will be so significant that it is “comparable to the economic damage caused by fighting a war domestically and permanently”.
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Adrien Bilal, an economist at Harvard who wrote the paper with Diego Känzig, an economist at Northwestern University, told the Guardian: “There will still be some economic growth happening but by the end of the century people may well be 50% poorer than they would’ve been if it wasn’t for climate change.
“I think everyone could imagine what they would do with an income that is twice as large as it is now. It would change people’s lives.”
Earlier this year, data from PwC revealed that nearly one third of CEOs expect climate change to alter the way their business plans to generate value over the next three years.
