Costs of climate change

THERE are millions across the globe who are waiting to see if US President Barack Obama will live up to his pledge to invest in renewable energy and help put the brakes on climate change. The US is one of the world’s biggest polluters and the only developed nation that is yet to ratify the Kyoto Protocol which sets binding limits on carbon emissions by industrially advanced nations. The EU has wholeheartedly embraced Kyoto while Australia did the same in 2007 when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd took office. But the US under George Bush doggedly stuck to its line that individual states have the right to set their own emission targets, and consistently denigrated what it called the “one size fits all” outlook of the Kyoto Protocol.In doing so, America missed the point altogether. The battle against climate change must by necessity be a concerted effort because the actions of one nation can have an impact on a country thousands of miles away. Take the case of Pakistan. As this paper pointed out not long ago, “We produce a mere 0.4 per cent or so of the greenhouse gases emitted annually worldwide and yet Pakistan ranks 12th in the list of countries that will bear the brunt of climate change.” It is estimated that environmental degradation is eroding Pakistan’s GDP by nearly five per cent a year — Rs365bn, or a billion rupees a day. Add to this the havoc wreaked by climate change and the costs will be truly staggering. Livelihoods will be lost wholesale and millions are bound to be displaced. We will face acute food and water shortages, and ‘climate refugees’ will further burden towns and cities whose infrastructure networks are already on the verge of collapse. And anyone who thinks that this is a problem that will afflict only the poor is sadly mistaken. Think, for a moment, about investments in reclaimed coastal land and islands that ought to have been protected under the law. These playgrounds of the wealthy will all be under water if global warming continues at its current pace. The big polluters, such as the US, must also see the bigger picture and act accordingly. According to a 2006 report byUK government economist Sir Nicholas Stern, global warming could shrink the global economy by as much as 20 per cent. Acting now, the report held, will cost the world just one per cent of its gross annual GDP.