News & Blog
The Trump Administration’s assault on the US Social Cost of Carbon isolates America in a misinformed attempt to justify more fossil fuel infrastructure.
The World Bank’s President Dr Jim Yong Kim has resigned. Now it is time for the bank to get real on coal power. The new President should use financial carbon metrics to re-assess the bank’s energy funding choices. While Germany’s exit from coal is long overdue, Kosovo desperately needs a new, smokeless baseload power station. The climate science is pretty clear; to achieve the Paris 1.5°C goal the world’s carbon budget only allows us to emit another 500 gigatonnes of CO2 . While current fossil fuel infrastructure does not commit us to 1.5°C there is little scope for new fossil-fuel…
The US must both decarbonise (at less than $25/tonne CO2) and re-join the Paris Accord if the US economy is to survive this century. In our last blog we explained why the CBO is half right – the impact of climate change on the US economy in the coming decades may be relatively small. The trouble is that by the time we find out that that all is not well, it will be too late. BAU (business as usual) is not a safe option for the US economy, which is why the CBO is also half wrong. So,…
In being half wrong, the CBO imperils the US economy. Climate change costs may be relatively small today but like the Boiled Frog Syndrome if and when the costs grow it will be too late to do anything. The Trump Administration should accept the climate science and start addressing the issue realistically. There need be no additional costs. Following the multi-agency US National Climate Assessment Report setting out the dramatic societal effects and costs that are coming with climate change, the Congressional Budget Office has dismissed the NCAR by saying that the costs will be negligible in the next decade…
December 2018 – with populist riots against carbon taxation in France, and a weak agreement at COP24 in Poland, ESG-based Responsible Investment propositions can take the heat out of climate change and reap financial rewards too. Done well, Responsible Investment is a virtuous circle, rewarding investors for choosing corporations who are ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) compliant and whose good governance boosts profits. As Janet Brown, of FundX Wealth Management, writes in Forbes.com: “ESG investing — which accesses companies based in part on their environmental, social and governance policies — is a fast-growing segment of the financial landscape. Importantly,…
Using this simple equation, Dollar-based climate losses for Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru are compared with those for China and the US in Dollars per tonne CO2 – not just tonnes CO2 Financial metrics applied to economic scenarios are invaluable for assessing the risks associated with climate change at global, national and city levels. Using data derived from the actual loss and damage costs attributable to manmade climate change triggered by fossil fuel burning since 1750, we published the world’s first, scientific carbon pricing methodology in our book ‘Predicting The Price Of Carbon’ by my colleague Richard H.…
New Global Climate Risk Map identifies, quantifies and puts Dollar figures on Climate Change Risk for 520 cities worldwide With international agreement on climate change policy still a distant dream, the need for individual cities to grasp the financial implications of their local vulnerability to the ravages of unabated global warming has never been so urgent.
An unprecedented 4% growth in GDP is the UK’s only hope for survival – but at what cost of decarbonisation? In our new modelling, we examine a full range of decarbonisation costs from $0-100 per tonne CO2. It shows the calamitous effect upon the UK of high decarbonisation costs and a failure to increase GDP to unprecedented levels. Result? Total economic collapse.
By 2100, two thirds of all US GDP growth scenarios are predicted to have collapsed or be in the process of collapse. For China, all scenarios grow. On 8th October 2018, Professors William Nordhaus and Paul Romer were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work on economic growth and climate change. The UN IPCC’s landmark report on the perils of exceeding 1.5°C of global warming, published on the same day, hardly mentions the effect of climate change on growth. Yet the survival of our global economy is at stake unless the balance between growth and climate change is tackled.
Climate change ‘will inflict substantial damages on US lives’
After the recent release of the 4th US National Climate Assessment, detailing climate change impact ‘will inflict substantial damages on US lives‘, our new financial impact focused report shows two thirds of all US GDP growth scenarios are predicted to be in serious decline by 2100 as a result of the effects of climate change. Read more…