CFE agenda 081417 - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

Allanfic The American South Will Bear the Worst of Climate Change's Costs Global warming will intensify regional inequality in the United States, according to a revolutionary new economic assessment of the phenomenon. A Texas State Park police officer walks on the cracked and drought- wracked lakebed of O.C. Fisher Lake, in San Angelos, Texas. Tony Gutierrez / AP I"1GRIII3III11415 RIIF IIVNIIIIIIC "NIIIIIICI1lR, 11 JUN 29, 2017 11 „?';I l ?,,! �e Climate change will aggravate economic inequality in the United States, essentially transferring wealth from poor counties in the Southeast and the Midwest to well -off communities in the Northeast and on the coasts, according to the most detailed economic assessment of the phenomenon ever conducted. The study, published Thursday in Science, simulates the costs of global warming in excruciating detail, modeling every day of weather in every U.S. county during the 21st century. It finds enormous disparities in how rising temperatures will affect American communities: Texas, Florida, and the Deep South will bleed income in the broiling heat, while some chillier northern states gain moderate benefits. "We are really sure the South is going to get hammered," says Solomon Hsiang, one of the authors of the paper and a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. "The South is really, really negatively affected by climate change, much more so than the North. That wasn't something we were expecting going in." Overall, the paper finds that climate change will cost the United States 1.2 percent of its GDP for every additional degree Celsius of warming, though that figure is somewhat uncertain. If global temperatures rise by four degrees Celsius by 2100 —which is very roughly