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- Permanent Link:
- http://dpanther.fiu.edu/dpService/dpPurlService/purl/FI15042576/00001
Notes
- Abstract:
- In July 2007, Governor Charlie Crist established greenhouse gas emission targets for the state
of Florida, including an 80 percent reduction below 1990 levels by 2050. Although achieving
this target will involve nontrivial expenditures, the failure to avert severe climate change would
have even more severe consequences for Florida, in cold hard cash as well as human and ecological
impacts.
Arguments against strong action to combat climate change often implicitly assume that inaction
would be cost-free — that we can chose a future without significant impacts from climate
change even if emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue to grow
unchecked. But the overwhelming scientific consensus now holds that this rosy assumption is simply
wrong, and that the more greenhouse gases are released, the worse the consequences will be.
The stakes are high, the risks of disastrous climate impacts are all too real, and waiting for
more information is likely to mean waiting until it is too late to protect ourselves and our descendants.
If a bad outcome is a real risk — and run-away greenhouse gas emissions lead to a very
bad outcome indeed — isn’t it worth buying insurance against it? We buy fire insurance for our
homes, even though any one family is statistically unlikely to have a fire next year. Young adults
often buy life insurance, out of concern for their families, even though they are very unlikely to
die next year. Taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and control climate change is life
insurance for the planet, and for the species that happen to live here, Homo sapiens included.
This report examines the potential costs to Florida if greenhouse gas emissions continue
unchecked. To do so, we compare an optimistic scenario and a pessimistic one. Under the optimistic
scenario — called “rapid stabilization” — the world begins taking action in the very near
future and greatly reduces emissions by mid-century with additional decreases through the end
of the century. Under the pessimistic scenario — called “business-as-usual” — greenhouse gas
emissions continue to skyrocket throughout the 21st century. The business-as-usual scenario is
based largely on the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a
panel of more than 2,000 scientists whose consensus findings are approved by all participating
governments, including the United States.
The cost of inaction — the difference between these two scenarios — is the human, economic,
and environmental damage that may be avoidable with vigorous, timely actions to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. Many of these costs do not have dollar-and-cents price tags; increased
deaths due to more intense hurricanes,1 or the destruction of irreplaceable ecosystems by sea-level
rise or temperature increases, transcend monetary calculation. Lives, and ways of life, are at stake;
the most important damages are priceless. ( English )
Record Information
- Source Institution:
- Florida International University
- Rights Management:
- Please contact the owning institution for licensing and permissions. It is the user's responsibility to ensure use does not violate any third party rights.
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