Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are rapidly warming our planet, with potentially severe economic, social, and health consequences. Conventional estimates of climate damages suggest that while coordinated global efforts are desirable, unilateral action is rarely cost-effective due to a classic free-rider problem. Why should a country bear the costs of reducing emissions when the benefits are shared globally? This column re-evaluates this view in light of new climate damage estimates based on global temperature variation, showing that the economic case for unilateral decarbonisation is far stronger than previously thought.
RETRACTED ARTICLE: The economic commitment of climate change
Global projections of macroeconomic climate-change damages typically consider impacts from average annual and national temperatures over long time horizons1–6. Here we use recent empirical findings from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years to project sub-national damages from temperature and precipitation, including daily variability and extremes7,8. Using an empirical approach that provides a robust lower bound on the persistence of impacts on economic growth, we find that the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices (relative to a baseline without climate impacts, likely range of 11–29% accounting for physical climate and empirical uncertainty). These damages already outweigh the mitigation costs required to limit global warming to 2 °C by sixfold over this near-term time frame and thereafter diverge strongly dependent on emission choices. Committed damages arise predominantly through changes in average temperature, but accounting for further climatic components raises estimates by approximately 50% and leads to stronger regional heterogeneity. Committed losses are projected for all regions except those at very high latitudes, at which reductions in temperature variability bring benefits. The largest losses are committed at lower latitudes in regions with lower cumulative historical emissions and lower present-day income.
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