Catastrophes Linked To Climate Change May Cause $158 Trillion Damage By 2050

Catastrophes Linked To Climate Change May Cause $158 Trillion Damage By 2050

According to a World Bank report, 1.3 billion people are expected to suffer the effects of climate changes in the next three decades
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Climate change related disasters are expected to put at risk 1.3 billion people and destroy physical assets to the tune of $158 trillion by 2050, according to the World Bank. The development bank's disaster mitigation arm Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) made these revelations on Monday in a published report. To put things in perspective, the population at peril is similar to India's, the second most populous country in the world and the financial risk is double the size of the world economy today... ...The report also asserted that the annual damage has risen from $14 bn between 1976-1985 to $140 bn between 2005-2014. The yearly figure was derived by averaging out the damages over a ten year period. The number of people affected every year almost trebled from 60 to 170 million people during this period. The poorer countries are more precarious today and need substantial help from the developed and rich countries in form of aid, technology and advisory to embrace consequential climate mitigation policies. Developing countries need a whopping $4.1 trillion dollars to control carbon emissions globally as envisaged in the Paris Climate deal. Building disaster resilient infrastructure and adapt by this time dense and planning devoid urban sprawls in developing countries will add remarkably to the already monumental figure of $4.1 trillion.

2050, roughly 34 years from now, The US has larger and more heavily developed coastlines, lots of agriculture and a large and growing population if our costs are only 1/4 of this amount that would leave us with a roughly (averaged) 4.5T$/year debt, if we assume a dramatically lower share of the expenses, say 1/10th, that would lower our (averaged) annual debt at around ~$440B/year.

Prevention is usually cheaper than response repair costs, so what would be a reasonable, preventative public policy to adapt to the changing climate, where should we be focusing our efforts and how much should we be investing to deal with the changes headed our way due to the symptoms of AGW?

I've seen a range of numbers on this issue in terms of costs both due to climate change symptoms and therapy, I'm not immutably wedded to these numbers, but if you going to offer dramatically lower or high numbers from the range I present above, please support those numbers with a referenced study so that we can see where they come from and the considerations involved in deriving those numbers.

The making of a riskier future: How our decisions are shaping future disaster risk
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