The Green New Deal Costs Less Than Doing Nothing

As the planet warms, we won’t just lose more beachfront property to rising seas, and more riverfront property to rising rivers. An increase in air pollution will cause a concomitant increase in hospitalizations. Bridges and roads will buckle and melt under rising temperatures. The agriculture industry will wither under more frequent, more severe droughts. Wildfires will burn hotter and longer, and further encroach on urban areas. Diseases that we didn’t formerly contend with, like Dengue fever, will spread. Ski season will shorten. All of this will cost us money. In fact, it already is—because some of these things are already happening. University of Chicago's Amir Jina, a founding member of the Lab, is interviewed. The Climate Impact Lab, a consortium of researchers and experts (including Jina), published a paper in the journal Science almost two years ago that modeled the costs associated with things like agricultural output decline, mortality due to temperature extremes, and increases in electricity demand. They found that by the end of the century, the U.S. could be losing between one and four percent of its GDP—or a few trillion dollars, most likely—every single year.