Climate Change: Costs of Inaction for the United States

This report is a study of the costs of inaction for the U.S. economy presents both a detailed analysis of four major categories of climate costs, and comprehensive modeling of climate impacts on the economy as a whole.

The detailed analysis shows that under business-as-usual conditions, with no new climate policies, the four cost categories – increased hurricane damages, residential real estate losses due to sea level rise, increased energy costs, and water supply costs – will add up to jumi.9 trillion (in today’s dollars), or 1.8 percent of U.S. output per year by 2100.

The comprehensive modeling employs the PAGE model, used in the Stern Review. A revised version of the PAGE forecasts, created for this study, projects even greater impacts, as much as 3.6 percent of U.S. GDP, or .8 trillion in today’s dollars, by 2100. Even this larger figure is probably an underestimate, since some important impacts cannot be adequately captured in the model’s calculations.

Contributing authors to the study are Jeremy Fisher and Bruce Biewald of Synapse Energy Economics, for the energy analysis, and Chris Hope and Stephan Alberth of Cambridge University’s Judge Business School, for the PAGE modeling.

The executive summary and the full text of the report are both available from NRDC .