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Impacts of Climate Change
– Increasing heat
– Rising sea levels
– Droughts, Floods and Storms
– Political and security risks → wars on resources
– Human health risks → malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heart disease
– Impact on wildlife and ecosystems → affects human nutrition
Responding to Climate Change: The Ongoing Debate
2 problems:
1. Sheer magnitude of the changes required to mitigate and/or adapt successfully to climate
change.
2. Global free riding problem that impedes consensus on who should pay for those changes.
Possible Solutions:
– Switching to renewable resources → require sustained investments at the rate of 3-4%
of GDP for many years.
– Switching away from meat could also save $1 trillion in health costs by 2050.
– Improving efficiency may not be the best solution → when we get mor efficient, we tend
to consume more of it and we just get back to where we started.
