Climate Change Price Tag Hits $400 Billion

New estimates show that damage and financial losses from climate change cost $400 billion a year. And that is just in developing countries. If developed nations were added, the number would be even more staggering.

The data are from research sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and is called its “Lose and Damages” package. Among its primary arguments is that money set aside by developed nations to help developing nations is much too low, given the extent of the problem.

Another critical point of the study is that money moved to developing countries should be contributions, not loans. Many developing economies already have deep financial problems and cannot take on billions of dollars more in debt. Making money off of climate change problems makes the problem worse.

The Guardian pointed out how little has been given to solve the developing nation problem so far at COP28:

Wealthy countries most responsible for the climate emergency have so far pledged a combined total of just over $700m (£556m) to the loss and damage fund – the equivalent of less than 0.2% of the irreversible economic and non-economic losses developing countries are facing from global heating every year.

One way to look at this is that the $700 million is less than the weekly revenue of several large oil companies.

The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee concluded:

At COP 28 in Dubai countries must operationalise a fair and fit for purpose Loss and Damage Fund that is directly accessible to developing countries and communities and able to meet their needs now, as well as being capable of scaling up to meet future needs.

There is no evidence that will happen.