Economics of Climate Change Lacks a Human Dimension

Paul Krugman does a thorough job of summarizing the somewhat daunting economic complexities of climate change policies in a recent New York Times magazine article (nyti.ms/agKlpe). While he certainly does a nice job of encapsulating a lot of information and concepts, his truly global analysis misses the trees for the forest, if I can badly coin a phrase. The real possibility of increased weather extremes, coastal flooding and sea level rise, ocean acidification and coral reef decline, and regional changes in weather and climate in developing countries and vulnerable areas, such as the polar regions, are the missing moral argument for immediate and strong action on climate change policy. Farmers in Iowa might be able to switch to growing more subtropical varieties of corn, and urban dwellers can better insulate their homes and turn up the A/C, but it's people and places at the margins, with little flexibility and who are forecasted to bear the brunt of climate change impacts, who will be the real victims of our past transgressions and current inaction.

The human impacts of climate change introduce an important moral dimension that is needed in the largely economic debate over climate change policies. Conservatives and opponents of taking action have certainly used this tactic (harming small businesses and job creation) for their own purposes. It is time those of us who want aggressive action used those same arguments. Impacts of climate change on global GDP will likely be low because those who are generally most affected by socially disruptive actions are "the least of these" and do not generally contribute much to money-oriented economic calculations. A similar assessment was made for the regional economic impact of the 2004 South Asian tsunami (http://tinyurl.com/y3znu3y). From the article, "...despite the unprecedented scale of the loss of human life, homelessness and displaced populations, it seems that the macro economic impact of the disaster is marginal. The businesses affected were small, local and often part of local subsistence rather than global supply and this reflects, to a large degree, the economic mix of activities and companies in those coastal, often rural, areas."

Speaking up for the "human impact" has traditionally been the responsibility of the world's faith communities and religious leaders. So it should be with climate change.