Emissions from US, China responsible for over $ 3.6 tln global income losses – study

Emissions from US, China responsible for over $ 3.6 tln global income losses – study
By Marwa Nassar - -

Emissions from the US and China, the world’s two leading emitters, are responsible for global income losses of over $1.8 trillion each in the 25-year period from 1990, according to a Dartmouth study.

Economic losses caused by Russia, India, and Brazil individually exceed $500 billion each for the same years. The $6 trillion in cumulative losses attributable to the five countries equals about 11% of annual global GDP within the study period.

Among the data, the research found that five national emitters of greenhouse gases caused $6 trillion in global economic losses through warming from 1990 to 2014, according to the study.

The study is the first to assess the economic impacts that individual countries have caused to other countries through their contributions to global warming. The research draws direct connections between cumulative emissions per nation of heat-trapping gases to losses and gains in gross domestic product in 143 countries for which data are available.

The study focuses on the economic impacts of temperature change as a consequence of emissions, not other effects of emissions such as those on air quality. Data presented in the study quantifies economic impacts based on distinct greenhouse gas emissions accounting schemes, considering those emissions that happened within a country’s territory versus the emissions embodied in international trade.

The research shows that the distribution of warming impacts from emitters is highly unequal, with the top 10 global emitters causing more than two-thirds of losses worldwide.

Countries that lose income are warmer and poorer than the global average and are generally located in the tropics and the global South. Countries that gain income are cooler and wealthier than the global average and are generally located in the middle latitudes and the North.

“Nations need to work together to stop warming, but that doesn’t mean that individual countries can’t take actions that drive change,” said Christopher Callahan, Guarini ’23, first author of the study.

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