What Global Warming Costs the Economy

What’s the Latest Development?

From winter’s snow storms to spring’s tornadoes, natural disasters will cost the American economy tens of billions of dollars this year. But while the field of Republican presidential contenders ignores the issue in their televised debates, climate change is a truly global concern. In an in-depth report, Al Jazeera looks at case studies in South Africa, where changing sea temperatures and water levels leave marine life wanting, and in Bolivia, where rainy seasons are twice as long as they once were, flooding crop fields and leaving hundreds of families homeless. 

What’s the Big Idea?

There is no contemporary question of social justice more compelling than climate change. The scope of the problem is truly world-wide and the same globalized economic networks we praise for raising living standards are the same ones releasing unsustainable amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. To be sure, there are winners and losers in globalization; winnings must be socialized and the loser cannot be the planet we depend on for—everything. If we do not accept protectionist economics, we cannot ignore the countries who are already suffering the effects of climate change.