38.000.000.000.000
A number with 12 zeros.
A new paper by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has calculated the economic damages due to global warming by the year 2050, which are already "locked in" by current emission targets. These damages are certain to affect societies worldwide in the next 26 years.
The total amounts to 19% of the global economy, or 38 trillion US dollars. That is the number 38 followed by 12 zeros, or 38 thousand billions, or 38 million millions. In a monospaced sans serif font set in bold, the number looks like this:
38,000,000,000,000
That’s a very big number. For comparison, the complete economy of the US in the year 2023 was worth $27.36 trillion dollars, that’s roughly 10 trillion bucks less than the economic damages locked in for the next 26 years. Locked in, dare i say, by the supposedly fiscal conservative parties and their followers.
The calculations and results in the paper are considered conservative and they primarily include damages from warming, increased rainfall, and temperature fluctuations, while extreme weather events like storms or wildfires are harder to statistically model. The calculations also account for adaptations to extreme weather by countries and companies, noting that poorer nations will have less capacity for such adaptations. Africa and South Asia are the most affected regions in terms of projected value destruction, but the effects will be global, impacting the economic output of all countries. This means, we are facing a long-term, climate-change-induced recession of the entire world economy.
According to the study, the projected damages already exceed the investments needed to limit global warming to a maximum of 2°C, as stipulated by the (non-legally binding) Paris Agreement. The projected damages increase by another 50% when "further climatic components" are included.
Another recent paper found that economic damages from climate change to be “six times worse than thought”, which, i’m sure, will be a sweet nightmare lullaby to any insurance company exec. This is the world we are leaving to our children — social upheavals and political conflicts not accounted for.
Ten years ago, a study found that the externalized costs of all industrial sectors amounted to a staggering 7.3 trillion dollars per year — a 7 followed by 12 zeros —and that none of the sectors would be profitable if these costs from greenhouse gas emissions or water, air, and land pollution were included.
Meanwhile, the same forces that knowingly drive the entire world (not just economically) to the brink are engaging in disinformation campaigns to prevent even the most necessary adaptation initiatives and who, in concerted efforts, continue to criminalize climate activism and drag kids to court who dare to speak up.
A few days ago, a Berlin prosecutor filed charges against activists from the Last Generation, including on suspicion of "forming a criminal organization". In doing so, the public prosecutor's office is not only becoming a mouthpiece for the conservative think tank network Atlas, which specifically lobbies against inconvenient climate policies and has influenced politicians for years, including Bundestag member Frank Schäffler from the economic liberal FDP-party. Besides his role in the Bundestag, Schäffler is also the Managing Director of the Prometheus think tank, which is part of said Atlas Network. Schäffler was one of the most prominent conservative voices who, at the start of the Last Generation protests, spoke of them in terms of "terrorism" and "criminal organization", language that was eagerly picked up and established by conservative media outlets like Springers newspaper Welt and the Bild tabloid.
This choice of words by so-called representatives of the people and conservative media, it should be noted, is directed at a protest organization explicitly dedicated to climate protection, which was elevated to constitutional status in 2021 by a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court. The Berlin prosecutor's office has now allowed itself to become a mouthpiece for conservative think tanks and mass-media-propagated memes of right-wing politicians to criminalize young people organizing resistance against policies that violate fundamental civil rights, legitimized by the Constitutional Court. So far, so bad.
In a commentary on the 75th anniversary of the german constitution, the largest public broadcast service ARD now reflects on the idea of a fundamental right to climate protection and whether granting rights for subjects of nature (such as rivers, forests, animals, and even the atmosphere) in the constitution would be helpful.
I am unsure if new legal entities for nature are helpful for climate protection. Skeptical voices in the article rightly point out that natural entities cannot assert or claim their rights; human administrators would always be needed to manage these rights. I also think that the "intergenerational justice" emphasized by the german constitutional court is entirely sufficient to ensure the protection of natural entities within the framework of existing boundaries and limits. According to the 2021 decision, climate protection is justiciable and part of fundamental rights protection, and that is that.
Nevertheless, according to lawyer Roda Verheyen, who won the climate ruling at the highest constitutional court, this jurisprudence has "not yet arrived in the decision-making reality of german courts", even though "the constitutional mandate for climate protection requires and presupposes radical transformations".
I am very confident that the Berlin prosecutor's office had more in mind the outraged Frank Schäffler and his tweets suggested by the Atlas Network, rather than the climate ruling of the constitutional court and the resulting ecological fundamental rights, when filing charges.
In light of the increasing criminalization of young people who engage in civil disobedience to fight for the fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitutional court and who are insulted and spat upon by people memed by right-wing think tanks, I have a simple question to the Berlin prosecutor's office:
Who’s gonna pay those 38.000.000.000.000 dollars in economic loss — a very big number with 12 zeros —, and the damages done to criminalized kids who are holding up the constitution, and where can we file them?
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It's so weird that people will argue about AI/AGI being the great filter, when it seems pretty obvious that resource extraction is the more clear and present existential threat. The idea of natural resources as legal entities shows up in the work of Canadian sci-fi author and futurist, Karl Schroeder, as well as on his Substack, Unapocalyptic, and the concept is pretty interesting, but these deodands, as he describes them, seem to hinge on advances in AI beyond our current capacity, at least as they are described in his novel Stealing Worlds. I'd definitely recommend the read if you enjoy science fiction. As implied by the title of his newsletter, though, part of his project revolves around imagining better possible futures, so it makes sense there's a certain amount of techno solutionism. Which is perfectly fine for a sci-fi author and futurist, but probably a bit too optimistic if you're a jurist.