The cumulative costs of achieving the 1.5˚C temperature target outlined in the Paris agreement could be as high as 100 trillion US dollars, a new study has found. However, researchers found that there was a wide range of uncertainty in the forecasts with the low-end estimate being 10 trillion US dollars.

In this Conversation on Climate Change Adaptation, we speak to the study's lead author, Professor Detlef Van Vuuren, who works at PPL Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency, and lectures at Utrecht University.

Since the world's governments committed to reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGs) sufficiently to limit global warming to 1.5˚C or at least "well below" 2˚C by the end of the century in the Paris Agreement, attention has increasingly turned to how to achieve such a mammoth task.

As with COVID-19, the costs of inaction are unimaginable, but the dramatic cuts in GHG emissions necessary to hit the targets will require an unprecedented transformation of the global economy. Such changes will inevitably come with a hefty price tag. Calculating what this is is no easy task, the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, set out to do just that. It provides discounted cumulative cost estimates for hitting the 2˚C and 1.5˚C temperature targets.

The researchers found that these costs had a wide range of uncertainty stemming from both the physical climate system and also the socio-economic pathways to action.

Read the research here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0732-1