Global Warming and Economic Prosperity: Boom or Bust?

Photo: NASA

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By 2100, the Earth may be 9 degrees (F) hotter than it is today -- twice as hot as the best climate model predicted just a few years ago.

That's the result of a recent MIT study.

The prediction is in line with a number of recent studies that have documented -- not predicted, but documented -- the accelerating pace of global warming. The dire predictions we've been hearing from the world's top climate scientists for years are proving, in large part, to be conservative. The Arctic and its receding sea ice are the most glaring example (the past two summers have resulted in record melts that prompted some to predict an ice-free summer Arctic within less than a decade). As the Earth's air conditioner goes, so goes the Earth.

The release of the study's results coincided with the approval, by a key House committee, of the nation's most aggressive and comprehensive proposal yet to fight global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and investing in renewable energy technology. That bill -- which represents one of President Barack Obama's priorities -- still faces many hurdles before it can become law, but it's the most solid sign yet that the U.S. government will tackle this difficult problem.

Also coinciding with these developments was a report that, in 2008, U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide dropped 2.8% -- the steepest percentage decrease on record.

That is meaningful, but not in the way you might think. Our pollution decreased so substantially because high gasoline prices choked fuel consumption and because the economy faltered. That's one way to reduce pollution: stifle the economy. Progressive policies that invest in new ways to produce energy represent the alternative.

Global warming will cost us one way or another. The changing climate will take a toll on the economy, in the form of increased destruction from natural disasters, in the form of more crops lost to drought or flood, in the form of increased rates of disease, in the form of increased cost of infrastructure to ward off a rising sea....

Or, the cost can come in the form of clean energy and energy efficiency innovation that mitigates and dampens the impact of global warming. That's the kind of cost that millions of job-seekers are counting on.

In other words, we can invest in a future we choose, or react to an unruly future. Either way, there's a cost. Either way there is the uncertainty that comes with predicting any future scenario. One way accepts the idea that humans are just one part of a global system with an outsized influence and a responsibility to act as good stewards. The other does not.

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