Climate change has economic costs. The famous economist at the end of the century. Another report from 2021 published in Environmental Research Letters This loss increased to 37% of GDP. Among those of us who work in sectors directly involved in climate mitigation or adaptation, this has been known for years, but in some ways it represented a diffuse, long-term and distant cost. It is one of the basic problems of climate action, that we see the short-term inconveniences, but we are not able to internalize well the impact, the externality that we cause as it is global, intergenerational and of enormous proportions.
For Valencians, last October 29. , increased in its virulence and probability due to the warming of the earth and, by extension, the Mediterranean Sea, devastated part of the province of Valencia, leaving a trail of destruction and death. The estimated economic damages are 22 billion euros, an enormous amount for a single province.
Estimate how much of this damage and destruction Over the next few months there will be attribution studies to climate change and we will have clearer data on how much more likely it was due to global warming. With this, and not without difficulty, it will be possible to try to estimate what part of the disaster can be attributed to climate change caused by human beings. But beyond the number there is one thing that must be clear: our emissions as a society are causing economic and social damage, and we cannot ignore what we are causing or the social responsibility that this entails. It is irresponsible and rationally impossible to look at images of L’Horta Sud and not think that there is something we are not doing correctly.
To make an economic estimate of how much damage our emissions cause. This metric attempts to measure the economic impact of the damage that carbon emissions will cause, with an amount that far exceeds the regulated costs of emitting CO₂ established by our regulations (either by carbon rate or by ETS). The European Investment Bank, for example, uses the “shadow cost” of carbon that helps it internalize this externality to provide financing for climate change mitigation projects. The amount they use is increasing, they value this cost at 165 euros per ton of CO₂ emitted in 2025, increasing it to 250 euros per ton in 2030. It was also recently published in the North American scientific journal PNAS an article that reassessed the social cost of carbon and set it at 270 euros per ton.
This is a very interesting tool to be aware of what what we are doing entails and the responsibility we have, although here we must be cautious. , as long as there are responsibilities that are systemic and structural and we cannot blame the person who commits them at the end of a chain of events. For example, a person who is forced to use a combustion car to go to work cannot be blamed for having a job where he or she has it.
That does not mean, however, that we are not responsible for our actions. And here I believe that an extremely serious reflection is in order. Human beings not only cause emissions through our consumption, we also cause them with our social actions. Our demands as citizens matter, because they shape laws, regulations and, also, the actions of third parties. In fact, there is a great social responsibility in something that until now we have not been able to adequately explain for fear of not being understood or hurting sensitivities, but that we cannot ignore: we are responsible for paralyzing climate action around us.
Let me be clear: there are people who cause much more climate damage by what they promote than by their individual actions. And this, thanks to the social cost of carbon, we can quantify it. Imagine someone trying to prevent a neighbor from installing an electric charger in the community garage because he has heard. This obstructive action would prevent the neighbor from buying an electric car with which he would travel 250,000 kilometers without emissions. Since he cannot do so, he will buy a diesel car, which will emit 33 tons of CO₂ throughout its useful life. With the social cost of carbon from the article published in the magazine PNASthis obstruction would be directly responsible for almost 9,000 euros of global climate damage, which will end up being suffered by residents of Pacific islands who will see their houses flooded, farmers in the Middle East who will see their crops reduced, or our neighbors in the Mediterranean area due to another large flood.
The cost of stopping a solar park
I give you another more dramatic example. Imagine one of these typical cases of platforms against renewable developments that manage to paralyze a 50 megawatt (MW) solar park, what effect does that have? Being conservative, during the 30 years of operation, a plant like that would generate about 2.25 terawatts per hour that would displace others generated with gas combined cycles. Therefore, its non-implementation causes the emission of 832,500 tons of CO₂. The social cost of this carbon is almost 225 million euros. Every year the plant is delayed, there would be 7.5 million euros in climate damage attributable to the delay.
With exercises of this type we can analyze what each of the obstructive actions towards decarbonization carried out by different agents entails and can help us make tangible the invisible externalities that we cause. If, for example, 1,000 megawatts of wind power were delayed for a year, we would be talking about 250 million euros in social costs. If the TSXG had properly weighed this damage, would it have dared to make precautionary stoppages? I leave the question open for reflection. The social cost also allows us to analyze the damage caused by not complying with the laws on climate change, by not implementing low-emission zones or by our actions to paralyze the bicycle lane that they want to create on our street and which we oppose because it takes away places from us. of parking.
The social cost of carbon is a tool that helps us realize something that we can no longer ignore: everything we do must be influenced and conditioned by the climate perspective. All. The social cost of carbon is not everything, but it must be present in all the decisions, individual and collective, that we make. Either we take this seriously, and we are capable of internalizing the consequences of our actions, or we will continue to settle in the comfort of not changing anything, in the irresponsible tendency to avoid any conflict in the face of the geographical and temporal relocation of our impacts, and in the climate cynicism of selling that we are champions of the climate because we ride a bike while we boycott changes with decarbonizing effects thousands of times greater.
