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Earth Science

Average World Incomes To Drop By Nearly a Fifth By 2050, Study Says (theguardian.com) 123

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
Average incomes will fall by almost a fifth within the next 26 years as a result of the climate crisis, according to a study that predicts the costs of damage will be six times higher than the price of limiting global heating to 2C. From a report: Rising temperatures, heavier rainfall and more frequent and intense extreme weather are projected to cause $38tn of destruction each year by mid-century, according to the research, which is the most comprehensive analysis of its type ever undertaken, and whose findings are published in the journal Nature. The hefty toll -- which is far higher than previous estimates -- is already locked into the world economy over the coming decades as a result of the enormous emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere through the burning of gas, oil, coal and trees.

This will inflict crippling losses on almost every country, with a disproportionately severe impact on those least responsible for climate disruption, further worsening inequality. The paper says the permanent average loss of income worldwide will be 19% by 2049. In the United States and Europe the reduction will be about 11%, while in Africa and south Asia it will be 22%, with some individual countries much higher than this. "It's devastating," said Leonie Wenz, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the authors of the study. "I am used to my work not having a nice societal outcome, but I was surprised by how big the damages were. The inequality dimension was really shocking."
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Average World Incomes To Drop By Nearly a Fifth By 2050, Study Says More

Average World Incomes To Drop By Nearly a Fifth By 2050, Study Says

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  • What's the opposite of peace and prosperity? Because without reliable long-term leadership we're going to leave future generations worse off than the current generation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jzanu ( 668651 )
      Exactly, this is a basic point. Lost primary sector productivity from ecological damages, compounded throughout the rest of the economy as supplies are disrupted or simply not available (droughts have killed pepper crops, etc.), and as customers become rarer due to damaged transit systems and increased travel risks. The other three or so posts right now have missed that concept so much as to show themselves paid to ignore it. Paid through social psychology and tribal mentality benefit or financially - both

      • Generally speaking, populations keep their heads down and try to avoid change or effort so long as they have a choice.

        The few in position to force a direction on the mob are usually short-sighted and selfish.

        In other words, it seems likely nothing's going to happen until people are ready to riot. As long as we're comfortable enough, it's status quo even as the 1% gather more wealth and the environment becomes more hostile.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dbialac ( 320955 )

          The few in position to force a direction

          And that's problem #1. Thinking it's about force. People respond well to choice and when given choices, they will pick the better of the options. When forced, people will respond with resentment and opposition. "You have a choice, you can do A or you can do B" will get you a lot further than, "Do this. Do that."

          • The choices were plentiful offered over the last 30 years. Plenty of ways to reduce carbon. The options keep reducing. It is clear now that it will only be by force of nature, not government, that anything changes.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dbialac ( 320955 )
              What choices for the end user? For the power industry, natural gas is now used far more than coal and it has a smaller carbon footprint, which helps everyone. The power industry also invests in wind and solar. But for the customer, the product has to offer a viable and better alternative than what you want to replace. You have to look beyond being an eco-oriented person who will just do it. Solar is still expensive (I have 15 solar panels myself), BEVs are still expensive, etc. Go up to Joe 6-pack or Mr Far

              • Well, choice number one was to choose to lobby the Congress and state legislators to believe in climate change instead of lobbying to cut funding of science. Choice number two was to believe scientists who said "we have a problem" and not protest at the city councils when things tried to change in small ways to reduce carbon output.

                The problem is "viable and better alternative than what you want to replace" was not an option... and still isn't. There were (are) going to have to be changes in lifestyle, but

          • Forcing a change doesn't mean making the change at gunpoint, offering choices is the usual method to force a change (eg a competitor "forces" a monopoly to drop their prices).

          • >People respond well to choice and when given choices, they will pick the better of the options

            I'm not sure if you're young, an idealist, or both... but no, they don't.

            The majority of people are selfish and short-sighted - and that's fine when they exist in an environment that makes the better choices the ones that align with their selfish and short-sighted goals, or at least where things are good enough they will put up with the things that don't as a 'cost of doing business'.

            But when things get tough a

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dbialac ( 320955 )
              Buying a cell phone is not a selfish and short-sighted choice. It offers a better alternative to a land line. There was absolutely no mandate to force people to use them, and yet nearly everyone has one now. Choice works, but the alternative has to offer something better. Putting somebody at an EV station that requires a lengthy recharge isn't better than a gasoline based ICE. Ford's CEO tried a road trip in an EV and at the end more or less stated that he got it, that is why people don't want them. Putting
        • will make that kind of herd mentality harder to maintain. Conservatism in the general population isn't an accident, it's actively pushed by the ruling class. Increasing education and with it critical thinking skills severely undermines that.

          It's why you're seeing a rash of book bannings in schools. They're trying to stem the tide.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dryeo ( 100693 )

            Hard times causes people to fall back to conservationism, or worse. Look at how many fascist regimes were born during the great depression. Look at the popularity of Trump, among the people who feel things are hopeless.
            You are right that it feeds on itself by destroying education.

      • Ignore? You mean like ignoring that when you spend $38T that money goes to people for work. They aren't just burning that money.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by XXongo ( 3986865 )

          Ignore? You mean like ignoring that when you spend $38T that money goes to people for work. They aren't just burning that money.

          If I understand the paper correctly, you're not spending $38T (doing so would in fact go to people). That $38T is the value of productivity that has been lost.

          What is unclear to me (I need to read the paper more carefully) is whether the paper includes the effects of substitution and adaptation to changed conditions: e.g., changing crops planted in a particular region to better match the changed conditions; abandoning the worst area and starting to plane in formerly unfavorable areas that have become more

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rei ( 128717 )

            Everyone (including Slashdot) is presenting the study wrong. It's forecasting that world incomes would drop by nearly a fifth relative to what they would have otherwise been, not relative to the present.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dryeo ( 100693 )

            Canadian here, governments are resisting like crazy to make any agricultural changes, instead pumping more and more money into supporting the farmers suffering from drought. I also don't know how more drought will benefit us, there's already close to 50 fires burning, many in the far north.
            Huge waves of refugees from those countries close to the equator also doesn't seem like it would be a benefit.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by NomDeAlias ( 10449224 )
      We should just let a single family run things and pass leadership through heredity!

      • Back in the old days they'd off the idiot son of the ruler to make room for a more reliable heir. The great thing about dynasties is the family running things has an interest in keeping their reputation. But you still end up fighting to settle grey areas of succession like with Lancaster and York in the War of the Roses.

    • we're going to leave future generations worse off than the current generation.

      Not everywhere. The paper claims that Canada looks like it will have a net 5-20% boost to GDP thanks to climate change.

      • Russia should get a little bump too if I'm reading this right. I mean assuming there is no macroeconomic blow back of 90%+ of the world population facing economic hardship.

        • Might be beneficial - if people are desperate they will sell what they have at a lower price.

          If an authoritarian regime there is willing to enslave or machine gun migrants so that they don't cause disruption, climate change could work out well for some countries.

          • People will do with less. Make less money. And live at a lower standard of living. That's what this means.

  • Ok, all you climate sleuths, here's your assignment:

    1. Find out which scenario this study is based upon.
    2. Find out how likely that scenario is

    Without looking, I'm guessing it's RCP 8.5.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by XXongo ( 3986865 )

      Ok, all you climate sleuths, here's your assignment:
      1. Find out which scenario this study is based upon. ... Without looking, I'm guessing it's RCP 8.5.

      They compare RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5 (see figure 1). As of 2050, these models have started to diverge, but the economic impacts are still within each others' error bars.

    • I think that '-1 Troll' is a little unfair here, but on the other hand how many of your other opinions do you form on the basis of not looking and guessing?

  • Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) will have unpredictable impacts, like facilitating fusion reactors that power carbon capture at scales undreamed of. OTOH ASI could kill us all - but we're locked in, have to go with ASI or die out from wars and climate change anyway,
    • Ahh yes climate change that will bring more energy, plants and water certainly means humans will die off. Everyone knows that if you add the ingredients for life to flourish it will die.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by XXongo ( 3986865 )

        This post is clearly intended as parody, but I'm not sure what it's a parody of. Nobody is predicting that humans will die off.

        The paper we're discussing says that climate change will have cost consequences, and the paper is attempting the quantify that cost. I'm not at all sure it's a good analysis (I think that there's too many unknowns), but "humans will die off" is not one of those consequences, even in the worst cases analyzed.

        • No one serious is predicting humans will die off but there are plenty of unserious people that won't stop screaming it while making demands that would lead to famine. Just listen to the harpies scream it while vandalizing art works in museums. You can also scroll through the comments under this post to find a few. The comment I replied to literally talks about humans dying off from it.

          • Ok, but you get loud and unhinged people on both sides of every issue. For every 'the seas are going to boil' person there is a 'climate change is faked by the WEF to box us all into 15-minute cities' person.

            To further complicate things on this specific issue, some of the radical groups like 'Just Stop Oil' act in exactly the way I'd commission a group to act if I wanted to delegitimise climate protests in general and buy time for me to transition my business away from fossil fuels.

            It's a mess, but then it'

            • Yes you do get unhinged on both sides but recently the left side's unhinged have been either growing in number or just getting louder. The fringe are taking over and being elevated.

              The 'Just Stop Oil' crowd is literally the growing co-hort I'm talking about. Alarmists screaming about a nonsensical doomsday scenario to justify taking actions that would kill a few billion people. They are like Thanos willing to sacrifice people now to pave way for a glorious Utopia in the future.

              Behind the actual dooms
      • Spoken like someone that's never used an autoclave. Anyhow, no one thinks climate change will cause human extinction but it'll continue to tip over countries here and there.

  • 2050?? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 )

    What kind of nonsense is hat .. we've been getting predictions like this continuously by fools who can't predict anything. In the early 1990s people kept saying the economy would be doomed by the 2000s. They totally missed the fact that the internet would emerge and jobs from that. In the 2000s the same predictions came about especially after the dot com busts. They didn't see the rise of smartphones and social media. Now we have the same shortsighted fools telling us there's not going to be anything new ev

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cinder6 ( 894572 )

      The weather and the economy are notorious for their bad (often hilariously bad) predictions. It does feel a bit farcical to put much stock in a study purporting to know how one will affect the other 25 years in the future.

      • Weather predictions are highly accurate and reliable.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          They weren't in the 50s and 60s and 70s when most of Slashdot was growing up listening to their parents bitch about how inaccurate weather predictions are.

          • I don't think you have your finger on the pulse of Slashdot's audience if you think that is the age range.
            • It's an 80-20 thing: 80% of the comments - at least the ones voted up enough that I bother to read them - are from the same 20% of the crowd with relatively low UIDs. That's not prima facie conclusive, but I'd say a rigorous study would show it's pretty close. Of the newer UIDs, it seems like we see mostly spam, or bot behavior. Again, not conclusive in and of itself.

              • To be fair, I lost my original Slashdot account that I made in the early 2000s when I took a hiatus from this site. I also lost the email (some hotmail account I can't recall) so recovering it wasn't doable.

                I'd say the average poster on here is probably 40+. I know I am.

              • The age of a slashdot account doesn't say anything about the age of the person though.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

              I think you probably haven't been around long enough.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )
      If anything is going to cause mass unemployment its not climate change, its AI. If Moores law remains in effect AI will create better robotics, which will be controlled by AI, and then even physical jobs like construction, welding, plumbing and electricians will be gone. Hell we wont even have jobs fixing the robots because another robot will do that too. 2050 might be entirely optimistic. Im no fan of UBI and laziness in general, but AI will eventually force the issue unless we get the robots to go on stri

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Maldives have been under water since 2020, according to prediction from 1990s. Also Africa has lost more than half of its population to mass starvation because of global warming, Great Barrier reef is dead, and so on.

      Need to get grants is what causes this sort of "data science", where people just intuit models, plug numbers and then adjust the variables within the model until they get the most outrageous result they can get.

      Then they go to their favorite journo and tell him they have a great clickbait story

      • Nice try. What do you mean the Maldives is underwater since 2020? I went there to the beaches a couple years ago, so that's just BS. I went to the capital Male and also some islands .. that I have been before. Same old beaches.

        Africa lost half its population to mass starvation? Are you crazy or something .. will need a proper source for that. They had starvation in Darfur 10 to 20 years back due to the war.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          The point is that the prediction in 1990s was that global warming would cause massive ice melting that would cause many of the island nations in the Indian and Pacific to go under water. There were even projects in those nations as a result of those predictions to relocate their populations.

          Same prediction was made for Africa in late 1990s, as the massive hunger crisis kicked in. That by 2020, there would be such horrific starvation as a result of desertification and other climate related disasters, that Af

    • What kind of nonsense is hat .. we've been getting predictions like this continuously by fools who can't predict anything. In the early 1990s people kept saying the economy would be doomed by the 2000s. They totally missed the fact that the internet would emerge and jobs from that.

      They weren't wrong though. Subtract the GDP created by the dot.com bubble from the world and we would have been in economic strife. The fact that an emerging unpredicted technology which changed the entire world fundamentally came into play does not invalidate the prediction.

      Look maybe in 2045 we'll invent nuclear fusion. Maybe we won't. Hopes and dreams have no bearing on economic indicators. If anything they raise the important point that we need to do *something*.

    • Dude, I do not know what your experiences are, but in my experiences, the economy has been in an almost free-fall for 50 years for the regular person.

      There is unimaginable wealth within America... and yet, it has become MUCH harder for someone just starting out. I started out at $3.35/hr 4 decades ago. Today, someone starts out at $7.25/hr. Rent was around $300/month, now it is over $1,000/month.

      So pay doubled but expenses tripled. This is *NOT* survivable.

      The Jack Welch school of socioeconomic theory must

  • Another way (Score:2, Interesting)

    by algaeman ( 600564 )
    Or, if 20% of the population die through famines, war and pestilence, then we can continue to enjoy the same standard of living in the "first world" countries.

  • The average (I assume that they mean "mean") will be skewed by the income of the top 1% which have a vastly greater income than the common person. This skew is getting worse, a trend that I expect to continue, so the "common man" will be much worse off than 1/5th of today's income.

    • time to go union!

    • The current average is already skewed by that. The trend continuing fits the prediction.
    • The top 1% are wealthy, but often have no or little income outside of dividends, rents, etc. Much of that wealth (e.g. the company whose stocks they own) is what's paying the incomes of everyone else. They only have substantial income if they sell to someone else, but that's merely wealth exchanging hands and not the creation of it.

      The average income dropping by 20% due to climate change alone is extremely dubious. If anything it would be far more likely to be the disastrous consequences of horribly misg

      • The top 1% are wealthy, but often have no or little income outside of dividends, rents, etc. Much of that wealth (e.g. the company whose stocks they own) is what's paying the incomes of everyone else. They only have substantial income if they sell to someone else, but that's merely wealth exchanging hands and not the creation of it. The average income dropping by 20% due to climate change alone is extremely dubious. If anything it would be far more likely to be the disastrous consequences of horribly misguided policy aimed at addressing climate change. Too much of it is rebranded Marxism, which does actually have a track record of making everyone poorer. This destruction usually happens from the bottom up as well. The rich, might become less wealthy, but not disproportionately so. The bottom 5% on the other hand will likely become completely destitute.

        I would expect average incomes compared to cost of living to drop by this much just through general inertia in that amount of time. It's about the same as the drop between about 1980 and today. At least here in America, where we continue to see cost of living rise substantially, for profit companies claiming new record highs in profits year over year, and constant claims when it comes time to look at raises that there just isn't enough to go around. All of that will accelerate as automation makes it easier

  • Alarmist propaganda (Score:3)

    by NomDeAlias ( 10449224 ) on Wednesday April 17, 2024 @01:47PM (#64402042)
    This reads like satire of alarmism.

  • Relative to a baseline without climate impacts (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ranton ( 36917 ) on Wednesday April 17, 2024 @02:02PM (#64402078)

    The actual Nature paper indicates they estimate a 20% reduction in income relative to a baseline without climate impacts. Considering worldwide income has increased 120% in real dollars over the past 25 years, if the next 25 years is more of the same they are predicting a 75% increase in average worldwide income (inflation adjusted) by 2050.

    I don't feel that should downplay the wasteful economic effects of increased climate change over the next few decades, but the summary and article posted weren't very clear on what the prediction actually was.

    • Re:Relative to a baseline without climate impacts (Score:5, Informative)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Wednesday April 17, 2024 @03:09PM (#64402370)
      Did your income increase by 120%? How much of that was eviscerated by inflation? Most people have seen a meager 1-3% raise per year and for about 5 years following the 2009/2010 housing collapse quite a few got 0% raises. Cost of goods has more than doubled in the last 2 yrs alone. Numbers mean fuckall if your actual spending power is in the toilet. You could be paid $1000/hr but if a roll of toilet paper cost $1600 what good is your claim of wage increase?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by ranton ( 36917 )

        Did your income increase by 120%? How much of that was eviscerated by inflation? Most people have seen a meager 1-3% raise per year and for about 5 years following the 2009/2010 housing collapse quite a few got 0% raises.

        I said in real dollars, which means those increases factor in inflation. I was just entering the workforce 25 years ago and my income has increased about 900% in real dollars since then, but that isn't relevant here because it shows career progression not an increase in average income worldwide. While the world has seen a 120% real income increase over the past 25 years, that is almost all coming from the developing world. Average income in the US has remained flat for the past 25 years. Someone working the

        • https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

          Not flat, 10% increase. Some of that increase may be due to more dual-income households, but we were already pretty well along that transition by 1999.

      • All the most rapidly developing economies are in developing countries (weird huh?). In terms of population Europe+North America is smaller than Africa and 4x smaller than Asia. So predictions about global population stuff means it's not about you.

    • I don't think the next 25 years will bring 120% real increase. The main story of the last 25 years is the world's largest nations played catch-up with what the rich were already doing, but that is petering out. And the global population pyramid is inverting, which while necessary, will start to kick in and cause a serious strain on economies everywhere. And this is before we even get to climate change.

      Then again, maybe AI will discover cold fusion and cheap carbon sequestration.

    • f the next 25 years is more of the same they are predicting a 75% increase in average worldwide income (inflation adjusted) by 2050.

      Sure, but for the average person, they will still lose more than they are now. It is GREAT that all this new value is being generated. Why are we generating it though? "We" don't see any benefits to it and in fact, are losing benefits faster than we are gaining them.

  • I come here for the good news. Not disappointed.

  • Lack of cheap and abundant fossil fuels to power an advanced economy is more likely. You ain't powering yhe NASDAQ on sunshine and rainbows...

  • Both the paper and the article are misleading. The funding is that climate change will decrease incomes about 19% compared to the expected growth without climate change. However, even with climate change, incomes will still grow.

    Of course, these are all long-term projections with significant assumptions and huge confidence intervals (or rather, no statistical confidence intervals). That effectively means that the results are fungible based on the authors' intentions.

  • 1. Countries that limit government will see their incomes double. 2. Countries that increase regulation and put onerous demands on individuals will see their incomes cut in half. 3. The world will have more of everything but will require less carbon-based energy to do it. 4. Seas will rise and some land environments will change - but people will adapt and their incomes will rise too. 5. There will be more arable land for everyone. 6. We will start moving to the desert as desalinization with limitless renewa
  • AL will take over numerous jobs.

  • RTFA. What they are suggesting is that, if we do not change climate policy, and also if nothing else changes, then growth of income relative to GDP will decline by whatever percent. Not that income will go down, but it will go up by less, presuming GDP stays on a relatively stable growth curve.

    That's a whole lot of "if nothing changes" (AGI for one?) and assuming global GDP doesn't increase significantly, the latter of which the likes of China, India and others would not like at all.

  • We could actually tax the ultrawealthy.

    Tell me what one single billionaire does that's worth more than $440k/yr.

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