Jeff Spencer
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thread 1/9
A new study released last week in Nature examines data from 1,600 regions of the earth for the last forty years, and concludes that by 2050 climate change will be causing economic damage worth $38 trillion every single year. That’s right, with a T. https://www.nature.com/art...
07:04 PM - Apr 21, 2024
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Jeff Spencer
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thread 2/9
For comparison, the entire world economy at the moment is about $100 trillion a year; the U.S. federal budget is about $6 trillion a year.
07:04 PM - Apr 21, 2024
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Jeff Spencer
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thread 3/9
Here’s how Bloomberg parses those numbers: “planetary warming will result in an income reduction of 19% globally by mid-century, compared to a global economy without climate change.” https://www.bloomberg.com/...
07:04 PM - Apr 21, 2024
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Jeff Spencer
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thread 4/9
We should really take action now, because if we don’t take strong action now to limit the rise in temperature, then the economic losses just keep growing—that 19% at mid-century becomes 60% by 2100. (2100 isn’t all that far away. A baby born today would only be 76.)
07:04 PM - Apr 21, 2024
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Jeff Spencer
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thread 5/9
Bill McKibben points out, “capitalism—which regularly acts homicidally—is acting truly suicidally. Having been warned for years now, it resists every effort to rein in its excesses.
07:04 PM - Apr 21, 2024
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Jeff Spencer
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thread 6/9
As Exxon’s CEO helpfully explained earlier this year, it’s not that you couldn’t make good money from renewable energy—you just couldn’t make ‘above average returns’ because sunshine is free.
07:04 PM - Apr 21, 2024
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Jeff Spencer
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thread 7/9
So instead we’ll tank the world, and with it the world economy (which is a subset of the first, not the other way round).” https://billmckibben.subst...
07:04 PM - Apr 21, 2024
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Jeff Spencer
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thread 8/9
Bill goes on, “If Amazon and Apple and Microsoft wanted to avoid a world where, by century’s end, people had 60 percent less money to spend on buying whatever phones and software and weird junk (doubtless weirder by then) they plan on selling, then they should be putting
07:04 PM - Apr 21, 2024
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Jeff Spencer
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thread 9/9
pressure on their banks to stop making the problem worse [by loaning money to fossil fuel companies]. They [Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft] should also be unleashing their lobbying teams to demand climate action from Congress.”
07:04 PM - Apr 21, 2024
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