Last Updated 7.10.25. (G)

The insane financial costs of escalating climate change consequences will eventually destroy the world's economy. Here is why.

No banks, corporations, or governments are currently planning, budgeting for, or setting aside adequate reserves to cover the losses and damages associated with our accelerating climate change crisis.

 

Below is a partial list of climate change consequences to help you visualize the escalating financial costs associated with these consequences, which are described in detail below.

 

 

Rising climate change consequences costs may be the greatest threat to the world economy

If temperatures continue to rise as they are doing now and increase only as over “optimistically” projected by current global warming authorities until the turn of the century:

1. Average global income will shrink by 23%. (1)

2. Global warming will facilitate a massive transfer of value and wealth from the hotter parts of the Earth to the cooler parts. At least initially, countries like Russia, Mongolia, Canada, and possibly the northernmost parts of the U.S. will see significant economic benefits. Most of Europe will fare slightly better, although some regions will experience severe droughts. The U.S. and China are expected to perform slightly worse, primarily due to the heat and/or drought crisis affecting the southern and western parts of the United States. All of Africa, Asia, South America, and the Middle East will be economically ravaged.

3. U.S. gross domestic product per person will drop by 36%. (2)

4. Inflation will continually rise (reaching up to 100% in the final phases of the Climageddon Scenario) (3). This rising inflation is due to the need to repair the ever-escalating, near-continuous damage from increasingly global warming-related natural disasters as they expand across local, regional, national, and global areas. Repairing these continuous and escalating natural disasters will create an ever-increasing need for resources that will become increasingly scarce. The need for repairs and resource scarcity will continually push prices and inflation higher and higher.

The financial costs of global warming will rise with each rising degree of average global temperature. However, global warming costs are likely to increase rapidly in an exponential curve rather than linearly. 

The estimated differences in total global warming costs are derived from different inputs, assumptions, and computer models. As you will soon discover, no matter what estimates you choose to use, the escalating costs of global warming will put an unbearable, steadily increasing burden on the citizens and nations of the world. When you read these cost estimates, remember that none of them place a dollar value on the massive predicted loss of human life. 

It will be horrendously costly to repair, rebuild, relocate, or construct both current and new infrastructure, homes, and businesses for the first time. The Stern Review in 2006 estimated that the rising costs of escalating global warming will grow to 5% or more of the gross domestic product of all the nations on Earth. (Gross domestic product [GDP] is a monetary measure of the value of all goods and services produced in a given period [quarterly or yearly].) 

This means that 5% of the world’s gross domestic product will be lost to emergency recovery from global warming-related consequences. For an economic comparison and perspective, consider that the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States resulted in only a 4% loss in the U.S. gross domestic product.

 

It gets FAR more costly as climate consequences accelerate over time

Newer studies from 2015 project that if the average global temperature increase reaches 6° Celsius (10.8° Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, the nations of the world will be spending from 10% up to a possible 30% of their total gross domestic product recovering from an endless stream of mega global warming-related consequences and catastrophes on the final road to extinction. The current global GDP is approximately $100 trillion per year; by 2100, it may double or triple that amount. This means we could be spending one-third of the world’s GDP by 2100—approximately $100 trillion a year—to try to survive the extinction caused by global warming. 

If we can avoid global warming extinction, the total estimated costs of all related global warming destruction could be between $400 and $600 trillion—about eight years of the current total gross domestic product for every nation onhis in perspective, if we fail to resolve global warming successfully now, sometime in the near future, we will have to dedicate 5 to 8 times the total current value of all annual global human productivity to recover from climate change consequences. 

Worse yet, that is only what we may have to pay if we are lucky. What will the cost be if we experience runaway, irreversible, or extinction-level climate change destabilization? 

Additionally, the financial costs of global warming-related catastrophes and emergencies will rapidly diminish any existing national emergency recovery safety net for the unprepared, causing unthinkable suffering and economic loss.

 

No person, corporation, or nation will be able to cope with the ever-increasing global warming and remain economically viable, as so much of their income or GDP will go toward climate change costs and recovery 

Here is just a tiny sample of the costs already being incurred due to global warming-influenced extreme weather. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which tracks U.S. billion-dollar disaster events resulting from extreme weather, has found that severe storms caused losses of $8 billion in the 1980s, $26 billion in the 1990s, $43 billion in the 2000s, and $78 billion thus far in the 2010s. (4)  In the past few years, the United States has experienced nearly 50 climate-related disasters, costing taxpayers over $1 billion.

 

A global financial catastrophe is looming if we do not address climate change before we surpass the 450 ppm carbon threshold.

In 2017 alone, the total combined costs for all U.S. global warming-aggravated disasters were approximately $ 500 billion. Hurricane Harvey alone exceeded $300 billion, and hurricanes Irma and Marie and California's many wildfires and mudslides made up the difference.) This $ 300 billion cost was predicted in the new Climageddon Scenario climate model in Phase 2 (described in the new book Climageddon: The Global Warming Emergency and How to Survive It).

 

The costs of climate change consequences will quickly reach insane levels

In the illustration below, you can see the predicted future single incident increasing costs of global warming aggravated disasters through the six stages of the Climageddon Scenario climate model. You can also see how much worse our single incident of global warming will make the disaster costs of each phase.

Click here to learn why we cannot cross the 425 to 450 ppm carbon threshold and the associated tipping point. 

 

 

If we continue on the path of escalating global warming, we will soon be facing a new kind of superstorm, which can be called a millennial superstorm. Millennial superstorms are storms of such severity that they have not been present on Earth for thousands of years. These new millennial superstorms are essential to consider because almost all of our infrastructure has been built to withstand the worst storm that occurs about once every 100 years. Our current infrastructure is not prepared to survive these 1,000-year millennial superstorms. For more data on increasingly extreme storms, read this article by Paul Douglas. (5)

 

Who are the biggest financial losers as global warming increases?

There will be massive financial losers as global warming escalates. A few of the biggest losers will be:

a. Home and business owners in global warming unsafe catastrophe zones. Those living near river or lake floodplains, or close to oceans or areas vulnerable to wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, or tornadoes, will be subject to significant real estate valuation losses and insurance premium increases. Insurance companies will be forced to raise prices about 5% per year for customers in the escalating global warming medium danger zones, or they will cancel policies and offload the risks and the unpredictable costs onto national government relief programs and safety nets. In high danger zones, insurance companies will raise insurance rates as much as 20 to 40% regularly and sometimes annually to keep up with climate change disaster costs

It would also not be unreasonable to estimate that real estate prices in areas at high risk of global warming will soon drop 1-3% per year as savvy buyers realize the risks and potential losses associated with such properties. In extremely high-risk regions, real estate prices could crash drastically, similar to how the prices of homes, businesses, and local farms crashed when toxic pollution was discovered in the water and soils at Love Canal, New York. (See this article on the new rules for buying real estate in the world of increasing global warming and the vast new global warming unsafe zones.)

b. Fossil fuel companies and related industries cannot hide or secretly offload the pollution and health costs onto unsuspecting taxpayers for the worst effects of their products. Fossil fuel subsidies totaling $5.3 trillion per year will soon disappear, and special global warming reduction carbon tax fees, ranging from $40 to $100 per ton or more, will be added to their operational costs. Fossil fuel companies will face massive stock divestment actions and a surge in individual and class-action lawsuits holding them responsible for global warming damages, and they will be hindered by governments implementing new regulations and taxes on profits to further reduce fossil fuel use. 

On the other hand, green energy will become highly subsidized, while fossil fuel energy generation will become comparatively unprofitable. This overlooks the momentum building behind the rapidly growing movement to divest from fossil fuel holdings.

c. Countries in the Southern hemisphere will be most affected by the worst of escalating global warming. They will experience soaring heat, the rapid spread of tropical diseases, and economic, social, and political instability. Needless to say, such countries whose economies are dependent on tourism will see those revenues steadily disappear. The irony is that many developing nations, which have contributed only a tiny fraction of global warming, will likely become poorer as northern countries, responsible for most global warming, initially become richer and experience other benefits.

d. Millennials and the younger generations will be financially punished the most by escalating global warming. Click here for a shocking article about the trillions of dollars the younger generations will lose. (6)

e. Average individuals from every generation in unsafe zones caused by global warming will watch their monthly budgets, reserves, and personal and business equity be destroyed. This is because global warming-related inflation and the costs of “natural” disasters and their recovery will continue to rise as temperatures increase. Part of the reason for this loss of equity is that, as the emergency worsens, individuals cannot find relief from either insurance or government emergency programs. Eventually, those funds will also be exhausted by the ever-widening drain in the bathtub of global warming costs. To add further hardship, these individuals will endure steadily increasing new taxes, which their governments will be forced to impose as insurance companies go bankrupt due to the continuous, worsening “natural” disasters caused by global warming. To learn more about global warming unsafe zones, see the Migrating North or South of the 45 Parallel map and copy near the bottom of this page.

f. People with low incomes and the middle class will be the first to suffer, and they will suffer the most. In addition to the pain of dwindling personal equity and rapidly increasing taxes from ever-escalating global warming disasters, people experiencing poverty and the middle class will also watch their government social security and safety net benefits continually cut back and finally disappear as their governments try to cope with dwindling and overburdened resources themselves (i.e. retirement and unemployment benefits, food assistance, assistance for older people or physically or mentally handicapped, worker’s compensation, etc.). Click here for a glimpse of how dire the situation will become for low-income individuals. (7)

For more information on the effects of climate change on your personal and business finances, please visit our Members' section.

The worst financial losers will be 

Banks, corporations, and governments worldwide did not plan for, budget for, or set aside adequate reserves for the ever-increasing costs of escalating climate change. Thus, they will be blindsided yearly with ever-increasing surprise liabilities and fewer resources for future productivity.

In the early to mid-phases of the Climageddon Scenario described here, it is fair to say that almost everyone will begin to watch the process of their wealth dwindling and disappearing. More will be said about the many costs of escalating global warming here.

Who is responsible for global climate change, and who should pay for all the home business and farm damages caused by climate change?

Click here to read about the real cause of global climate change. It is not you, as an individual, or a business, or a farm. Once you know who and what the real cause of global climate change is, you can join one of the thousands of worldwide lawsuits to collect restitution for any damage you may have received because of climate change. Click here for one of the most important pages on our website. It will show you how to get restitution for your losses.

 

Here are some additional climate change costs that most people typically do not consider

The following is from our annual climate change forecast. Much more cost-related information is found in this annual forecast:

Food costs will likely remain high if climate change continues to intensify. Farmers will increasingly experience lower crop yields or complete crop failures due to the numerous climate consequences.

Fisheries will suffer due to warming water and other climate-related impacts. The price of livestock for food will also continue to rise due to increased heat, drought, and other climate-related consequences.

Additionally, the plant feed used to feed domestic animals will be subject to low crop yields and crop failures. Both food plants and animal livestock will also suffer from more diseases and insect infestations due to the increased migration of diseases and insects into warmer climates, where they have never been before. These food production problems and expenses will also increase year by year as the temperature continues to rise.

In 2025, because of the many accelerating consequences of climate change listed above and below, which directly and indirectly affect all categories of food prices, expect your food bill to go up by 2 to 4 percent more than the previous average food inflation rate average. This increase in food prices will also include cost increases for food distribution and labor production, as well as other expenses related to climate change consequences.

This will devastate poor families and put paycheck-to-paycheck middle-class families under much higher stress. We estimate that poor families will spend 15% of their income on food. Middle-class families will spend less of their total income, but there will still be a significant increase of several percent. Food prices are expected to increase by a greater percentage and as a larger proportion of total household income in Phases 2 and 3 of climate change, as described further down the page.

Due to the increasing consequences of climate change, homeowners and business owners will be particularly hard hit by unpredictable and near-continuous rises in property insurance costs. Over the past seven years, property insurance premiums have risen by 30% in the US alone. In high-risk areas for climate change, where property insurance is still available, the average cost of an insurance policy has increased by 50%.

Property insurance rate uncertainty and increases will devastate new and existing home and business owners, as well as home and business sales, because their monthly or yearly overhead involving property insurance will continually increase beyond their control.

Unpredictable climate change-driven property insurance rate increases pose the most significant challenge for first-time homebuyers, as they often spend every penny they have to move in. This will make it impossible for many first-time homeowners to remain in their homes as climate change worsens and climate change-related property insurance continues to rise with the acceleration of the climate change emergency. (A recent New York Times article estimated that one in ten homes in the US would soon become financially uninsurable because of accelerating climate change.)

The real estate market and the business sales market will be hardest hit by the significant increases in home and business property insurance. Soon, all new buyers will factor in accelerating property insurance rates when making every home or business purchase decision. Within 5-10 years, states will require full disclosure of climate change risks and projected property insurance costs for all residential and commercial property sales. (More about this in the insurance section further below.)

Home and business expenses will increase dramatically for individuals and businesses that make the wise decision to relocate out of medium- to high-risk climate change areas. They will make this decision because continual rebuilding will be too expensive, and ever-increasing property insurance will make a living in those homes or operating those businesses financially unviable sooner rather than later. Additionally, the psychological and emotional stress of continuing to rebuild when climate change is predicted to worsen at even faster rates for many decades is unbearable and irrational.

In 2025, expect more sudden and temporary severe spikes in prices for your energy bills and other critical commodities because of the sudden changes in climate change-driven extreme weather consequences.

Unprecedented sudden weather extremes will drastically affect product distribution and the prices of all kinds of energy (electric, gasoline, home heating oil, diesel, etc.) and other critical commodity inventories, reserves, and transportation. 

More states and nations will require energy-efficient air conditioning in all new homes, businesses, and even in many older homes, as temperatures and heat-related deaths continue to rise.

There will be increases in taxes worldwide, directly due to the rapidly rising costs of city, county, state, and national governments for repairs and rebuilding required by the increasing frequency, severity, and scale of climate change disasters.

City, county, state, and national deficits will increase not only in poor nations but also in rich nations. These rising deficits will occur because the cost of climate change consequences will rise dramatically faster than in previous years. Very few cities, counties, states, or nations are budgeting anywhere close to the actual cost of accelerating climate change consequences in their annual budgets. This denial of the actual accelerating costs of climate change consequences will force ever-larger city, county, state, and national deficits to emerge as the climate emergency intensifies. No city, county, state, or national government is discussing the projected 3 to 5% or more of the total GDP that accelerating climate change consequences will soon cost.

More people are falling deeper into debt and experiencing bill-paying problems after being impacted by climate change-driven extreme weather events, especially since most of the damages will no longer be covered by government emergency relief organizations, as the sheer number and severity of these climate catastrophes continue to rise.

More frequent and extreme weather-related temporary and long-term evacuations from affected areas are expected to occur. These ordered evacuations will cause significant hardship and substantial costs to those affected.

The fossil fuel industries will continue to be able to export and transfer the above-listed financial costs and losses for the damages and suffering their products cause unfairly to the citizens of every nation. It will be you who will pay higher local, state, and national taxes, as well as higher insurance rates. Because of the above climate change effects, you will also have to pay personally for any climate-related damages and losses not covered fully by your insurance.

The most expensive single-incident global climate change disaster in 2025 is expected to approach or exceed $ 300 billion in total cost. The total cost of all global climate change-related damages will significantly exceed $ 1-2 trillion. In 2025, the US and many other countries will, directly and indirectly, be forced to spend about 3-5% of their total gross domestic product (GDP) on climate change-related consequences. These escalating climate damage expenses have not been factored into any national budget we are aware of. (The current US GDP is just over 28 trillion dollars.)

More individuals and businesses will be compelled to invest in expensive backup generator systems and other power sources due to the increasing frequency of power outages caused by extreme weather. Extreme weather-related power outages will increase significantly, rendering individual lives and business operations vulnerable without a backup power source.

The disabled and less affluent will suffer disproportionately more because of the costs of climate change consequences.

In the US, by 2025, the total cost of all climate change-related consequences is expected to exceed $300 billion. Worldwide, total climate change-related consequences will exceed several trillion dollars. We are aware of no nation on earth that has yet established a climate change damage budget to offset the accelerating costs of climate change. This means the nations of the Earth will continue to have increasingly larger budget deficits annually as the climate change emergency continues to accelerate.

In 2025, you will hear the term Managed Retreat more often in the media. To be politically correct, this is the term politicians will use instead of saying climate change-related relocation,  even though more people will be choosing to relocate or be forced to relocate because they have run out of repair and rebuilding money or the current government emergency programs or the insurance companies refuse to rebuild their homes, businesses or farms the second or third time. 

Paradoxically, voluntary or Managed Retreat relocation will create crashing home, business, and farm prices (70-90+%) in medium to high-risk climate change areas. This will create many new home, business, and farm ownership opportunities for low-income individuals willing to buy these properties at drastically reduced prices and still live or conduct business without any property insurance.

Ironically, the climate change emergency will create more low-income housing, low-income business, and low-income farm opportunities that would've never been possible in the current market had not many individuals continued to deny the obvious and accelerating climate change reality and consequences and then waited too long to relocate out of medium to high-risk climate change areas, which had become uninsurable at viable insurance rates.

One of the most severe economic consequences of accelerating climate change will be its impact on national and global inflation rates. Because of increasing low crop yields, crop failures, increasing property insurance (in medium to high-risk climate change areas,) as well as the continually rising costs of repairing and rebuilding necessary government and private infrastructure after climate change disaster after climate change disaster (described in this page), no government or state will be able to lower its inflation rates no matter how they try. Inflation rates will stay high, and in many areas, they will continue to rise.

Government deficits, whether budgeted or not, will also continue to rise steeply because the costs of climate change consequences and critical infrastructure repairs, both nationally and globally, will continue to increase. This will force governments to raise taxes to cover the ever-increasing costs of climate change disasters.

One of the worst cost-related things that will happen in 2025 and beyond is that reinsurance companies (those companies that insure individual insurance companies to spread and share their risks) will also begin canceling reinsurance coverage for the insurance companies they insure, who also hold property insurance coverages in medium to high-risk climate change areas. This will make it impossible for insurance companies to carry even the most expensive property insurance for homes and businesses in medium to high-risk climate change areas.

When reinsurance companies cancel the property insurance coverage of insurance companies, no government will be able to force any individual insurance company into carrying property insurance in medium to high-risk climate change areas because they will have to individually assume all of the risk themselves and put their insurance company at risk of sudden bankruptcy as climate change consequences continue to accelerate.  As more global reinsurance companies decline to cover policies with medium to high climate change risk, insurance companies will likely follow suit. What will follow is a crash in the availability of financially viable home, business, and farm insurance worldwide. This will eventually lead to a crash in home, business, and farm prices worldwide in medium- to high-risk climate change consequence areas due to their uninsurability.

As more and more home and property insurance rates skyrocket or are canceled, it may turn out that nothing may be more powerful to end global and national climate change denial and begin honest climate change reduction than the costs and problems of having home or business property insurance become so expensive (or be canceled) causing homeowners and business owners into unsustainable and unviable financial hardships including eventual relocations. Sooner or later, the painful and loud complaints of homeowners and business owners (and the industries that serve them, like realtors) will be so powerful that even the most climate change-denying politicians will need to change course.

In 2025, we estimate that the total cost of climate change consequences in the US alone will range from $500 billion to $700 billion or more. The US government, US businesses, and individual families will not plan for or budget for most of these costs. Climate change will become a significant, largely unaddressed, and financially undermanaged cause of increasing national, business, and personal financial losses and deficits. The costs of growing climate change consequences will be the hidden and unmanageable source of inflation. 

(If you value what you are discovering, please share this page with your friends because much of this uncensored climate change information is actively being censored by the media and even by many environmental groups due to its highly unsettling nature.)

For more information on the effects of climate change on your personal and business finances, please visit our Members' section.

 

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If you still have doubts about what you are reading...

For many visitors to our uncensored climate change think tank's website, their biggest question after reading our climate change consequences and timetable forecasts is, "Why are your climate change forecasts so much worse than almost everything I hear in the media from my government, the educational environmental and climate change organizations, or the former world's leading authority on climate change, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC)? Click here for the five critical reasons that will fully answer your "why are our forecasts so much worse" question.

 

 

End Notes

1. Ben Gruber. "Unmitigated climate change to shrink global economy by 23 percent, researchers find." Reuters. November 16, 2015.
2. Kenneth Rapoza. "Climate change will be disastrous for these economies." Forbes. October 26, 2015. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/10/26/climate-change-will-be-disastrous-for-these-economies/#246817eb4052
3. Tim Garrett, interview by Alex Smith, Radio Ecoshock, October 19, 2011, transcript. http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/climate2010/ES_Garrett_101119_LoFi.mp3
4. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. "U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters." NOAA.gov. 2016. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/
5. Paul Douglas. "Meteorologists are seeing global warming's effect on the weather." The Guardian. May 27, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/may/27/meteorologists-are-seeing-global-warmings-effect-on-the-weather
6. Maria Gallucci. "Climate change could be worse than student debt, Great Recession for millennials' income." Mashable. August 22, 2016. http://mashable.com/2016/08/22/climate-change-cost-millennials-trillions/#MPVks6RnU8q6
7. Megan Darby. "Climate change could push 100m into extreme poverty." Climate Change News. August 11, 2015. http://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/11/08/climate-change-could-push-100m-into-extreme-poverty/
8. Lawrence Wollersheim. Book Climageddon 2016.