Ocean damage nearly doubles the cost of climate change
The global cost of greenhouse gas emissions is nearly double what scientists previously thought, according to a study published Thursday by researchers at the University of California, San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
It is the first time a social cost of carbon (SCC) assessment-a key measure of economic harm caused by climate change-has included damages to the ocean. Global coral loss, fisheries disruption, and coastal infrastructure destruction are estimated to cost nearly $2 trillion annually, fundamentally changing how we measure climate finance.
For decades, we've been estimating the economic cost of climate change while effectively assigning a value of zero to the ocean," said Bernardo Bastien-Olvera, who led the study during his postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps. Ocean loss is not just an environmental issue, but a central part of the economic story of climate change."