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The following question is of profound importance, yet rarely discussed: If we solved the climate problem at the lowest cost to society, what would we do physically, and how much would it cost?
An estimate is shown below:
All numbers are in units of dollars cost, per American, per year. Europeans would see similar numbers. These costs would show up as an increase in the cost of goods and services, in addition to money spent by government.
Costs are divided into three categories: planet cooling, decarbonization green premium and additional R&D.
By MRPeasy 05.01.2024
By Global Unichip Corp. 04.18.2024
This table assumes decarbonization occurs over 30 years, at a constant rate. It also assumes decarbonization green premium costs start at $20 per ton of carbon dioxide reduced and increase over 30 years to $80 per ton.
The left part of the table looks at years one, two and three, while the right part of the table looks at years 10, 20 and 30. One might think of these as the “early years” and the “later years.” The early years are relatively easy, since green premium costs are proportional to the amount of carbon dioxide reduced, and initially this is small.
For more details on the table, watch the following video:
Tolerance of costs
Evidence of climate harm increases with time. Therefore, the public’s tolerance-of-costs is also likely to increase. In other words, to survive climate change, we need costs to stay below tolerance-of-costs as we go through time.
For example, we need the public to accept approximately $50 per American, per year, during the early years, when people are moderately nervous about climate. And accept hundreds of dollars per American, per year, during the later years, when people are more nervous.
More R&D
Resolving climate change involves building carbon-free infrastructure, such as solar farms and wind farms. This is likely to cost the world on the order of $100 trillon over several decades. In theory, we can reduce this cost by spending additional billions of dollars on R&D. If additional R&D costs $20 billion a year, and the U.S. paid half, this would cost each American $30 per year (50% x $20 billion/330 million).
Planet cooling
We primarily have two climate problems. One is global warming from carbon dioxide, and the other is global warming from tipping points.
We can solve the carbon dioxide problem by replacing coal, oil, and gas with solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear. However, this will not solve the tipping point problem. We seem to be tipping too fast. Therefore, we must reflect a tiny percentage of sunlight back into outer space.
There are several ways to do this, one of which is to inject sulfur the atmosphere, above where airplanes typically fly. Sulfur is contained within coal and oil, and is therefore commonly emitted upon combustion.
In theory, we can filter it out before combustion, move the harvested sulfur to an airplane, and emit it at a high altitude, rather than at ground level. High-altitude sulfur stays aloft for a year or two, while ground-level sulfur typically stays aloft for several days. Therefore, changing the emissions site reduces the temperature of the planet, while not increasing total sulfur emissions. The latter point is important, since sulfur is harmful to people, plants and oceans.
To justify the expense, our society would need to compare the cost of cooling the planet, with the cost of not cooling the planet. One study suggests large scale planet cooling would cost $18 billion a year. For comparison, the total value of New York City property is $1.4 billion. And this is just one coastal city that would be lost to sea level rise.
If the U.S. paid half, planet cooling would cost each American $27 per year (50% x $18 billion/330 million).
