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The Conversation
The Conversation
Environment
Dennis Wesselbaum, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Otago

Calculating the economic cost of climate change is tricky, even futile – it’s also a distraction

Piyaset/Shutterstock

Climate change is no longer a distant threat. It’s here, it’s real and it increasingly affects us all.

But predicting climate change and its associated costs, particularly over long periods of time, is inherently uncertain. And based on the best available evidence from organisations such as the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the economic costs of climate change appear to be small – making this a relatively weak argument for environmental action.

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