Q So for the last decade and a half, mainstream economists have been warning about the economic costs of not doing anything about climate change. So why, when the economic costs of climate change have been so clearly calculated, is the CBO not doing anything?
A I mean, that's the million-dollar question. Um, you know, unfortunately, we've seen continued inaction from the CBO. I will say, to their credit, they did put out a report talking about climate change and saying that, you know, climate change is a problem. We know that. Um, yet we haven't figured out how to work it into our complex model. Now, of course, as somebody who understands how powerful CBO is and how they constantly are making or breaking legislation, I don't find that anywhere near sufficient. I mean, just to put it into perspective, a report that came out under the Trump administration, the National Climate Assessment Four, estimated that unabated climate change would lead to damages in the realm of 10% of GDP every year into perpetuity. So just to put that into perspective, that is, you know, more than twice the size of the great financial crisis back in 2008, but as a permanent shock to the economy, um, it would be, you know, pretty catastrophic. And to be frank, I think that that is actually a, a underestimate of what things would look like in a three plus degree warmed world, um, precisely because a habitable planet underpins absolutely everything in our lives. So it's, it's hard to capture those in a simple GDP number.
AI assessment note: “yet we haven't figured out how to work it into our complex model.”