How Does Climate Change Affect Economic Growth?

The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference is well into the middle of its first week of meetings in Le Bourget, a commune in the northeastern suburbs of Paris. The conference is the 21st yearly session of the Conference of the Parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 11th session of the Meeting of the Parties to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

It will continue until December 11th in hopes of finding dramatic ways to reduce greenhouse gases to limit the global temperature increase to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to implement new technologies that could curb ongoing global warming. The Paris conference is one of the largest gatherings of world leaders in history with 30,000 diplomats and delegates who have come together to discuss and eventually commit to the multinational enactment of new policies toward forging what many are calling ‘the planet’s last, best hope to stave off the worst consequences of climate change.’ It has takenclose to 20 years for this global commitment to reach the enactment stage. Two previous meetings of world leaders, Kyoto in 1997 and in Copenhagen in 2009, ended with promises that were ultimately viewed as failures.

Most environmentalists agree that a dramatic change in climate control is necessary. Not all countries agree on the methods to deal with the problem and for many of the smaller countries, adopting the new technologies requires having the right institutions, regulations and workforce. Experts say that the Paris conference must include negotiations on how the richer countries will provide funds to poorer countries in order to prepare them for any new technology. Some rich countries have already pledged to spend more than $100 billion a year beginning in 2020 to adapt low-carbon technologies and build defenses against rising sea levels, droughts and other climate-related problems. To date, however, the main vehicle for parceling out this money, the UN’s Green Climate Fund, is holding only $12 billion in pledges.