As you gulp your third iced coffee this morning, sweating bullets under the sweltering Singapore sun, you stumble upon yet another article about climate change.
Even PM Lee spoke about it in this year’s National Day Rally. If you’ve not watched it, you can watch a summarised version of it that we’ve done here:
Even though the country’s increasingly warm weather is hard to ignore, you believe that Singapore’s immense wealth will safeguard its economy from the adverse effects of climate change.
Surely, the poorer countries will suffer more, right?
Well, not quite.
Wealth and weather don’t matter
A new report finds that climate change does not discriminate.
Rich or poor, hot or cold, climate change will damage the economies of every country by the year 2100 unless they implement major policy changes.
Researchers who examined data from 174 countries over 50 years discovered that persistent temperature changes adversely affected a country’s economic growth, regardless of how warm the country is.
So, if you live in Canada or Iceland, laughing at climate change behind a wall of snow, you should be worried too.
The United States, for instance, could see a 10% loss in the gross domestic product (GDP) if they don’t adopt significant policy changes.
Canada could also expect a 13% loss in income, Switzerland could see a 12% cut, and India could see a 10% GDP per capita drop.
In fact, if we carry on as usual without any making any significant changes, the average global temperatures will increase by 4 degrees Celsius by 2100, which could bring more than a 7% loss in world GDP per capita, said the study published on Monday by the US National Bureau of Economic Research.
One political pact could prevent this environmental and economic catastrophe, though.
2015 Paris Agreement
The 2015 Paris Agreement is a global pact to combat climate change, agreed to by nearly 200 countries.
Its main objective is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius, aiming for 1.5 degrees Celsius.
To reach this ambitious goal, however, a provision of financial resources, a new technology framework, and an enhanced capacity-building need to be put in place, according to a UN report.
Not every country is as committed to this cause, however.
In 2017, US President Donal Trump famously vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement.
This would be a huge setback in the fight against climate change and could cost the United States more than 10% of its GDP per capita.
However, if the United States were to follow through on the international agreement (which can only be done after 4 November 2020), it could cut the loss to under 2%.
Negative effects inevitable
Unfortunately, even with the implementation of major policy changes in some countries, it might be too late to ward off all the negative effects on their economies.
Dr Kamiar Mohaddes, a co-author and a professor of economics at Cambridge University, said: “We need to have much stronger mitigation”. Adhering to the Paris Agreement would at least reduce the negative effects of climate change, he added.
Fortunately, Singapore is one of the 200 countries that agreed to the global pact to fight climate change. They also reaffirmed their commitment to the cause after the United States pulled out.
It’s a good thing we don’t have a television personality as the leader of our country.
But oh, 2020…hmm.
Here’s a simplified summary of the South Korea martial law that even a 5-year-old would understand:
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