International climate change agreements typically specify global warming thresholds as policy targets, but the relative economic benefits of achieving these temperature targets remain poorly understood. Uncertainties include the spatial pattern of temperature change, how global and regional economic output will respond to these changes in temperature, and the willingness of societies to trade present for future consumption. Here we combine historical evidence with national-level climate and socioeconomic projections to quantify the economic damages associated with the United Nations (UN) targets of 1.5 °C and 2 °C global warming, and those associated with current UN national-level mitigation commitments (which together approach 3 °C warming). We find that by the end of this century, there is a more than 75% chance that limiting warming to 1.5 °C would reduce economic damages relative to 2 °C, and a more than 60% chance that the accumulated global benefits will exceed US$20 trillion under a 3% discount rate (2010 US dollars). We also estimate that 71% of countries—representing 90% of the global population—have a more than 75% chance of experiencing reduced economic damages at 1.5 °C, with poorer countries benefiting most. Our results could understate the benefits of limiting warming to 1.5 °C if unprecedented extreme outcomes, such as large-scale sea level rise, occur for warming of 2 °C but not for warming of 1.5 °C. Inclusion of other unquantified sources of uncertainty, such as uncertainty in secular growth rates beyond that contained in existing socioeconomic scenarios, could also result in less precise impact estimates. We find considerably greater reductions in global economic output beyond 2 °C. Relative to a world that did not warm beyond 2000–2010 levels, we project 15%–25% reductions in per capita output by 2100 for the 2.5–3 °C of global warming implied by current national commitments, and reductions of more than 30% for 4 °C warming. Our results therefore suggest that achieving the 1.5 °C target is likely to reduce aggregate damages and lessen global inequality, and that failing to meet the 2 °C target is likely to increase economic damages substantially.
Stanford scientists found that the global economy is likely to benefit from ambitious global warming limits agreed to in the United Nations Paris Agreement.
Failing to meet climate mitigation goals laid out in the U.N. Paris Agreement could cost the global economy tens of trillions of dollars over the next century, according to new Stanford research. The study, published in Nature, is one of the first to quantify the economic benefits of limiting global warming to levels set in the accord.
The agreement commits 195 countries to the goal of holding this century’s average temperature to 2 degrees Celsius above levels in the pre-industrial era. It also includes an aspirational goal of pursuing an even more stringent target of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. To date, the economic benefits of achieving these temperature targets have not been well understood.
“Over the past century we have already experienced a 1-degree increase in global temperature, so achieving the ambitious targets laid out in the Paris Agreement will not be easy or cheap. We need a clear understanding of how much economic benefit we’re going to get from meeting these different targets,” said Marshall Burke, assistant professor of Earth system science in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciencesand lead author of the study.
To develop this understanding, a team of Stanford researchers studied how economic performance over the past half-century correlated with changes in temperature around the world. Then, using climate model projections of how temperatures could change in the future, they calculated how overall economic output is likely to change as temperatures warm to different levels.
The researchers found a large majority of countries – containing close to 90 percent of the world’s population – benefit economically from limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees instead of 2 degrees. This includes the United States, China and Japan – the three largest economies in the world. It is also true in some of the world’s poorest regions, where even small reductions in future warming generate a notable increase in per capita gross domestic product.
“The countries likely to benefit the most are already relatively hot today,” said Burke. “The historical record tells us that additional warming will be very harmful to these countries’ economies, and so even small reductions in future warming could have large benefits for most countries.”
The projected costs from higher temperatures come from factors such as increases in spending to deal with extreme events, lower agricultural productivity and worse health, the scientists said.
Previous research has shown that the actual climate commitments each country has made as part of the Paris Agreement add up to close to 3 degrees of global warming, instead of the 1.5–2 degrees warming goals.
Given this discrepancy, the researchers also calculated the economic consequences of countries meeting their individual Paris commitments, but failing to meet the overall global warming goals of 1.5–2 degrees. They found that failing to achieve the 1.5–2 degrees goals is likely to substantially reduce global economic growth.
Percentage gain in GDP per capita in 2100 from achieving 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming instead of 2 degrees.
Percentage gain in GDP per capita in 2100 from achieving 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming instead of 2 degrees. (Image credit: Marshall Burke)
“It is clear from our analysis that achieving the more ambitious Paris goals is highly likely to benefit most countries – and the global economy overall – by avoiding more severe economic damages,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, professor of Earth system science and paper co-author.
The authors note the study may underestimate the total costs of higher levels of global warming. That’s especially true if catastrophic changes such as rapid melting of the ice on Greenland or Antarctica come to pass, or if extreme weather events such as heatwaves and floods intensify well beyond the range seen in historical observations. A recent studyby Diffenbaugh and his colleagues showed that even with reduced levels of global warming, unprecedented extreme events are likely to become more prevalent.
The new research helps shed light on the overall economic value of the Paris Agreement, as well as on the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the accord because of concerns that it is too costly to the U.S. economy. The researchers calculated that the overall global benefits of keeping future temperature increases to 1.5 degrees are likely in the tens of trillions of dollars, with substantial likely benefits in the U.S. as well. They note that these benefits are more than 30 times greater than the most recent estimates of what it will cost to achieve the more ambitious 1.5 degrees goal.
“For most countries in the world, including the U.S., we find strong evidence that the benefits of achieving the ambitious Paris targets are likely to vastly outweigh the costs,” said Burke.
Burke is also a fellow at the Center on Food Security and the Environment, the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environmentand the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Diffenbaugh is also the Kara J Foundation Professor, the Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and an affiliate of the Precourt Institute for Energy. Additional co-authors include W. Matt Davis, a former researcher at the Center on Food Security and the Environment. The research was supported by the Erol Foundation.
Media Contacts
Marshall Burke, School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences: mburke@stanford.edu, (650) 721-2203 Noah Diffenbaugh, School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences: diffenbaugh@stanford.edu, (650) 223-9425 Michelle Horton, Center on Food Security and the Environment: mjhorton@stanford.edu, (650) 498-4129
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The three largest economies in the world and almost 90 percent of the global population benefit economically from limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees instead of 2 degrees. | iStockphoto/leolintang
A common assumption is that North Korea is a "Hermit Kingdom" that froze in time some decades ago. There are certainly many things about North Korea that have persisted, including the all-encompassing personality cult, the brutal repression, and the pervasive fear. In the last six years, however, since Kim Jong Un came to power and predictions of imminent collapse immediately followed, North Korea has changed in significant ways.
In the course of her reporting on North Korea, Anna Fifield , the 2018 Shorenstein Journalism Award recipient, has watched a leader who is much bolder and more audacious than his father ever was. Sometimes that boldness comes out in executions of family members and launching of missiles. But recently, it has manifested itself as summit diplomacy with enemy leaders. Kim Jong Un is now trying to re-position himself as a responsible, if nuclear-armed, global leader. He has adeptly accelerated the nuclear program and allowed a class of nouveaux riches to flourish.
An often-overlooked fact about North Korea, reports Fifield, is that life there has been getting slightly better for many people, in relative terms. Over the last several years, she has been struck by the number of North Korean defectors she met who have escaped not because they were starving, but because they were disillusioned.
Why have these and other changes occurred in North Korea? And how does the current diplomatic engagement with the North present an opportunity for us to help the country’s transformation?
On this panel discussion, celebrating the 2018 Shorenstein Journalism Award, the award winner, Anna Fifield, the Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post , will consider these and other questions, drawing on her long career in journalism covering Asia and focusing on North Korea.
Anna Fifield is the Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post , responsible for coverage of greater China. She joined The Washington Post in July 2014 as Tokyo Bureau Chief, writing about Japan and the two Koreas for four years, with a concentration on North Korea. She has been on 12 reporting trips to North Korea and regularly talks about North Korea on international television and radio, and at conferences.
Before joining The Washington Post , Fifield was a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, where she studied how change happens in closed societies. Previously, she was a correspondent for the Financial Times for 13 years, based in London, Sydney, Seoul, Tehran, Beirut, and finally in Washington D.C., where she was White House correspondent and covered the 2012 President election campaign.
Fifield comes from New Zealand and has a B.A. in English literature from Victoria University and a post-graduate diploma in journalism from Canterbury University.
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Andray Abrahamian is the 2018-19 Koret Fellow in the Korea Program at Stanford’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). Abrahamian has been Executive Director and Director of Research for Choson Exchange, a nonprofit that has trained over 2000 North Koreans in entrepreneurship and economic policy since 2010. His work for Choson Exchange and other projects has taken him to North Korea 30 times. He has also lived in Myanmar, where he conducted field research for his recent book, North Korea and Myanmar: Divergent Paths (McFarland, 2018), which asks why Myanmar came to end its isolation, while North Korea has not done so yet.
Abrahamian is an honorary fellow at Macquarie University, Sydney, and an adjunct fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute. He is a frequent contributor to 38North.org, a website focused on North Korea analysis, and is a member of the US National Committee on North Korea. He holds a PhD from the University of Ulsan and an MA from the University of Sussex in International Relations.
Barbara Demick is New York correspondent of the Los Angeles Times , formerly head of the bureaus in Beijing and Seoul. She is the author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea and Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood . Demick has won Britain’s Samuel Johnson Award for best nonfiction, the George Polk Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Award, as well as the Osborn Elliot Prize for Journalism from the Asia Society and the Overseas Press Club, the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Award and Stanford University’s Shorenstein Journalism Award for best Asia reporting. She has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Yong Suk Lee is the SK Center Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Deputy Director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Lee’s main fields of research are in labor economics, technology and entrepreneurship, and urban economics. Some of the issues he has studied include technology and labor markets, entrepreneurship and economic growth, entrepreneurship education, and education and inequality. He is also interested in both the North and South Korean economy and has examined how economic sanctions affect economic activity in North Korea, and how management practices and education policy affect inequality in South Korea. His current research focuses on how the new wave of digital technologies will affect labor, education, entrepreneurship, and productivity. Lee’s research has been published in both Economics and Management journals. He also regularly contributes to policy reports and opinion pieces on contemporary issues surrounding both North and South Korea.
Prior to joining Stanford, Lee was an assistant professor of economics at Williams College in Massachusetts. He received his PhD in Economics from Brown University, a Master of Public Policy from Duke University, and bachelor's degree and master's degree in architecture from Seoul National University.
About the Shorenstein Journalism Award:
The Shorenstein Journalism Award,which carries a cash prize of $10,000, honors a journalist not only for a distinguished body of work, but also for the particular way in which that work has helped readers to understand the complexities of Asia. The award, established in 2002, was named after Walter H. Shorenstein, the philanthropist, activist, and businessman who endowed two institutions that are focused respectively on Asia and on the press: the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University, and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In 2010, Shorenstein APARC re-envisioned the award in recognition of the fact that Asia has served as a crucible for the role of the press in democratization in places such as South Korea, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, and Indonesia. Since then the award has also recognized Asian journalists who, in addition to their professional excellence and contribution to knowledge of Asia, have helped defend and build a free media in Asia.
This report was produced for the Abe Fellows Global Forum 2017 symposiums on climate change, held in partnership with Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center (Abe Global | Stanford, October 20, 2017) and the Asia Society Texas Center (Abe Global | Houston, October 18, 2017), respectively.
Energy-intensive production has been both a leading contributor to climate change as well as one of the keys to modern economic growth over the last several centuries. In the post-WWII era, the “economic miracles” of Asian growth—starting with Japan, and followed by South Korea, Taiwan, China, and now increasingly India—have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. At the same time, these “economic miracles” have created huge pollution problems which have adversely affected the health of millions of people while speeding up the effects of climate change.
Some early developers from this group—including Japan—have made efforts to clean up their air and water, created more energy efficient economies, lowered their carbon footprints and contributed to initiatives to slow global warming. The Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster forced Japan to take even more aggressive action to reduce energy consumption and lessen its impact on the global environment. In contrast, the United States, as a sizeable nation-state both in its geographic area and economy, is one of the world’s largest polluters and recently made recent headlines when it withdrew from the Paris Agreement negotiated at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21).
Putting into place effective measures to curtail climate change while creating sustainable societies requires international cooperation. The series of extreme weather events in the US in 2017 are only some the most recent disasters to remind us of climate change’s threat to our economy, our society, and our individual daily lives.
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On May 14 and 15, 2018, many of the CISAC fellows were lucky enough to visit the United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska. USSTRATCOM oversees strategic deterrence on multiple fronts, including nuclear weapons, missile defense, and, until recently, cyber-attacks. This trip was only the latest iteration of a longstanding relationship between CISAC and USSTRATCOM to foster research and debate on deterrence, assurance, and nuclear security
Our visit involved several highlights. General John Hyten, Commander of USSTRATCOM, took time out of his schedule to speak with us during breakfast on the first day. We were briefed on the global mission and history of USSTRATCOM, strategic planning, laws of armed conflict, nuclear modernization, and cybersecurity. The fellows were also able to visit the Global Operations Center and Battle Deck, where many of USSTRATCOM’s most important day-to-day functions take place. Several CISAC fellows (including me) had the opportunity to brief both military and civilian members of USSTRATCOM on a range of issues spanning from nuclear terrorism to the proliferation of offensive cyber capabilities to the domestic politics of American citizens’ growing perception (now at a historic high) of national decline.
I walked away from the experience with three strong impressions.
First, USSTRATCOM is populated with thoughtful individuals who have deeply sober attitudes about the devastating impact of using nuclear weapons. Each person we met was committed to ensuring the nation’s security but emphasized how seriously they took the notion of nuclear conflict and how they all sought never to prevent conflicts from reaching that point.
Second, I was struck by how everyone at USSTRATCOM was open to discussing new or provocative ideas. During our breakfast, General Hyten called upon one of the fellows working on Russian nuclear doctrine. It was clear that he was aware of the fellow’s work and disputed its conclusion. The two conversed about their differing views for several minutes before agreeing to disagree. Another one of our fellow’s briefings focused on the origins of the recent United Nations treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. Her talk drew some skepticism, but also many questions and generated a very civil discussion. USSTRATCOM invited us to speak, took our arguments seriously, and sought to understand any viewpoint that they felt could be valuable.
Third, and lastly, there is enormous need and potential to continue building connections between the military (or government more broadly) and the academic community. Visiting USSTRATCOM highlighted how scholars who study security may not fully grasp the realities behind how to effect and maintain it. This might lead to academic work that tends to be unrealistic or too reductive. Conversely, both military and civilian members of USSTRATCOM may be so engrossed in addressing specific problems that they sometimes miss the forest for the trees or overlook fallacies in their strategic logic. This could result in policies that have unintended and, given USSTRATCOM’s purview, severe consequences. Collaboration between these two worlds is perhaps the best tool we have for solving both problems simultaneously. The potential ramifications are too important not to do so.
Eric Min is a Zukerman Postdoctoral Fellow in Social Sciences at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, where he also obtained his Ph.D. in Political Science. His research focuses on the application of text analysis, machine learning, and statistical methods to analyze the dynamics of conflict and diplomacy. Starting in the fall of 2018, he will be an Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He can also be found on Twitter.
"Scholars and pundits in the West have become increasingly alarmed that China’s planned Belt and Road Initiative (B&R) could further shift the global strategic landscape in Beijing’s favor, with infrastructure lending as its primary lever for global influence. The planned network of an infrastructure project—financed by China’s bilateral lenders, the China Development Bank (CDB) and the Export-Import Bank of China (CEXIM), along with the newly formed and multilateral Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank—is historically unprecedented in scope. But the B&R is only the natural progression of a global sea change in developing economy infrastructure finance that has already been underway for more than two decades." Read the whole article by Bushra Bataineh, Michael Bennon, and Francis Fukuyamahere.
"Malaysia's recent electoral earthquake has opened the way to a transition to democracy. This is a big positive development at a time when democracy globally needs a lift," writes Larry Diamond in this American Interest article.
Integrated assessment models generate climate change mitigation scenarios consistent with global temperature targets. To limit warming to 2 °C, cost-effective mitigation pathways rely on extensive deployments of CO2 removal (CDR) technologies, including multi-gigatonne yearly CDR from the atmosphere through bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and afforestation/reforestation. While these assumed CDR deployments keep ambitious temperature targets in reach, the associated rates of land-use transformation have not been evaluated. Here, we view implied integrated-assessment-model land-use conversion rates within a historical context. In scenarios with a likely chance of limiting warming to 2 °C in 2100, the rate of energy cropland expansion supporting BECCS proceeds at a median rate of 8.8 Mha yr−1 and 8.4% yr−1. This rate exceeds—by more than threefold—the observed expansion of soybean, the most rapidly expanding commodity crop. In some cases, mitigation scenarios include abrupt reversal of deforestation, paired with massive afforestation/reforestation. Historical land-use transformation rates do not represent an upper bound for future transformation rates. However, their stark contrast with modelled BECCS deployment rates implies challenges to explore in harnessing—or presuming the ready availability of—large-scale biomass-based CDR in the decades ahead. Reducing BECCS deployment to remain within these historical expansion rates would mean either the 2 °C target is missed or additional mitigation would need to occur elsewhere.
Young Russian and U.S.-based scholars from a variety of science and social science disciplines met at Stanford to tackle emerging issues in nuclear security.
How can a new generation of scholars from around the world work together to prevent the use of nuclear weapons, from nuclear terrorism to developments in North Korea? A summit hosted at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation sought answers to that question—and more.
The third meeting of the Stanford-National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute) Young Professionals Nuclear Forum, held May 2-4 at CISAC, brought together young Russian and U.S.-based scholars from a variety of science and social science disciplines to explore how to use thoughtful, cooperative approaches to solve these pressing international nuclear security issues.
Dr. Siegfried Hecker, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, emeritus, and an internationally recognized expert in nuclear risk reduction, organized the summit. Opening the forum, Dr. Hecker stressed that while U.S.-Russian relations continue to be complicated and cooperation in the nuclear sphere has virtually come to a stop, “the younger generation of nuclear professionals should be prepared to collaborate again once the relations between the two governments turn for the better.”
The group of Stanford and Russian scholars took part in two day-long exercises. Day one included an exercise in risk analysis of the threat of radiological terrorism from the perspective of the attacker, tasking the participants with comparing the risks of carrying out an attack using a radiological dispersal device versus carrying out an attack on a spent nuclear fuel cask. On the second day, scholars engaged in a detailed simulation of U.S. and North Korean approaches to the denuclearization of North Korea to be discussed at the proposed June summit between the U.S. and North Korea. CISAC affiliates Larry Brandt, Chaim Braun, and former national lab experts Len Connell (SNL) and James Toevs (LANL) joined Dr. Hecker to advise the teams.
Working in mixed groups of Russian and Stanford scholars, one group represented the U.S. perspective; the other the North Korean. They explored the risks of maintaining or eliminating different nuclear facilities and activities in North Korea. In the exercise, it quickly became clear that the North Korean team was aiming to keep a hedge for the future and not give away all nuclear options. Meanwhile, the U.S. team sought to eliminate much of the immediate risk posed by North Korea’s nuclear program, claiming some peaceful nuclear facilities and activities might eventually be possible but they cannot allow North Korea the ability to reconstitute its weapons quickly.
So—who won the exercise?
For Dr. Hecker: “nobody won.” That wasn’t the point. But, he said, “what was really interesting was that they came up with really reasonable compromises—on both the North Korean and American sides.”
The Center for International Security and Cooperation tackles the most critical security issues in the world today. Founded in 1983, CISAC has built on its research strengths to better understand an increasingly complex international environment. It is part of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Though scholarly research, fellowships, and teaching, CISAC is educating the next generation of leaders in international security and creating policy impact on a wide variety of issues to help build a safer world.
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Stanford and Russian young nuclear experts gathered for a forum at CISAC in May 2018. | Rod Searcey
Interested in learning more about the Ford Dorsey Master's Program in International Policy at Stanford University? Then please join us for an informational webinar on May 23, 2018 at 9:30am PST. We will be going over program specifics and answering any questions.
Percentage gain in GDP per capita in 2100 from achieving 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming instead of 2 degrees.
