THERE HAS NEVER been an official estimate of the cost of the Paris Agreement,
....nor has there been one that gives a meaningful evaluation of its impact.
......Looking at the numbers, it is obvious why.
“In 2007, New Zealand’s then Prime Minister, Helen Clark, declared her vision was that the small nation would become carbon neutral by 2020. She was celebrated by the United Nations as a “Champion of the Earth.”
....,,If only cutting carbon was as simple as winning attention.
......New Zealand not only failed to achieve the vision, but also failed even to reduce any emissions. The latest 2019 official statistics show that the country’s total emissions will be higher in 2020 than they were when Ms. Clark’s ambition was declared.
....Yet, in 2018, current Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern reupped the pledge, promising to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Legislation aimed at achieving that goal was passed in 2019.
.....to its credit, Ardern’s government actually asked its leading economic authority to estimate the cost of her promise. Thus, we have what is likely the only official, academically credible estimate of what it will cost to achieve carbon neutrality. This research, undertaken by the leading independent economic think tank in New Zealand, shows that just getting halfway to the target—cutting 50 percent of New Zealand’s emissions by 2050—would cost at least $19 billion annually by 2050. For a small country with a population similar to that of the Republic of Ireland or the state of South Carolina, that’s a big deal, about what the government spends now on its entire education and health care system.
And it is only the cheapest cost of getting halfway to Ardern’s target. Getting all the way will likely amount to more than $61 billion annually, or 16 percent of GDP by 2050. That is more than New Zealand today spends on social security, welfare, health, education, police, courts, defense, environment, and every other part of government combined.
To achieve their promise, New Zealanders will need to accept an escalating carbon tax that ends up so phenomenally high that it would be equivalent to a gasoline tax of $8.33 per gallon. And even the 16 percent GDP cost relies on a fairy-tale assumption that every single policy will be enacted as efficiently as possible. Bearing in mind the evidence that costs double in the real world, it could be 32 percent or more.
The cost doesn’t just start in 2050, which would make it easy to ignore. Getting there requires policies starting in 2020, meaning the costs will start coming in now, ramp up to 16–32 percent in 2050, and stay there for the rest of the century.
Across the century, the cost adds up to more than $5 trillion and could reach beyond $11 trillion. If we imagine each New Zealander paying an equal share of this amount every year across the century, the cost would be the equivalent of at least $12,800 for every single New Zealander, every year. If the policies are done badly, as they have been done so far across the globe, the cost per person could even go beyond $25,000 per year. !
.........”
Ref:-... False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic, Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet
