The climate crisis is costing Australia’s economy $1.156 billion

Sydney (Australia), Sep 26 (EFE).- The climate crisis could cost Australia about 1.8 billion Australian dollars (1.156 million US dollars at today’s exchange rate) in crop losses over 30 years, the Minister of the Treasury warned this Tuesday. Country by the Sea, Jim Chalmers.

“Unless further action is taken, Australian crop yields could fall by 4% by 2063, costing GDP about $1.8 billion in today’s dollars,” Chalmers said in a speech at a forum. Drought National took place in the northeastern city. Rockhampton.

The data is based on the Treasury Department’s projections of the impact of a nearly two-degree increase in global temperatures on the severity and frequency of wildfires, droughts and coral bleaching. Other disasters. , in Australia.

Climate events such as the Black Summer bushfires between 2019 and 2020 and severe flooding along Australia’s east coast in October 2022 together cost A$3 billion.

“The pressure from a changing climate and frequent natural disasters is constant, layered and cumulative,” Chalmers stressed, according to a transcript of his speech posted on his official website.

The projections come a month after an official interim report warned that unless Australia and other countries take action to mitigate climate change, the country could see a 0.2 to 0.8% drop in productivity by 2063.

At two degrees of global warming, this drop in productivity translates into a loss of up to A$423 billion to the maritime nation’s economy.

The current Labor government, which came to power in May 2022, ended twelve years of conservative policies, committed to reducing pollutant emissions by 43% by 2030 (an improvement on the previous target of 26-28%), and to reach zero emissions by 2050.

Additionally, the Australian government, one of the planet’s biggest polluters when fossil fuel exports are taken into account, is seeking to achieve neutral emissions by 2050 and transition to renewable energy power.

Despite the progress, hundreds of Australian scientists and engineers last week called on the government to press ahead with its commitment to achieve neutral emissions by 2035, fifteen years earlier than agreed, to meet the “enormous challenge” of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. . EFE

WAT/GRC/RRD