Climate change may cost California billions

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Climate change may cost California tens of billions of dollars annually in coming years as sea levels rise and hot days cause people to turn up the air conditioning, a draft report from the state said on Wednesday.

Thirsty cities may be able to buy water from farmers and high-altitude forests are expected to benefit for most of the century as trees enjoy the warmer weather, but a long-term effort to understand the details of climate change suggests costs will be higher than expected.

Much depends on whether global efforts to slow the Earth’s heating are successful.

“Climate change will impose substantial costs to Californians in the order of tens of billions of dollars annually,” the Climate Action Team draft report said, adding that “costs will be substantially lower if global emissions of greenhouse gases are curtailed.”

“On the whole, I am actually less optimistic,” said Michael Hanemann, an economist co-director of the California Climate Change Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author of the report.

Reuters