Climate Change May Cost California Billions
Date: 03-Apr-09
Country: US
Author: Peter Henderson
Climate Change May Cost California Billions Photo: Sam
Mircovich
Storm clouds gather over West Los Angeles in this photo taken February 13,
2009.
Photo: Sam Mircovich
SAN FRANCISCO - 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.
The summary of 37 climate change studies is the latest in a series that
America's most populous state publishes every two to three years, adding
detail as it goes. "As you fill in the detail, the whole gets worse,"
Hanemann said by telephone.
California leads the United States in setting climate change goals, aiming
to cut carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, although proposed federal
legislation could set similar targets for the nation.
Major concerns include a possible $100 billion loss from flooding
concentrated around San Francisco Bay if sea levels were to rise and a
hundred-year flood hit.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wants Californians to approve billions
of dollars in bonds to build fresh water projects, focused on water
scarcity.
"Today's new research reveals that California's severe drought conditions
are only a preview of what is likely to come because of our changing
climate," he said in a statement.
Heat may increase the output of some crops, but water will be a limiting
factor. The study concluded the impact of climate change on the water sector
itself could be modest -- but Hanemann said studies thus far assumed a
perfect market where cities could buy extra water from farms, a situation
that he said was not possible.
One of the major changes in the new report, based on an hourly look at
California energy use, is that electricity demand may rise by 55 percent by
the end of the century.
(Reporting by Peter Henderson, Editing by Peter Cooney)
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