Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Social Security has to be fixed. But you still need your own savings.

An I bond is now at 4.28 percent. Are they still a good deal?

Use these 6 points to say no to a college you and your kid can’t afford

RFK Jr’s ‘history lesson’ on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine flunks the fact test

The Trump-Biden battle over the 2017 tax cut

That time football legend, rig-driving eligible bachelor Biden was arrested

How Trump’s allies amplify his Truth Social messages to the wider world

In Arizona, election workers trained with deepfakes to prepare for 2024

Biden back in the battleground state of Wisconsin

Arrested U.S. soldier was in Russia to pursue girlfriend

Middle East conflict live updates: WHO says health services in south Gaza will run out of fuel in three days

U.S. signals optimism for Gaza cease-fire as Israel moves into Rafah 

Dog hit by car loses leg, is adopted by firefighter who helped her

Postal worker finds WWII-era letters, drives 5 hours to deliver them

Strangers help Sesame Street puppeteer after heirloom necklace was stolen

A college professor wants to use Section 230 against Big Tech

Commerce Department revokes more export licenses to China’s Huawei

Defense think tank MITRE to build AI supercomputer with Nvidia 

Nats go over .500 the hard way by beating the O’s and Corbin Burnes

These Nationals are pretty fun. They’d be more fun with James Wood.

Baseball can crush rookies. Why hasn’t it crushed Trey Lipscomb?

The next global crisis could come from the sun. We should prepare now.

The FTC’s noncompete clause rule goes too far

The crisis Biden and Trump don’t want to deal with

Carolyn Hax: Family pushes siblings to ‘make amends’ after their mother’s death

Miss Manners: I’m offended by a golfer’s skirt choice

Ask Amy: I want to be closer with my brother. He never reaches out to me.

In court, Stormy Daniels pulled a Trump on Trump 

Serve seared scallops on a creamy herb sauce for a quick, elegant meal

Seared Scallops With Creamy Herb Sauce

From a forgotten Indian cookbook, a deeply flavored chickpea curry

‘Look at the U.S.A.’: A photographer’s reflection on post-9/11 conflict

In photos: The scene after tornadoes struck Michigan and Oklahoma 

Cruise worker charged with stabbing 3 with scissors on ship off Canada

France tries to shed its rude reputation ahead of the Olympics

Don’t be a jerk at the airport: A guide for headphones

US-VOTE-POLITICS-ECONOMY-BIDEN

What price tag would you put on preserving a functioning human civilization? Would $200 trillion just about cover it? Could that even be a bargain?

Bloomberg NEF, Bloomberg’s green-energy research team,  estimates in a new report this week it could cost $196 trillion in investments to zero out the world’s carbon emissions by 2050, as many countries have pledged to do, to avoid society-destroying global warming. It probably won’t shock you to learn the world’s net-zero pledges haven’t yet been followed by the hard cash, or even promises of hard cash, necessary to make them a reality.

BNEF suggests annual green investments will need to nearly triple to $6.9 trillion by 2030 if we are to have any hope of hitting net zero by 2050. This will include governments, businesses and consumers swapping most of the world’s fleet of gas-powered vehicles for electric ones, building charging stations for those vehicles and replacing fossil fuel-powered energy with wind, solar and other renewables, with new grids to connect them all. 

“With the tangible impacts of climate change becoming more real by day, the window to make a dent in global warming is closing,” BNEF analyst Nilushi Karunaratne wrote in a report. “But there is still an opportunity for meaningful change.”

The BNEF estimate actually is on the low end compared with a McKinsey reckoning that transitioning society away from fossil fuels will require average annual spending of $9.2 trillion between 2021 and 2050, or $275 trillion. Similar to BNEF, McKinsey also warned the highest spending would have to occur within the next 15 years.

As shockingly large as these numbers may seem, they are minimal compared with the likely price tag for doing nothing. Insurance giant Swiss Re has  estimated that runaway global warming could gouge $23 trillion per year from global GDP, with the US economy 7% smaller than in a cooler world and developed economies possibly 10% smaller than they should be. By such measures, spending $200 trillion over 27 years sounds relatively cheap.  

S&P Global has estimated climate change could shave 4% from annual global GDP by 2050. That could mean a mere $13 trillion per year in economic losses — still more than the $7 trillion or so we would spend to avoid them. And those losses would fall especially hard on fast-growing countries in the global South, with South Asia losing 15% of GDP, Central Asia losing 7% and sub-Saharan Africa losing 6%. 

The zero-by-2050 goal isn’t some arbitrary target but likely our best hope of keeping global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages, beyond which the damage to the planet’s habitability will rise   exponentially. At the moment, we’re on a path to approach 3C of warming, which scientists warn could render large swaths of the planet   unlivable.

The tricky part of convincing politicians and voters to commit to net-zero is that most of the worst costs of rampant global heating are still decades down the road, while most of the investment to avoid such a disaster needs to happen right away. As anybody who has ever struggled to exercise, save for retirement or put off watching just one more episode of “The Bear” knows, humans have a hard time delaying gratification, even if it will make their future selves happier and more prosperous.

But climate change is already wreaking havoc on lives and livelihoods in 2023, after just 1.2C of warming. It shouldn’t be too hard to imagine a world in which today’s climate disasters seem quaint in comparison. Doing everything we can to avoid such a future is well worth a price that will only get steeper the longer we wait. 

• Actually, Your Neighbors   Really Do Care About Climate: Mark Gongloff

• Once-Bold UK Is   Now a Laggard in Climate Fight: Lara Williams

• To   Beat the Heat, We’ll Need to Turn Our Homes Into Batteries: David Fickling

(Corrects the average annual spending needed to transition society away from fossil fuels in fifth paragraph.)

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist covering climate change. A former managing editor of Fortune.com, he ran the HuffPost’s business and technology coverage and was a reporter and editor for the Wall Street Journal.

More stories like this are available on <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion">bloomberg.com/opinion</a>

Mark Gongloff | Bloomberg

Bloomberg

name

prism://prism.query/site,/business/energy&limit=20

Energy

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/business&limit=20

Get a curated selection of 10 of our best stories in your inbox every weekend.

Business

The source for business news and analysis. Covering economic policy, business policy, financial news, economic issues, stock market data, local business, technology and more.