In a 2006 report, climatologist and NASA scientist James Hansen projected that humanity has less than 10 years remaining to drastically reduce emissions or a global tipping point will be breached, which will cause catastrophic weather pattern changes.
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An October 2006 study written by Sir Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist at the World Bank, determined that if global temperatures climb by just another 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit this century, 40 percent of the world’s species could face extinction and 4 billion people could face water shortages. Greenland’s ice mass could melt irreversibly, causing massive U.S. coastal flooding, and the economic costs could be more than 20 percent of the entire world’s gross domestic product.

Clearly, the time for the United States to develop sound climate change policy and drastically reduce its greenhouse gas contribution to this growing global problem is now. Without our lead in mitigating this crisis, the world’s economy and environment may face catastrophic collapse later this century.

The standard argument put forward by many U.S. politicians and fossil fuel industry lobbyists to avoid climate change laws has been that such greenhouse gas restrictions would cripple our economy. This argument is false on at least two major counts. First, according to the Stern report, if the world governments take action now to reduce emissions, it will cost about 1 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. Assuming business as usual and no action is taken, it will cost 20 percent of the world’s GDP later this century to deal with the impacts. This is greater than the economic impacts of the 20th century’s world wars and Depression.