President Trump has made no secret of his skepticism that man-made pollutants are altering Earth’s climate.
Not only has he frequently called the concept a hoax, the chief executive argues that moving from fossil fuels to wind and solar power inhibits U.S. economic growth, a stance he used to justify pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement supported by his predecessor, President Barack Obama.
“I’m not willing to sacrifice the tremendous power of what we’ve built up over a long period of time, and what I’ve enhanced and revived,” Trump said, referring to the gap between U.S. policy and that of other members of the G-20 after a meeting last weekend in Osaka, Japan. “I’m not looking to put our companies out of business.”
If Trump is underestimating the risks detailed in the vast majority of international scientific research, however, the consequences may undermine the hard line on immigration that has been a hallmark of his presidency and a rallying cry for his supporters.
A new report from Moody’s Analytics, the economic research arm of the Wall Street firm known for evaluating corporate debt, warns that developed economies in the Northern Hemisphere, such as the U.S., are likely to see a dramatic increase in immigration from less-developed nations to the south if some of the most severe predictions of climate change prove correct.
The economic impact on those nations is likely to be harsher, the report noted, since their temperatures are already warmer and the higher proportion of outdoor laborers will be more susceptible to heat-related illness and death.
Slower growth “in the most affected countries could prompt residents of those countries to relocate,” the report says, and if enough people do, “it could put strain on certain countries that are receiving the immigrants.” In the U.S., it points out, immigration is already a hotly debated policy issue.
Trump said during his 2016 campaign that illegal immigration into the country, particularly across the Mexican border, is straining U.S. resources. In office, he has also complained about arrivals from less-developed nations in Africa and fought for policies he says will curb the influx.
In late December, the president rejected a funding proposal from Congress that didn’t include the money he wanted for a wall on the Mexican border, prompting the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
In May, he threatened to impose tariffs of up to 25% on all imports from Mexico unless the country’s government agreed to help curb illegal crossings.
“They’re coming up because they want a piece of what’s happening in this country,” Trump said Monday, when he signed a bill providing $4.6 billion for additional security at the southern border as well as medical care and shelters for people detained there. “They want the economy. They want the jobs. They’re not coming up, for the most part, for other reasons. They’re coming up because they want the jobs.”
U.S. jobs are likely to become even more attractive if average global temperatures rise 4 degrees, the scenario in one of four models developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and studied by Moody’s Analytics.
That model assumes no additional climate-friendly policies are implemented through 2100 and that the global population doubles from current levels to nearly 15 billion people.
While the cost of damage from climate change, such as stronger and more frequent storms and a spike in heat-related deaths, will climb to about 3.5% of the U.S. economy, Moody’s predicts, the country will still have economic growth — one of only a few nations including Germany, France, and the U.K. to do so.
The expansion in those nations, researchers say, is largely because of oil prices driven downward by falling demand for winter heat as temperatures rise in traditionally colder regions.
The physical costs of change, particularly in the more severe models that Moody’s reviewed, compounds slowly over time, researchers explained.
While they would be higher than the $69 trillion expense estimated by the global climate change panel if temperatures rise only 2 degrees through 2100, no estimates were offered.
“The more draconian effects of climate change are not felt until 2030 and beyond,” the researchers said. “And they do not become especially pronounced until the second part of the century. Until around 2030, the tangible effects of climate change will mostly be felt by the increased incidence and severity of natural disasters.”
In the meantime, efforts to counter climate change carry their own economic risks, according to a review by the European Central Bank in May, potentially hurting the energy, transportation, and manufacturing industries.
“Financial markets can be adversely affected by the uncertainties related to the timing and speed of the process of adjustment towards a low-carbon economy,” the report said.
Indeed, that’s a paradox of efforts to combat climate change, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said last year.
In a sense, “success is failure,” he said. “A wholesale reassessment of prospects, as climate-related risks are reevaluated, could destabilize markets, spark a pro-cyclical crystallization of losses and lead to a persistent tightening of financial conditions.”
Doing nothing, a far easier response at present, would be the wrong response, he said at a climate risk conference in Amsterdam in April 2018.
“Climate change is a tragedy of the horizon, which imposes a cost on future generations that the current one has no direct incentive to fix,” Carney said. But “once climate change poses a clear and present danger to. financial stability,” he added, “it may already be too late” to prevent more severe harm that could be avoided now.
