International News

WASHINGTON, June 30 (APP/AFP) – If the United States
fails to take decisive measures to combat climate change, it will become a poorer country facing more dramatic inequality, according to a study published Thursday.
The poorest third of US counties could see income drops as great as
20 percent if current trends continue, according to the worst-case projection of the study, published in the journal Science.
An interdisciplinary team of climatologists and economists based its
findings on economic models and 116 projections of the impact of climate change.
The study comes just weeks after US President Donald Trump announced
that the United States would withdraw from the Paris accord aimed at combating climate change.
His move drew intense international criticism, but Trump insisted on
Thursday he was “proud” of having pulled out from the agreement, saying the
move would save US jobs and protect American sovereignty.
The new study, however, predicts large-scale economic losses and
potentially the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in
American history, according to Solomon Hsiang, professor of public policy at
the University of California at Berkeley, the study’s principal author.
Southern states and those in the lower Midwest that already tend to
be hot and relatively poor have the most to lose if economic activity migrates to the North and West, the study said.
“In the absence of major efforts to reduce emissions and strengthen
resilience, the Gulf Coast will take a massive hit,” said Robert Kopp, a
professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick in New Jersey, a co-author of the study.
“Its exposure to sea-level rise — made worse by potentially stronger
hurricanes — poses a major risk to its communities,” he said.
“Increasingly, extreme heat will drive up violent crime.”
Hsiang said climate change would seriously affect Americans’ economic
potential for decades to come.
Some regions stand to gain, however.