Climate Change in California: Risk and Response - Softcover

Kahrl, Fredrich J.; Roland-Holst, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520271815 ISBN 13: 9780520271814

Verlag: University of California Press, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

California is synonymous with opportunity, prosperity, and natural beauty, but climate change will certainly influence the state’s future. Changes will affect the economy, natural resources, public health, agriculture, and the livelihoods of its residents. But how big is the risk? How will Californians adapt? What will it cost? This book is the first to ask and attempt to answer these and other questions so central to the long-term health of the state. While California is undeniably unique and diverse, the challenges it faces will be mirrored everywhere. This succinct and authoritative review of the latest evidence suggests feasible changes that can sustain prosperity, mitigate adverse impacts of climate change, and stimulate research and policy dialog across the globe.

The authors argue that the sooner society recognizes the reality of climate change risk, the more effectively we can begin adaptation to limit costs to present and future generations. They show that climate risk presents a new opportunity for innovation, supporting aspirations for prosperity in a lower carbon, climate altered future where we can continue economic progress without endangering the environment and ourselves.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Fredrich Kahrl recently received his PhD from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley.

David Roland-Holst is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

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"Climate Change in California is a stimulating and provocative perspective on climate change in the Golden State, reviewing the potential risks, linking the science to the outcomes everyone needs to understand, and providing a road map for action."—Todd Dawson, University of California, Berkeley

"A comprehensive and sophisticated look at the impacts of climate disruption on the California economy that is likely to be referenced often and serve as a model for regional integrated assessment."—Dallas Burtraw, Resources for the Future

"Kahrl and Roland-Holst examine why we should care about climate change in the language of dollars and cents. By exploring the effects of climate change on California's economy, the eighth largest in the world, they show how the most expensive impacts will likely center on human health and property. The take-home message is clear: the sooner we break down institutional and political barriers to dealing with climate change, the more economically we can implement necessary adaptations."—Tony Barnosky, University of California, Berkeley

Aus dem Klappentext

"/i/Climate Change in California//i/ is a stimulating and provocative perspective on climate change in the Golden State, reviewing the potential risks, linking the science to the outcomes everyone needs to understand, and providing a road map for action."--Todd Dawson, University of California, Berkeley

"/i/Climate Change in California//i/ is a comprehensive and sophisticated look at the impacts of climate disruption on the California economy that is likely to be referenced often and serve as a model for regional integrated assessment."--Dallas Burtraw, Resources for the Future

"Kahrl and Roland-Holst examine why we should care about climate change in the language of dollars and cents. By exploring the effects of climate change on California's economy, the eighth largest in the world, they show how the most expensive impacts will likely center on human health and property. The take-home message is clear: the sooner we break down institutional and political barriers to dealing with climate change, the more economically we can implement necessary adaptations."--Tony Barnosky, University of California, Berkeley

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Climate Change in California

Risk and Response

By Fredrich Kahrl, David Roland-Holst

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Copyright © 2012 The Regents of the University of California
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-520-27181-4

Contents

Preface, vii, 
Acknowledgments, ix, 
Introduction, 1, 
1. Economic Perspectives on Climate Adaptation, 13, 
2. Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing, 30, 
3. Water, 46, 
4. Energy, 63, 
5. Transportation, 79, 
6. Tourism and Recreation, 90, 
7. Real Estate and Insurance, 100, 
8. Public Health, 115, 
9. Revelation or Revolution?, 125, 
Notes, 129, 
Index, 155, 

CHAPTER 1

Economic Perspectives on Climate Adaptation

Scientific evidence has established a connection between economic behavior and climate change, primarily through the use of carbon-based energy sources in pursuit of higher material living standards. Over the last two centuries, domestication of carbon fuels for industrialization has conferred on a large share of humanity living standards that would have been beyond the imagining of their forebearers. Recently, however, we have awakened to the fact that this Promethean gift is changing the natural world in fundamental and adverse ways. This unintended negative externality has given rise to what is often called the "mitigation agenda," a local, national, and global policy dialogue about how to limit greenhouse gas emissions and other anthropogenic contributions to climate change.

Conversely, climate change has begun and will continue to present to the economy and all its participants a broad spectrum of challenges as well as opportunities. The general response to these challenges is referred to as the "adaptation agenda." Although both mitigation and adaptation are essential environmental issues and unified in the context of climate change, it is important to recognize their differences. Mitigation can, and probably should, improve environmental conditions and slow the progress of climate change. Mitigation activities, which are being discussed, negotiated, and promoted at all levels of society, represent a complex agenda of social responsibility and environmental citizenship from the global to the individual level. Because mitigation is causative (i.e., behavior leads to an effect) and this externality is global, cooperation is essential to progress.

The adaptation agenda is fundamentally different because it is responsive (i.e., effects induce behavior) and more localized. Greenhouse gas emissions are a local activity that affects the global environment, but climate change is a global process that affects localities. For this reason, individuals, communities, and even states can debate their role in the mitigation agenda, but everyone has a responsibility to protect themselves from the adverse effects of climate change. Regardless of what we do about emissions, climate change has begun and will continue for generations. The extent of change will depend on mitigation decisions, but adaptation is inevitable.

Effective adaptation requires an understanding of the challenges and opportunities alluded to above. In this chapter, we review the basic economics of adaptation, including its costs and potential benefits. An economist's perspective offers only part of the insight society needs to advance the adaptation agenda, but the concepts presented here can elucidate how a changing climate will create economic risks and rewards. As they always have, these two incentives can be expected to animate human behavior and move society along the path toward economic sustainability. Public agency is also discussed here because it will be essential to facilitate timely, cost-effective, and inclusive climate adaptation. Like private actors, policy makers need incentives to animate and change their behavior, and the concepts we cover below also recognize their essential role and the risks and rewards they face.

In this overview of the basic economics of climate adaptation, we present conceptual principles that provide a foundation for the chapters that follow. Because climate adaptation is localized, some of the lessons from California will be more generally relevant than others. The general conceptual principles, however, should be relevant anywhere. We discuss five topics of special relevance to climate adaptation: uncertainty, costs, timing, fairness, incentives, and institutions.

UNCERTAINTY

An essential consideration for all adaptation decisions is uncertainty and its economic avatar, risk. As we all know from the weather report, uncertainty is endemic to our understanding of climate processes, and climate-economy linkages only compound that uncertainty. We can never expunge uncertainty completely, but individual and social responses to it can be more constructive if better information about events and consequences is available. The importance of this uncertainty for economics is that it complicates decision making and can affect behavior in pervasive and often socially undesirable ways. Throughout this book we argue that one of the main barriers to adaptation is inadequate information available to private and public actors. Generally speaking, the available evidence is not relevant or authoritative enough to support timely and decisive policy.

Uncertainty in the context of adaptation takes six forms:

1. Climate processes

2. Baseline economic resource availability and activity

3. Impacts of climate change on economic resources and activities

4. Institutional constraints and capacity to respond to climate change

5. Technological change

6. Responses to adaptation measures

This book focuses on developing evidence for the third and fourth areas, economic impacts and institutional response, because we believe a stronger analytical foundation, a candid discussion of risks and trade-offs, and greater consideration of the current and future effectiveness of institutions are most needed to advance proactive, sound decision making. At the present time, the vast majority of information about climate change, scientific evidence presented in terms of physical systems, is related to the first category. Financial markets, the insurance industry, and indeed most of the rest of the economy are not managed by scientists, and economic agents need to see climate costs and benefits in material terms if they are to commit resources for adaptation. Government agencies need to understand the costs and benefits of different adaptation options if they are to make decisions that put public resources to their best use.

More assessment research is also needed to improve the quality and authority of evidence on climate change. This will help overcome an important barrier to effective policy response, disagreement among stakeholders about the facts of climate change and its impacts. Part of our motivation for writing this book was a desire to translate scientific evidence into implications that society can interpret and act upon, namely real and potential economic impacts. Information in this form can support responsible risk assessment and strategic responses to uncertainty. It will also improve the preconditions for cooperative solutions and public agency.

COSTS

Two kinds of costs are relevant to economic decisions about climate change: the costs of climate damage and the costs of adaptation. This book is mainly about the former, but better information on what it costs to adapt will also be needed to move forward.

Because climate has such a complex and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of California Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0520271815
• ISBN 13: 9780520271814
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 170
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar