The Economist blog post, Costs to Come, points out that although the harms of global warming to the economy are quite apparent, most people still have an incentive to emit unnecessary amounts of carbon dioxide and waste natural resources.  Hurricane Sandy, which was allegedly caused by global warming, has had immense negative impacts on the suffering US economy.

However, the post also states that there is a solution to this problem – harsh taxing of the emission of greenhouse gases.  For example, the costs of car emissions must be internalized by the driver, so that the driver will have a greater incentive to drive less and use public transportation.

Yet it is doubtful that people will find this solution attractive, because high carbon taxes or large public investments have negative short term impacts. As the diagram above points out, the global cap and trade costs are huge compared to the impact of a hurricane, and even the Vietnam War is dwarfed by the whopping 1.9 trillion dollars. Looking only from the short-term economic point of view, it is difficult to determine whether or not the tax should be imposed, but we cannot disregard the ethical impacts of our decisions.  We need to create a sustainable system, not only because it will undoubtedly generate great economic value in the future, but also because we have the social responsibility to take initiative in improving the future of the global community.

Works Cited:

“The Cost of Global Warming: A Story in Pictures.” The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2012. <http://blog.heritage.org/2009/04/06/the-cost-of-global-warming-a-story-in-pictures/>.