Starving for any attention, the carbon-haters need to find a reason to get into the inflation debate. CO2 keeps rising but crops are up, forests are greener, tropical islands are growing, mangroves are expanding, and the world is in more danger of being overrun with cheap soy and corn than by rising seas. Whatever. The disaster-bus will find a way to blame fossil fuels for everything that’s bad, as if through some miracle EV’s and windmills will make pork cheaper.
It’s a cult:
Climate crisis is ‘battering our economy’ and driving inflation, new book says
Edward Helmore, The Guardian
Forget Ukraine, coronavirus, corporate greed and “supply chain issues”, when it comes to inflation the climate crisis is the real, lasting, worry, according to a new book, and one that’s only likely to get worse. Climatenomics lays out how ‘supply chain disruptions’ has become a euphemism for the effects of climate change
“I don’t think people have realized that climate change is an economic issue now because it’s always been seen as an environmental, health or social issue,” says Keefe. “The fact of the matter is climate change is battering our economy.”
Any long term trend will do, even a really short one:
According to Keefe, citing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) figures, climate-related weather disasters cost the US economy more than $145bn in 2021 – a nearly 50% increase from last year.
Then Any big Scary Number will do. Lordy Maths! Just say “trillion” and give me your money:
Over the last five years, they have cost $750bn. Since 1980 323 weather and climate disasters have cost $1bn or more, the total cost of these events exceeds $2.195tn.
Nevermind that the long term cost of climate losses is growing smaller as a percentage of GDP.
Thanks to Roger Piekle Jnr for the analysis.
As I said five months ago when it was obvious that 2022 would be the Year of Inflation, more money, means more inflation:
More dollars fighting over the same stuff means higher prices. It’s just a supply and demand thing. This is the money base of USD, a rough measure of “how many dollars there are”. It’s obvious where this is going and it isn’t a temporary spike:
US St Louis Federal Reserve, Money Base graph 1918-2008 | Source
Cause and effect.
REFERENCES
St Louis Federal Reserve: AMBSL and BOGMBASE
Piekle, Jnr (2018) Tracking Progress on the Economic Costs of Disasters Under the Indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals, Environmental Hazards. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17477891.2018.1540343
A complete list of things caused by global warming: Numberwatch
Plus shorter lists:
- Global Warming Ate My Homework: 100 Things Blamed on Global Warming
- 45 ridiculous things global warming will supposedly cause
- Even the ice cream vendors get into the fun: 8 Weird Things You Didn’t Know Were Caused by Climate Change