It's so unbelievably stupid that we have to frame destruction in economic terms for it to resonate with people. A society that is rational, empathetic, or even simply pragmatic would not need to rely on financial incentives to stop killing the planet.
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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The danger in linking climate risks to dollars is making misleading math. The actual opportunity cost of climate disasters is incalculable/infinite.
Add up all the potential economic activity for tens of thousands of years of a flourishing sustainable human civilization, and subtract it because we are risking ecological collapse and even possible near term human extinction. The numbers to measure the damage done in dollars suddenly require scientific notation and approach infinity.
In this article, they tried to measure only the past opportunity cost. Now multiply it by our future costs and you'll get a sense of how badly we fucked ourselves and everything else.
Same first thought. You can't just "pay back" that amount of money and have everything fixed. A lot of very wealthy people have to do a lot of things that will "cost" them.
Ha! This administration hasn't even begun to create more damage. Trump to the world, "Hold my water...no, seriously, hold my water, I can't."
The way bombings of fossil fuel infrastructure are going, Trump seems to be intent on outdoing the Ukrainians re: climate protection
He only drinks diet coke