The article is aimed at finding the potential unprecedented and underplayed risks of climate change globally. It tries to bring to the fore that the economic assessments of climate change impact currently fail to convey the scale and magnitude of what is at stake for the lives and livelihoods of individuals, infrastructures, Indigenous Peoples, and critical ecosystems. It also provides an overview of the risks posed by climate change that carry some of the greatest consequences for human populations and wildlife: destabilization of ice sheets and glaciers and consequent sea- level rise, stronger tropical cyclones, extreme heat impacts, more frequent and intense floods and droughts, disruptions to oceanic and atmospheric circulation and finally destruction of biodiversity and collapse of the ecosystem. In addition, the article tries to establish the fact that economic assessments often present consequences in terms of the impact on gross domestic product only, a measure of economic output that is too narrow to be able to convey the true nature and scale of damage to lives and livelihoods due to climate change.
Keyword: Climate finance, Climate change, Global economy, Carbon emission
Ruth DeFries , Ottmar Edenhofer , Alex Halliday , Geoffrey Heal, Timothy Lenton, Michael Puma, James Rising, Johan Rockström, Alex C. Ruane, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, David Stainforth, Nicholas Stern, Marco Tedesco, Bob Ward