Tropical cyclones cause more damage than we think — and India among countries facing high social cost of carbon

Subject: Environment

Section: Climate change

Context:

Extreme weather events also have long-term impacts on economies and can hinder economic development, increasing the ‘social cost’ of carbon.

Details:

India’s long-term economic damages from tropical cyclones are expected to range from $43-47 per tonne of carbon dioxide.
Globally, the long-term impacts of these storms raise the global social cost of carbon by more than 20 percent.
Driving this increase mainly are India, the United States, China, Taiwan, and Japan.
India’s social costs represent 11.3 per cent of global median economic damages from tropical cyclones.
The current policies do not consider the long-term effects of extreme events.

Social Cost of Carbon:

The social cost of carbon (SCC) is the marginal cost of the impacts caused by emitting carbon emissions at any point in time.
The social cost of carbon estimates the future costs of societies from the emission of one additional tonne of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and is a key metric informing climate policies.
The purpose of putting a price on a tonne of emitted carbon or CO2 is to aid people in evaluating whether adjustments to curb climate change are justified.
The social cost of carbon is a calculation focused on taking corrective measures to a “State of Nature”, where there is evidence of market failure.