Environmental and Economic Impacts of Climate Change

My presentation is about the environmental and economic impacts of climate change. Many people believe climate change does not influence them financially. This is not true. The alterations in temperature, precipitation totals and weather patterns have an enormous effect on a person’s finances. Climate change has six environmental outcomes. The ecological consequences are droughts, floods, heatwaves, more extreme tropical cyclones, melting of glacial and sea ice and extinctions and declines in wildlife populations. Each of the six environmental effects has negative economic impacts. Examples of adverse monetary influences include greater spending on wildfire suppression, higher food prices, elevated water bills, escalation in homeowners’ insurance fees and governments having to spend enormous amounts of money on disaster relief and aid. The ecological outcomes of climate change clearly have economic consequences. In fact some of the financial impacts are caused by more than one of the environmental factors. For example, both droughts and floods will lead to higher food prices because agriculture crops will be destroyed. Likewise, food prices have skyrocketed over the past several years due to produce being decimated by deficiencies or surpluses in rainfall. Individuals may not be able to purchase food resulting in starvation. Another illustration is elevated homeowners’ insurance fees. Floods and tropical cyclones cause destruction to homes. Insurance companies will have to raise rates in areas more prone to flooding and tropical cyclones. Homeowners may not be able to afford insurance. If a flood or tropical cyclone destroys their home the individuals will not be able to rebuild because they may have no money or financial assistance. A good example of this is when hurricane Ian decimated Florida, insurance rates went up dramatically. People could be homeless and in need of government assistance. Luckily there are some steps the public can take to reduce greenhouse emissions and prevent the environmental effects from becoming worse. One is to walk or take a bike to get from one place to the next. Another is for people to use a vehicle that runs on electricity, hydrogen fuel cells or other forms of alternative energy. The third is use energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal to generate electricity. The final solution is to remove carbon dioxide and methane molecules from the atmosphere. This can be done in two ways. The first is by planting more trees because vegetation takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The second is to use machines that can remove greenhouse gas molecules from the atmosphere and store the particles below the earth’s surface. By educating the public, hopefully people can do more to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and help prevent the extreme weather events from becoming more severe and causing greater economic loses.