$215 Trillion to Save the Planet Is a Bargain
The longer we wait, the faster the bill accumulates, as does the damage from global warming.
Fighting climate change boils down to rewiring the globe’s energy system.
Photographer: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
If you’ve ever carried a credit-card balance, you know the pain of watching interest charges accumulate, turning what was once a high but manageable expense into an express ticket to bankruptcy. The clean-energy transition is kind of like this: The longer we delay paying for it, the more crushing the cost will become.
BloombergNEF’s latest New Energy Outlook, a 250-page State of the Transition address, estimates the world must invest $215 trillion by 2050 to zero out carbon emissions and limit global heating to a merely disastrous 1.75 degrees Celsius above preindustrial averages. That amount is what economists call “a lot.”