Global management consulting giant Deloitte has withdrawn a ludicrous report that concluded extreme climate change would deliver GDP gains to one-third of the world’s economies through the end of this century.
The report from Deloitte’s Prague office found that colder-latitude countries like Canada, Norway, and Russia “should benefit the most from rising temperatures,” RFI reports. A summary of the report showed the Czech Republic’s GDP rising 25% over that time span “in the fastest warming scenarios”.
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Experts had scorched the report as “naïve and misleading” and “perfectly insane”, with a methodology deemed “woefully inadequate”, Consultancy.UK writes. RFI notes that recent peer-reviewed studies have global GDP dropping 20% through 2100 if climate change is not brought under control.
Consultancy.UK also puts the Deloitte release up against the recent report by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute that showed the world’s richest 1% producing more than double the greenhouse gas emissions of the poorest half, and the richest 10% accounting for more than half of total emissions. The story lists Iceland, Mongolia, North Korea, Sweden, and Tajikistan as other countries that Deloitte saw benefitting from runaway warming.
“Deloitte did admit that nearly 130 countries stand to face negative economic consequences from climate change,” Consultancy.UK notes. “The worst affected appear to be the hottest and poorest—with Deloitte listing a number of Middle Eastern and African countries such as Mali and Sudan as those which stand to lose the most from global warming. The alarmingly casual assertion suggests that Syria—whose civil war can trace its roots to a historic drought—will be only the tip of a new iceberg of climate refugees, whom richer nations will continue to work to keep outside their borders, regardless of their role in climate change.”
Deloitte, a Big Four accounting firm that took in US$45 billion in fees for the fiscal year ending in May 2019, announced Friday it was pulling the report off its website.
“The unfortunate wording does not represent Deloitte’s global viewpoint on the impact of climate change, therefore the report has been withdrawn and is no longer publicly available,” the company said. “Deloitte believes it’s essential that everyone—from governments to businesses to NGOs and individuals—act to protect our planet.’
