The United Kingdom stands to gain economically from climate change action, but not for the reasons usually cited in economic studies, according to UK-based Cambridge Econometrics. Most economic analyses of climate change weigh the costs of reducing carbon pollution against the much larger costs of inaction, but Cambridge projects direct economic gains from carbon reduction programs the UK government is committed to completing by 2030. “What’s particularly striking about the paper is it found those improvements would come from the first-order changes the economy would have to make to decarbonize,” Spross writes. “Rather than second-order climate, health, or policy benefits of cutting carbon emissions, it’s the first-order restructuring of the economy itself to get those cuts that delivers the improved results. That’s a fairly new finding.”
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