Failing to meet climate mitigation goals laid out in the UN Paris Agreement could cost the global economy tens of trillions of dollars over the next century, according to new research from Stanford University. The study, published in Nature, is one of the first to quantify the economic benefits of limiting global warming to levels set in the accord. The team of Stanford researchers studied how economic performance over the past half-century correlated with changes in temperature around the world. Then, using climate model projections of how temperatures could change in the future, they calculated how overall economic output is likely to change as temperatures warm to different levels. The researchers calculated that the overall global benefits of keeping future temperature increases to 1.5 degrees are likely in the tens of trillions of dollars. They note that these benefits are more than 30 times greater than the most recent estimates of what it will cost to achieve the more ambitious 1.5 degrees goal.

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