West Chester-based Moody’s Analytics has warned that climate change could potentially cost the global economy $69 trillion by 2100, if the predicted warming threshold of two degrees Celsius is reached, writes Steven Mufson for The Washington Post.

Two degrees is the widely accepted limit for holding back climate change’s most dire effects.

In its new climate change report, Moody’s stressed that even an increase of another 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, would accrue $54 trillion in damages by the end of the century.

This would mainly be from the effects on workers’ health and productivity by the rising temperatures and extreme weather events disrupting and damaging infrastructure and property more frequently.

Mark Zandi, the Chief Economist at Moody’s Analytics, said that the report is the first attempt to really try to quantify the potential macroeconomic consequences of climate change.

According to Zandi, climate change is not a sudden unexpected event but one that has been slowly creeping up.

“It’s not a shock to the economy. It’s more like a corrosive,” he said, adding that it’s one that is “getting weightier with each passing year.”

Read more about the economic effects of climate change in The Washington Post here.

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