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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		Can climate change reshape the global economy?
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:02
	Publish Date:		2015-12-10 18:00:00
	Description:		A new study at the University of California, Berkeley found that, if left alone, climate change could severely reshape the global economy by the end of the century. The researchers based their results on the finding that economies grow more slowly above or below an optimal productivity temperature of 13 degrees Celsius, or 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Study leader Solomon Hsiang (Sh-i-ahng) explains. "Given the finding that there’s this optimum temperature and that many countries are warmer than it, we simulate the world going forward and we ask how economies will evolve as the planet heats up. And what we find it that economic productivity for most of the temperate countries and the tropical and subtropical countries declines relative to what it otherwise would be in a world where we allow climate change to occur unmitigated." Hsiang says he hopes the study reveals the cost of climate change when making investments for global energy solutions. "So we might have been undervaluing the climate which would make us not as willing to spend on it but what we’re finding is that actually we should probably be willing to spend more on it today."
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