This video was made in partnership with Bill Gates. To learn more about his work on clean energy, visit https://gatesnot.es/3dSVdur

We’ll each have at least $100,000 more in our piggy banks, on average, if we stop climate change than if we don’t.

Thanks also to our Patreon patrons https://www.patreon.com/MinuteEarth and our YouTube members.

To learn more, start your googling with these keywords: climate change damages, greenhouse gas emissions, climate mitigation

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Credits (and Twitter handles): Script Writer: Peter Reich Script Editor and Video Narrator: Alex Reich (@alexhreich) Video Illustrator: Sarah Berman (@sarahjberman) Video Director: Julián Gustavo Gómez (@thejuliangomez) With Contributions From: Henry Reich, Kate Yoshida, Ever Salazar, David Goldenberg, Arcadi Garcia Rius Music by: Nathaniel Schroeder: http://www.soundcloud.com/drschroeder

References:

Burke M, WM Davis, NS Diffenaugh. 2018. Large potential reduction in economic damages under UN mitigation targets Nature 557: 549-553.

Hsiang S, R Kopp, A Jina, J Rising, M Delgado, S Mohan, DJ Rasmussen, R Muir-Wood, P Wilson, M Oppenheimer, K Larsen, T Houser. 2017. Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States. Science 356, 1362-1369

International Monetary Fund. 2017. The Effects of Weather Shocks on Economic Activity: How Can Low-income Countries Cope? World Economic Outlook Chapter 3, 117-183.

Kahn, ME, K Mohaddes, RNC Ng, M Hashem Pesaran, M Raissi, J-C Yang. 2019. Long-Term Macroeconomic Effects of Climate Change: A Cross-Country Analysis, CESifo Working Paper, No. 7738, Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich.

Some economists argue that people in the future will be so much richer than people today that we should just let them pay to fix climate change. There’s no guarantee, however, that future people will be richer (especially if we let climate change happen), and other economists argue that even if future people are richer, it’s not ok to leave them with a ruined planet. So, we’ve emphasized why it would be beneficial to slow climate change now.