4.3 Consequences

Your choices for mitigation and geoengineering in the top section will affect the predicted outcomes for climate change (shown in the lower section).

But your actions have other consequences too: they each cost money and have different impacts for climate, humans and other life, as follows:

Climate change:

• Change in GMST relative to preindustrial, in °C

Cumulative impacts by the year 2100:

• number of human lives lost, in millions
• food price increase, in per cent
• biodiversity loss, in per cent
• economic costs, in per cent of Global World Product per year (% GWP per year)
• number of conflicts
• social unrest, in number of mass migrations and demonstrations.

Economic costs include those of actions taken (costs of implementing mitigation, geoengineering and adaptation, and damages caused by geoengineering) plus the damages due to remaining climate change. Global World Product is the combined gross national product of all the countries in the world.

Now you’ve had a brief tour, you can familiarise yourself with the climate design tool a little further by testing out some scenarios.