A recent study conducted by the UK charity, Christian Aid, assessed the cost of the damage caused by ten of last year’s most devastating weather events at around US$170 billion. These include: Hurricane Ida in the United States that killed at least 95 people; severe floods in Europe, China and South Sudan, resulting in the deaths of more than 540 people and displacement of almost a million people; and extreme drought in East Africa and Northwestern Afghanistan, forcing people to leave their homes in order to survive.
All these disaster-related events are linked to climate change and global warming that are caused mainly from the burning of fossil fuels. At the global level, when the cost of cleanup, repairs, rehabilitation and reconstruction is counted, in the long-run it could very well outweigh the revenue accruing to oil producing nations from the processing and sale from fossil fuels, not to mention the environmental damage caused, loss of life, displacement of people, and their consequential social and economic effects.