Tsunamis: Another Perspective on the Economic Impact of Carbon Restrictions
Nicolas Loris /
All the world mourned the human toll taken by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Thousands of lives were lost; hundreds of thousands more shattered. Of course, natural disasters inflict economic destruction as well, and estimates of the recent disasters’ cost to Japan are now coming in.
Catastrophe modeler Risk Management Solutions Inc. (RMS) puts economic losses from the earthquake and tsunami between $200 billion and $300 billion. That estimate, RMS says, “reflects not only property damage but secondary consequences, such as disruption to power supplies, evacuations and decommissioning of several nuclear power stations.”
It’s a horrendous price tag. Yet man-made disasters can be even more expensive. Consider this: The Waxman–Markey cap-and-trade proposal advanced last year would wreak just as much economic destruction as Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. One critical difference: The Japanese losses resulted from a once-in-a-millennium natural disaster. Waxman–Markey would inflict the same level of economic damage year after year after year.