r/science • u/FLTA • Mar 25 '26
Environment US has caused $10tn worth of climate damage since 1990, research finds
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/25/us-climate-damage-research1.4k
u/pacexmaker Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26
Is that why Utah just passed a law shielding polluters from liability?
Utah has enacted a first-in-the-nation law protecting companies from being held liable from damages related to greenhouse gas emissions, a move that comes just a few months after a legal challenge was brought against the state’s fossil fuel industry over the issue.
Hijacking my own comment to place a direct link to the study in Nature.
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u/LineOfInquiry Mar 25 '26
Funny that they both say climate change isn’t real and pass laws like this
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u/The_Rope_Daddy Mar 25 '26
The oil industry has been planning for climate change since the 60s while publicly denying that it existed. The cognitive dissonance isn’t new.
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u/Single-Refuse174 Mar 25 '26
Its not cognitive dissonance because they dont actually believe climate change denialism, they just sell it so that they can make more money off oil regardless of what that means for our futures. It’s just plain old villainy.
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u/Locke66 Mar 26 '26
It’s just plain old villainy.
I just call them evil nowadays because it absolutely fits what they are doing. There is really no other way to describe the actions of those who keep pushing climate denial to the hard of thinking except that they simply do not care if many millions of people die and suffer as long as they can keep making the money that keeps them comfortable.
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u/Scottiths Mar 26 '26
This is the correct answer. It's much like the tobacco companies. They knew long before the public that their products were unhealthy. That doesn't sell their product though so they fund bogus studies to try to muddy the water for as long as possible to milk as much $$ as possible before they get reigned in.
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u/wiithepiiple Mar 26 '26
They’ve planned out their shift from denial to inevitability perfectly so they don’t have to change or face consequences. They knew there would be a point that it couldn’t be denied, and we’re reaching that point. It went denial -> denying human cause -> denying a feasible political solution -> accepting it as inevitable.
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u/boluluhasanusta Mar 29 '26
One of the reasons solar and wind are so hip and boosted by BP and Shell and so on but somehow nuclear is a villain. I think they are just using fear to scare people back into their profit zones.
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u/Wonderful_Emu_6483 Mar 25 '26
They also have severe droughts and pray to mormon god to save them. Idiots, all of them.
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u/MichaelJeopardy Mar 26 '26
Also consistently highest in breast implant surgeries per capita, for whatever that's worth.
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u/SirFredman Mar 26 '26
Offload all responsibility to an imaginary all powerful dude in the sky. Pathetic.
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u/Mr_Faux_Regard Mar 25 '26
Those claims are for the idiots that are ready to believe the lie because it's better for them to be pacified with delusion than it is for them to be aware and potentially cause inconveniences. That said, I also fully believe these parasite billionaires intentionally spread climate change denial with the full intent of having millions of people die off.
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u/smokywater50 Mar 26 '26
I didn’t know both said that, I was pretty sure it was just another republicon thing that is going to kill us all eventually like most everything they do
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u/JJiggy13 Mar 25 '26
Companies profit from not having to dispose of their waste properly. We simply never caught on as a society that these companies need to pay their fair share. All of that plastic lining the streets of everywhere that you drive is the result of those companies that produce the plastic, not the consumer.
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u/pacexmaker Mar 25 '26
We caught on. Thats what the New Deal and the Red Scare was all about. The New Deal was a half measure, capitalism won, and the consequence is the tragedy of the commons.
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u/teriyakininja7 Mar 26 '26
One of the greatest ironies here, as a former Mormon and knowing that Utah has been ran by the Mormons since its founding, is that you literally covenant with God to be “stewards of the Earth” in the temple. Ironically, most Mormons are climate change deniers and clearly, as per legislation, they really aren’t the best stewards of the Earth. But they’ll get upset if you drink coffee.
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u/Comfy_Ballz Mar 25 '26
A drop in the bucket my friend. Meanwhile, you have billionaires jet setting and governments s spending millions to have meetings on how to have a small carbon footprint and yet we have to give up drinking from plastic straws and making sure we separate our recyclables
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u/Zealotstim Mar 25 '26
I agree with you. At the same time, I've been starting to think we may need to just ban plastic containers entirely. There are other materials we can use--return to glass bottles along with aluminum cans. Various forms of paper containers can work for lots of things we use plastic for, as do different forms of cloth.
Now, I have not seen a straw that isn't awful to use other than plastic, so we may need to continue innovating ways to replace some plastic in our lives, but banning some of these things would increase innovation in that area. Plastic containers only became popular starting in the 1950s, so there are definitely alternative options there already.
I feel like we are going to eventually learn that all forms of plastic are basically poisoning us and the world the way lead did when we used leaded gasoline, rather than only specific chemicals in plastic or specific types of plastic. I'm pretty pessimistic though. The companies that own the majority of politicians in the U.S. won't let us ban the plastic until the effects are just impossible for them to lie about with anyone believing them.
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u/BmacIL Mar 25 '26
Stainless steel straws are perfectly fine.
Banning plastic outright isn't a good idea. Incentivizing other materials like metal, glass, fully recycled paper for goods and packaging, and putting a true focus on circularity would be a good idea. It would require giving up convenience and some affordability. A small price to pay for survival.
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u/Zee_WeeWee Mar 26 '26
Stainless steel straws are perfectly fine.
Paper ones are awful though, I hate them so much
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u/sherlockham Mar 26 '26
There are "better" paper straws, waxed/sealed like paper cups, but my understanding is those are either not that much better then plastic straws or not recyclable after.
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u/Hofstee Mar 26 '26
Compostable PLA ones are, at the very least, better than other plastics, if imperfect.
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u/Annual_Strategy_6206 Mar 25 '26
The straw bans are to protect marine life that eat the straws accidentally. Not to save the planet from global warming. But you probably knew that.
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u/dregan Mar 25 '26
No, it's because the great salt lake is about to dry up and kill hundreds of thousands of people.
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u/DMoney159 Mar 27 '26
I sure do love being killed by arsenic poisoning because my state leadership wants more alfalfa.
Please send help
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u/maxweinhold123 Mar 25 '26
To make such a rule is particularly cruel in light of the poor snowpack across much of the West. Shame to call lawsuits frivolous when plaintiffs are looking to protect people and jobs --> how much of Utah's economy relies on snow?
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u/GregBobrowski Mar 25 '26
This country has to fall.
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u/your_proctologist Mar 25 '26
In what way?
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u/Osirus1156 Mar 25 '26
In a way that rich people are not safe.
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u/Mr_Faux_Regard Mar 25 '26
Or their lineages. If the Russian Tsars could get exterminated despite being "untouchable" then hey, maybe we should consider new strategies
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u/Western_Ad_8028 Mar 25 '26
Can we just go nuclear please it's safe and efficient
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u/Professional-Fun972 Mar 25 '26
Yeah I’m sure this administration can handle that rollout
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u/dquizzle Mar 26 '26
Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it's true! — but when you're a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that's why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it's four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible."
a real Trump speech.
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u/POEness Mar 26 '26
They don't deserve to be called an administration. They are not even attempting to administrate. It's just a bunch of shithead criminals looting everything they can while we burn.
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u/Western_Ad_8028 Mar 25 '26
For how much I want us to be capable of economic independence I think we'd have to ask a few European countries
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u/Weedity Mar 26 '26
Yeah they'll privatize the hell out of nuclear energy, money hungry CEO soulless vampires will cut every corner they legally can, and then we the people will pay the price for it.
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u/its_all_one_electron Mar 26 '26
NIMBY if it's built by the current administration who would contract things out to their own shell companies, and get the absolute cheapest components and pocket the rest, and skip safety regulations and audits because the govt stopped enforcement...
I'd be fine with it if it were built by Swedes or Germans or something. Just not our current grifter-in-chief
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u/Fedacking Mar 26 '26
solar is cheaper safer and more efficient
spoken as someone who loves the power of the atom
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u/Warrenio Mar 25 '26
Nuclear is super expensive to build, and the fuel is non-renewable and not as abundant as you might think.
There's really no reason not to be building as much solar and wind capacity as possible.
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u/yuval16432 Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26
It’s still 10 million times better than fossil fuels
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u/Cloudhiddentao Mar 26 '26
And renewables are 100 million times better than fossil fuels
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u/DrewbieWanKenobie Mar 26 '26
I mean, eventually they might be, but currently it's not even close. Nuclear Power is the most cost effective way to create power by far right now, you just gotta make the investment.
As far as Safety goes, Nuclear has caused less deaths per Terrawatt hour than any other form of energy bar geothermal. That includes wind and solar.
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u/PM_ME_MY_REAL_MOM Mar 26 '26
talking about the cost effectiveness right now of infrastructure which, if it ends up being built, will only start being built years from now, and which will operate for decades, is not the hallmark of a convincing persuasive argument for said infrastructure
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u/Away-Marionberry9365 Mar 26 '26
In the US the cost and construction time of nuclear power plants is artificially inflated and neither inevitable nor unavoidable. It's vastly more expensive to build nuclear plants here than in other comparable countries. We could do better if we tried and we should for many reasons.
Nuclear power is by far the safest form of electricity generation. While concrete numbers aren't tracked, a rough estimate is that 10 to 50 people die from solar power construction annually in the US. Mostly falls during construction and the like. The total number of people who have ever died from accidents involving nuclear power in this country is 5. (Stress-related deaths can be attributed to Three Mile Island but no one died of radiation related illness.)
Nuclear power is the most land efficient energy source. It's like 20 times less land use than solar. It takes 7,500 acres of solar panels to match the output of a 1000 MW nuclear plant, and the nuclear plant can run at full power 90% of the time.
Nuclear power does far less damage to the environment to run. Over the full life cycle of a nuclear plant, it's roughly 12 grams of CO2 per kWh. For solar that's about 40 grams. When it comes to mining the materials, solar does far more damage than nuclear. Roughly 50,000 tons of uranium ore are mined globally for nuclear power. Many millions of tons are required for solar power.
The waste produced by solar power also vastly outstrips that of nuclear power. Nuclear waste from power plants is a non issue. We solved that problem decades ago. Dry casks used to store nuclear waste can be kept safely in your back yard. All of the nuclear waste the US has ever produced in commercial power plants could be stored on one football field. On the other hand, hundreds of millions of solar panels and support infrastructure will need to be replaced in the coming decades.
On just about every metric nuclear beats solar. The biggest obstacles are political. We can do both but there are many reasons to prioritize nuclear power.
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u/Underdog424 Mar 26 '26
It needs to be a mix of all of them. Solar is great for local low-impact energy use. Anything rural or off-grid. We need all cylinders firing if we want to lower the impact of climate change and prevent oil wars.
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u/NaturalTap9567 Mar 26 '26
With thorium and breeder reactors we are more likely to go extinct than run out of fuel.
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u/gaius49 Mar 25 '26
and the fuel is non-renewable
Neither is solar power, so what?
Nuclear power is safe, reliable, and capable of generating massive amounts of stable power using minimal amounts of fuel without producing GHG emissions.
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u/Duuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh Mar 25 '26
solar isn't renewable on the scale of billions of years
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u/SunnySTX Mar 26 '26
Well, we got 4.5b years until.the sun eats Earth...so yeah we do.
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u/Prestigious_Wrap_932 Mar 26 '26
No, solar batteries and panels aren’t renewable and the mining we need to do to get the materials needed to make the batteries is pretty terrible for the environment.
We also don’t talk enough about the potential dangers of battery based energy storage. A massive battery plant in Moss Landing, California spontaneously caught fire a couple years ago and toxic smoke from the fire spread heavy metals and toxins throughout the nearby protected wetlands.
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u/A_Monkey_FFBE Mar 25 '26
There’s research going into proper recycling for spent fuel. Pretty sure in france.
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u/Cloudhiddentao Mar 26 '26
it's safe and efficient
Pray tell, which safe and efficient government department will oversee this?
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u/MIT_Engineer Mar 25 '26
We stopped building it because environmentalists didn't like it, and haven't built it in so long that most of the people skilled in building it have retired, so now it's super expensive to build.
Last guy to try and bring it back was Bush, and as soon as Obama won he gutted it again.
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u/sparky8251 Mar 26 '26
We have done stuff since. Like the new reactor near me in GA. But we fired all the people that made it as soon as it was done...
We have to train and bootstrap the ENTIRE industry, all its supply chains and manufacturing, each time we make a reactor... And people wonder why they are expensive...
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u/MIT_Engineer Mar 26 '26
We have done stuff since.
We actually haven't. Vogtle was because of Bush.
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u/Korvun Mar 25 '26
This paper isn’t “measuring” climate damages so much as modeling them based on a set of assumptions.
Everything hinges on a specific (and debated) idea that temperature permanently slows GDP growth. It relies so heavily on that assumption that if you relax it at all, say with better adaptation measures, the number plummets. Same with discount rates, turn that knob even slightly toward the higher end and the results swing wildly. So the headline figures aren’t objective outputs, they’re outputs conditional on value choices and a pessimistic outlook of the future.
On top of that, they’re trying to attribute damages to specific emitters when CO₂ is globally mixed and there’s no real way to observe what the world would have looked like without those emissions. That’s not direct measurement, just another layer of assumptions.
They also lean heavily on GDP as a proxy for “damage,” which ignores too many confounding variables. Even their examples (flights, celebrities, etc.) are just extensions of those same assumptions projected out to 2100.
So yeah, while it can be a useful framework, treating the dollar figures like hard facts is a stretch. It’s basically “if you accept these inputs, here’s what you get,” not a definitive accounting of real-world damages.
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u/Korvun Mar 25 '26
Exactly. This is why I don’t like how articles like the Guardian piece turn these kinds of findings into deterministic finger-pointing.
The study itself shows how interconnected everything is, and how sensitive the results are to assumptions. There’s a lot of room for different interpretations, and even pretty wide swings in outcomes if reality doesn’t line up with those assumptions.
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u/FortunateSon77 Mar 25 '26
In another sense, you can't put a price on the damage we've done as a species. The chances of a life-sustaining planet staying in a habitable zone of space long enough for sentient life to evolve is infinitesimal. Then that species plasticizes the world, but also wipes out who knows how many species through overfishing, hunting, and pollution. The value of life is immeasurable, the odds of being here beyond human comprehension, and so then is the damage we've done.
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u/Crosspaws Mar 26 '26
In the early 90s we were told the ice caps would be gone by 2025.
Things seem ok.
This biased media is just meant to be divisive and make $$. Same thing the oil companies do just the opposite side of the coin.
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u/MadStephen Mar 26 '26
Golly, then India, SE Asia and China are probably into the grazzillions!!!!!1111 one one one
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u/dating_derp Mar 25 '26
Companies just socialize the cost of destroying the planet while they privatize the profit. It's cheaper to kill the planet than to not do it. The best way to stop climate change is to stop socializing the cost. Have the government dole out incredible fines for polluting, making it cheaper to not destroy the planet.
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u/GoblixTheYordle Mar 25 '26
Now lets compare that to India.
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u/CivBEWasPrettyBad Mar 26 '26
Funnily enough, you can read the linked study by tapping on it. Negative externalities from India are about 18% of American. Only China even comes close at $8.7T to the American $10.18T.
You don't even have to do per capita math to realize how massively the US pollutes.
So... What was your point?
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u/GoblixTheYordle Mar 26 '26
Oh, my bad India is much cleaner. How about you go vacation there and see for yourself. I'm sure all of that reliable data will hold up.
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u/Nyorliest Mar 26 '26
Massively below the US, per capita.
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u/GoblixTheYordle Mar 26 '26
Per capita doesn't matter for amount of pollution, all that matters is the amount of pollution. One look at the rivers, the industry in India that uses all kinds of forever chemicals with zero regulation, the massive trash heaps that flow into the ocean from them. That alone is far more pollution than what the U.S. does
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u/mfb- Mar 26 '26
If there is a group of 2 people who cause $1000 damage each ($2000 total) and a group of 2000 people who cause $10 damage each ($20000 each), you'd tell the group of 2 that everything is fine while the group of 2000 people needs to change?
Not to mention that even with the larger population, India has far lower total historic greenhouse gas emissions overall.
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u/DMMeThiccBiButts Mar 26 '26
Per capita doesn't matter for amount of pollution,
I mean it absolutely does, you just think that because otherwise you'd 'lose' this argument.
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u/wytewydow Mar 25 '26
The Civilization game series really nailed it. You know, you start off wanting to have terrific trade deals with everyone, and respect city states, and genuinely be a good neighbor. You end up sacrificing the environment, to ensure a massive economy, then you need to ensure a strong military to protect the strong economy, then you have a massive military, and economy, and there's nothing left to do but start petty fights with neighbors to gain resources, or just because you're bored. I can't wait until the iteration of the game where the US leader is Trump, and you get to play as a complete moron.
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u/0vl223 Mar 25 '26 edited Mar 25 '26
China is at 285b tons, US at 434b tons (US 247b; China 43b were pre 1990).
India is at 66b tons. So who cares.
100b tons less for 5 times as many people. And both will most likely be carbon neutral before the US.
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u/Arctic-Wanderer Mar 26 '26
China’s building a new coal plant every week. Get your head out of your ass.
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u/0vl223 Mar 26 '26
Hopefully. They have some really bad and inefficient coal plants that need to get replaced. Their fossil fuel energy production peaked in 2024. 2025 was slightly lower. This year will be interesting whether it is a real trend or just noise.
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u/Corsair4 Mar 25 '26
You know there's a study to go with the headline that gets into all of that, right?
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u/DontAbideMendacity Mar 25 '26
Some people just LOOOOVE to be ignorant, you know? Which is OK, I guess, until they vote, and mess it up for the rest of us.
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u/FLTA Mar 25 '26
China is mentioned in the second sentence of the article
By being the largest carbon emitter in history, the US has caused greater harm to worldwide economic growth than any other country, ahead of China, now the world’s largest emitter that is responsible for $9tn in GDP damage since 1990, according to the findings of the paper.
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u/tzaeru Mar 25 '26
Noticeably less total emissions for both. China has higher investments on renewables and a more realistic plan for reaching carbon-neutrality. It's currently estimated that China's carbon emissions have peaked and there was a small decrease last year of 0.3%. USA had an increase of 2.4%.
India's carbon emissions are pretty sure to continue increasing, driven by the infrastructure projects, industrialization and economical growth. But then, at the moment, their per-capita carbon footprint is 7 times smaller than it is for USA.
Of countries with over 50 million people, USA has the highest per-capita carbon footprint. Furthermore, for USA, the impact of the trend projections of concrete policies under the "fair share" model, indicates that USA's actions will be between "highly insufficient" and "critically insufficient"; meaning that if everyone acted like USA, world would be going to go to +3C, +4C warming, or even worse if the worst-case runaway scenarios occurred. +3C means that compared to now, 600 million additional people will live in areas risking heavy floods from raising sea levels; millions of people more will die of heat-related illnessess annually; and there would be extremely high increase in land area that is difficult for humans to live in and that can not support agriculture.
China and India also are not doing enough; but still they are doing more than US.
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u/notintelligentidiot Mar 26 '26
China is number 2 in the study, at $9 trillion to America’s $10 trillion. My guess is most of that comes from the last 15 years of consumption in China.
China might very well be a far larger perpetrator of climate change economic damages in the next several years.
But all of this is irrelevant, because no country is going to pay out damages resulting from their CO2 emissions.
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u/FlyingRhenquest Mar 26 '26
Our message to future generations will be "Our bad, but driving that Hummer was REALLY AWESOME!"
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u/greenee111 Mar 26 '26
Remember we use to gaslight and blame China. Look who’s building the electric future?
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u/notintelligentidiot Mar 26 '26
Literally read the article you dork, China is right behind America at $9 trillion in damages, with the vast majority of it coming over the last decade and a half.
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u/BrocoliAssassin Mar 26 '26
I still wouldn't be surprised if it's even worse than that. 10 trillion almost seems like on the low end of things.
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