Morning Must-Read: Jason Furman and John Podesta: The Cost of Delaying Action to Stem Climate Change

**Jason Furman and John Podesta: The Cost of Delaying Action to Stem Climate Change: “The report… written under the leadership of Jim Stock…

…Immediate action substantially reduces the cost of achieving climate targets. Taking meaningful steps now sends a signal to the market that reduces long-run costs of meeting the target…. The least-cost mitigation path to achieve a given climate target typically starts with a relatively low price of carbon to send these signals to the market, and subsequently increases as new low-carbon technologies are developed and deployed… net mitigation costs increase, on average, by approximately 40 percent for each decade of delay…. If delayed action causes the mean global temperature increase to stabilize at 3° Celsius above preindustrial levels, instead of 2°, that delay will induce annual additional damages of 0.9 percent of global output…. The possibility of abrupt, large-scale, catastrophic changes in our climate increases the need to act…. Enacting meaningful change in climate policy is analogous to purchasing climate insurance…”