The United States' role in warming the planet just got a price tag, and it's a staggering one: roughly $10 trillion in economic damage worldwide since 1990, per a new study in Nature. Researchers say no country has slowed global growth more through its greenhouse gas emissions, with China close behind at $8.7 trillion, and the European Union at $6.4 trillion, per AFP. About 30% of the US-linked harm hit its own economy; the rest is spread across the globe, often landing hardest on poorer nations. India alone is pegged with about $500 billion in losses tied to US emissions; Brazil, about $330 billion, per the Guardian.
Led by Stanford environmental scientist Marshall Burke, the study links country-by-country emissions since 1990 to how rising temperatures have shaved growth, from heat-sapped workers to strained health systems. Researchers say the timing of the emissions is vital to understanding "loss and damage" as carbon dioxide that has been in the atmosphere for 25 years has already done half of the damage expected, according to a Stanford report. Burke calls the numbers "huge," though actual damages are likely to be much higher.
The study highlights what many vulnerable countries have argued for years: those who contributed least to the problem are bearing a disproportionate share of the costs. The findings land amid long-running fights over "loss and damage" financing and US resistance to formal liability for climate harms, a stance that hardened under President Trump, who pulled out of a planned fund for vulnerable nations. The study isn't likely to bring the US back to the table, "but it certainly says it should," Burke tells the Guardian. "You have people being harmed who did not cause the problem, and that feels just fundamentally unfair."
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