Canada's climate costs to soar

The Chronicle Herald (Canada): Climate change will cost Canada and its people about $5 billion a year by 2020, a groundbreaking analysis for the federal government warns. Costs will continue to climb steeply, to between $21 billion and $43 billion a year by the 2050s — depending on how much action is taken on reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions and how fast the economy and population grow, the analysis says.

"Climate change will be expensive for Canada and Canadians," says the report from the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, issued Thursday morning. "Increasing greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide will exert a growing economic impact on our own country, exacting a rising price from Canadians as climate change impacts occur here at home."

The roundtable is a group of business leaders, academics and researchers chosen by the federal government to advise Ottawa on how to deal simultaneously with challenges in the economy and the environment. The group generally assumes that the world will be able to contain global warming to about two degrees by 2050, as promised....