Ocean Damage Doubles Carbon's True Cost
The research, released in Nature Climate Change, represents a collaborative effort spanning five nations—the United States, Germany, Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands—and marks the first comprehensive integration of ocean-related damages into social cost of carbon (SCC) metrics that shape worldwide climate policy.
Scientists focused their analysis on what they term blue capital: the interconnected natural resources, economic value, and societal advantages flowing from marine environments including oceans, seas, and coastal zones.
Their investigation encompassed climate-driven harm across five critical marine sectors: coral reef systems, mangrove forests, commercial fisheries, aquaculture operations, and port facilities.
The results expose a glaring omission in the SCC—a widely utilized benchmark quantifying economic damage per tonne of atmospheric CO₂ emissions—which has systematically excluded marine ecosystem losses.
Blue Carbon Economics
Researchers constructed dual projections to isolate ocean-specific costs: a baseline climate scenario versus one incorporating an extra megatonne of CO₂ released in 2020.
Their calculations pinpoint the blue social cost of carbon at $48.3 per tonne for 2020. The damage distribution breaks down as follows: fisheries account for $22.1, coral reefs $14, mangrove ecosystems $10.1, and port infrastructure $2.1.
These marine-based costs—completely absent from conventional SCC frameworks—mean current estimates capture barely half the picture. When ocean system devastation enters the equation, total carbon damage assessments approach double their traditional values.
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