Thank you for that sober exposition. Here’s what scares me: the collapse of civilization. If that happens, ‘global GDP’ will not be a thought in anyone’s mind.

The economy is intrinsic to civilization as we know it. Civilization as we know it depends on large-scale agriculture, particularly a very few critical crops. All agriculture is dependent on the climate (i.e. the ‘normal’ weather: temperatures and precipitation); large-scale agriculture means large-scale disruptions of output if the weather is ‘wrong’; being dependent on a few crops intensifies that risk for civilization.

For as long as civilization has existed, the overall climate of the planet has been what is was from day one. The global system of large-scale agriculture on which civilization as we now know it depends really only goes back to the middle of the last century.

So changing the climate creates tremendous risk for civilization itself that people seem to me to be overlooking. Perhaps that is because such risk is almost impossible to forecast. The scale of the risk, however, even if there are only tiny probabilities its happening, dictates doing everything we can to avoid it.