Dire Forecast For California Real Estate

By: Jon Dougal – November 18, 2008

Climate change and global heating have been a mantra of environmentalists and green builders for at least the last 10+ years. Empirical data has always been short as a method of convincing the naysayers. It almost arrives too late, but new data has surfaced by a creditable organization with no hidden agenda about the costs of GHG’s, and climate change. It is like the old studies of whether cigarettes hurt your health, how many studies were needed. Now the evidence is clear enough that people will hear it through their wallets, and they better listen.

A University of California, Berkeley, http://www.bizjournals.com/gen/company.html?gcode=2ECB69C5C176477E8B4894A1F2B1550E report released Thursday Nov 13, 2008, estimates that climate change will impact the state’s real estate to the tune of approx. $2.5 trillion.

California Real estate is arguably the most expensive in the nation by quantity. Insurance represents the next largest sector possibly at risk from climate change the report projects. The report funded and supported www.next10.org, published through Ceres, estimates $4 trillion in real estate assets, of which $2.5 million are at risk from extreme weather events, sea level rise and guess what wildfires.

The potential cost is $300 million annually to $3.9 billion over this century, depending on how the global temperature rises.

Additional sectors at risk include: water, energy, transportation, tourism, agriculture and public health, which could add incur additional billions of dollars per year in direct costs and additionally trillions of dollars of collateral risks.

"Our report makes clear the most expensive thing we can do about climate change is nothing," said lead author UCB adjunct professor Davis Roland-Holst. As Ray Anderson said (I believe) “There is no good business case for a compromised environment.” Just the free services of water purification conducted by the wetlands of the state leaning water before it enters the ocean are worth billions. Without those wetlands we would have oceans dying at a faster rate than they are already.

Get the entire report at http://www.nextten.org/research/research_ccrr.html