Name: 氣候衝擊如何摧毀經濟？| Edmond Rhys Jones | TED (How Climate Shocks Could Break the Economy | Edmond Rhys Jones | TED)
Uploaded: 2025-12-25T13:05:24.000Z
Duration: 11 min 28 s

2021 was a bad year for natural disasters.

2021 年是自然災害頻繁的一年。

That was the year that Floods killed 1700 people in Pakistan and Europe began what would be the worst drought in 500 years.

那一年，巴基斯坦發生洪水造成 1700 人死亡，歐洲則迎來了 500 年來最嚴重的乾旱。

程度副詞

And that was the year one of my clients turned to me and said, is it really worth solving climate change?

那一年，我的一位客戶問我，解決氣候變遷真的值得嗎？

What he wanted to understand was the economic return on the trillions of dollars we have to spend to get to net zero.

他想了解的是，我們為了達到淨零排放必須投入的兆美元，能帶來什麼樣的經濟回報。

You see, there's a huge gap between the science and the economics.

你看，科學和經濟學之間存在著巨大的鴻溝。

The science is scary, and it's really detailed.

科學令人擔憂，而且非常詳盡。

The science tells us that we're leaving 12,000 years of climate stability behind us.

科學告訴我們，我們正在告別十二年來穩定的氣候。

Those floods and those droughts are going to get more frequent and more intense.

那些洪水和乾旱會變得越來越頻繁，越來越劇烈。

But then when you turn to the economics, all that turbulence and that kind of disruption just seems to get lost in translation.

但當你轉向經濟學時，所有那些動盪和幹擾似乎都詞不達意了。

You find yourself looking at graphs with suspiciously smooth curves.

你會發現自己看著那些有著可疑平滑曲線的圖表。

Rising temperatures, steadily declining growth.

Now, those graphs do tell us something really important.

現在，那些圖表確實告訴我們一些非常重要的事。

There really is a connection between global warming and our ability to build things and make things and just get things done.

全球暖化和我們建造、製造、以及完成事情的能力之間，確實存在關聯。

And the damages from that get really big really quickly.

而且由此造成的損失會非常快速且巨大。

But when I turned that analysis into my first quadrillion dollar slide for my client, it left him cold.

但當我把那份分析變成我給客戶的第一張兆美元簡報時，他卻沒什麼反應。

You see, the problem with the economics is that it's robust, but

你看，經濟學的問題在於它很扎實，但

it doesn't actually do a very good job of explaining how, in practice, climate change will impact businesses and households in, in the real economy.

它其實沒辦法很好地解釋，在實際情況中，氣候變遷會如何影響企業和家庭，影響真實的經濟。

And that's why all that turbulence and disruption you expect to see that you actually need to see if you want to prepare, seems to disappear.

這也是為什麼你預期會看到，而且實際上需要看到，以便做好準備的那些動盪和幹擾，似乎都消失了。

So that's what I want to talk to you all about today.

所以這就是我今天想跟大家聊的。

Imagine we had as good an understanding of the impact of climate change on the economy as we have of climate change itself.

想像一下，我們對氣候變遷對經濟的影響，有跟對氣候變遷本身一樣好的理解。

The big insurers estimate that natural disasters cause about 200 to $300 billion worth of damages, direct damages, every year.

大型保險公司估計，自然災害每年會造成大約兩千億到三千億美元的損失，是直接損失。

And these numbers are certainly more tangible.

You can see the collapsed bridges and the flooded mines in the data, but they're also incomplete.

你可以在數據中看到橋樑倒塌和礦坑淹水，但這些資訊並不完整。

Where are the lost revenues for the factories that relied on that mine?

那些依賴該礦坑的工廠損失的收入在哪裡？

Or the lost income for the workers that needed that bridge to get to work?

或者，需要靠那座橋才能上班的工人的收入損失在哪裡？

In fact, if we compare those numbers with that quadrillion dollar slide, we can see we're missing about 80% of the problem.

事實上，如果我們將這些數字與那張兆美元的圖表比較，就會發現我們忽略了約 80% 的問題。

And then we need to focus on the commercial relationships, the financial mechanisms that actually link companies together and transmit climate impacts around the economy.

然後我們需要關注那些真正將公司連結在一起，並將氣候衝擊傳遞到整個經濟體的商業關係和金融機制。

So now, instead of chasing hurricanes as they rampage through the physical infrastructure, we're going to trace them as they reverberate through the financial infrastructure.

所以現在，我們不再追逐肆虐實體基礎設施的颶風，而是追蹤它們如何在金融基礎設施中迴盪。

And I know chasing hurricanes sounds more fun, but

我知道追逐颶風聽起來比較有趣，但是

honestly, this is when you're going to start seeing some of that turbulence and that disruption that we're looking for.

說實話，這時候你才會開始看到我們正在尋找的那些動盪和幹擾。

We all know that hurricanes regularly cause billions of dollars of damage along the coast, but

我們都知道颶風經常在海岸造成數十億美元的損失，但是

Or then insurance premiums are rising as a result across the region, and

或是是以，整個地區的保險費都在上漲，而且

many households, particularly those on low income, many of whom actually in land, can't keep up.

許多家庭，特別是低收入家庭，其中許多人其實住在內陸，已經無法負擔。

So now we see rising mortgage defaults and credit card delinquency, and

所以現在我們看到房貸違約和信用卡拖欠率都在上升，

this is causing problems for another set of financial institutions.

這也給另一批金融機構帶來了問題。

2021 年，又是一個糟糕的年份。

A major frost and drought caused coffee production in Brazil to fall by 20%.

嚴重的霜凍和乾旱導致巴西咖啡產量下降了 20%。

But prices went up 30% globally in just one week.

但價格在一週內就全球上漲了 30%。

Well, it started when many farmers walked away from their forward contracts.

嗯，這始於許多農民放棄了他們的期貨合約。

And forward contracts are actually there to provide price stability between coffee farmers, coffee buyers.

期貨合約其實是為了在咖啡農和咖啡買家之間提供價格穩定。

But when some farmers saw higher profits available in the open market, they left their buyers in the lurch.

但當一些農民看到公開市場有更高的利潤時，他們就讓買家陷入困境。

And so now the buyers can't meet their own onward commitments into the futures market.

所以現在買家無法履行他們在期貨市場上的後續承諾。

So they're scrambling to find cash to keep those positions open.

是以他們正急著找現金來維持這些部位。

They're scrambling to find new coffee supplies to meet them, and

他們正急著尋找新的咖啡供應來滿足需求，

it's driving the price up higher and higher.

So these are just two disparate examples of how climate change causes turbulence in our financial infrastructure.

所以這只是氣候變遷如何造成我們金融體系動盪的兩個不同例子。

But the real worry is that the financial infrastructure itself will break under rising pressure because we're going to see more extreme weather in the next 10 years than we saw in the last 10 years.

但真正讓人擔心的是，在未來十年，我們將會遇到比過去十年更劇烈的極端天氣，金融體系本身將會在不斷增長的壓力下崩潰。

Those shocks are going to grow and the gaps between them are going to shrink.

這些衝擊會越來越大，它們之間的間隔也會越來越短。

And we can already see some of the warning signs in Florida.

我們已經可以在佛羅裡達州看到一些警訊。

Several insurers have now gone bankrupt or they've pulled out.

已經有好幾家保險公司破產了，或者他們退出了市場。

And now the state is the single largest provider of home insurance in Florida, putting pressure on its budget.

現在這個州成了佛羅裡達州最大的房屋保險提供者，這給它的預算帶來了壓力。

In California, climate risks are driving up the cost of borrowing for many of the local authorities that actually need to invest in preventing those risks.

在加州，氣候風險正在推高許多地方政府的借貸成本，而這些地方政府實際上需要投資來預防這些風險。

So we may be heading towards a tipping point, at which point the financial infrastructure can't manage climate risk anymore.

所以我們可能正朝著一個臨界點邁進，屆時金融體系將無法再管理氣候風險。

And this isn't academic, because if we can't manage climate Risk, we can't do a lot of things.

這不是學術上的討論，因為如果我們無法管理氣候風險，很多事情我們都做不成。

Imagine trying to get a mortgage on a house that you can't insure, you can't, or sell one that's become uninsurable, for that matter.

想像一下，如果你想買一間無法投保的房子來申請房貸，或者賣掉一間已經無法投保的房子，會是什麼情況。

規模化來看，這就是重大的幹擾。

And this isn't the normal boom and bust cycle.

這不是一般的景氣循環和衰退。

This may all sound a bit melodramatic to some of you.

這聽起來可能對你們有些人來說有點戲劇化。

There's a very real debate right now between a growing set of voices that are worrying about these kinds of tipping points and those that say, don't worry, the financial system as a whole will be able to manage climate risk for many decades to come.

目前存在一個非常真實的爭論，一群越來越多的人擔心這些臨界點，而另一群人則說，別擔心，整個金融體系在未來幾十年內都能應對氣候風險。

But I think for our purposes, in a way, it doesn't matter, because there's huge benefit in being able to better anticipate the turbulence ahead either way.

但我認為，就我們的目的而言，這在某種程度上並不重要，因為無論如何，能夠更好地預測未來的動盪，都會帶來巨大的好處。

And I think the first step in being able to better anticipate the future is recognizing that many of the kind of tools and techniques that we've traditionally relied on don't really have the imagination to do so.

我認為，要更好地預測未來的第一步，就是認識到我們傳統上依賴的許多工具和技巧，其實並沒有足夠的想像力來做到這一點。

They're really rooted in the status quo, historical data, past trends.

它們真的根植於現狀、歷史數據和過去的趨勢。

So what we need to do is look to other complex dynamic systems and the way those are studied, like evolutionary biology or thermodynamics, ironically, environmental science, energy networks, and

所以我們需要做的是，借鑒其他複雜動態系統及其研究方式，像是演化生物學、熱力學，諷刺的是，還有環境科學、能源網絡，以及

the field of complexity economics does exactly this.

複雜經濟學領域正是這麼做的。

It borrows tools and techniques from those other areas of study and uses them to better anticipate how shocks and trends can reshape economies.

它借鑒了其他研究領域的工具和技巧，並用它們來更好地預測衝擊和趨勢如何重塑經濟。

Of course, climate change is both of those things, right?

當然，氣候變遷同時具備這兩者，對吧？

Because you've got falling productivity, rising risk, punctuated by natural disasters.

因為你會看到生產力下降、風險升高，還會伴隨自然災害。

And one of the key tools that many of these fields use are simulations.

而這些領域許多都使用的關鍵工具之一就是模擬。

And in this context, you should be thinking of them as digital twins of whatever system it is that you're studying.

在這個情境下，你應該將它們想像成你正在研究的任何系統的數位孿生。

They're populated with thousands of virtual actors, each with their own rules of behavior, and

它們由數千個虛擬參與者組成，每個參與者都有自己的行為規則，以及

critically, the connections between them.

最關鍵的是，它們之間的連結。

你設定好它們，然後讓它們跑。

You can test them against reality and calibrate them, and then you can run experiments.

你可以將它們與現實進行比對和校準，然後就可以進行實驗了。

What would happen if we had a different setup?

如果我們有不同的設定，會發生什麼事？

Urban planners use simulations to prove that sometimes demolishing a major road can actually ease traffic congestion.

都市規劃師會利用模擬來證明，有時候拆除一條主要道路反而能緩解交通壅塞。

Ecologists use simulations to show why fish stocks can collapse even after you've put fish quotas in place.

生態學家會利用模擬來顯示，即使設定了漁獲配額，魚群數量為何仍可能崩潰。

The important thing about both of those results is, is that they're unexpected, they're not intuitive.

這兩種結果的重點是，它們出乎意料，而且不符合直覺。

Where Global Warming meets the Global Economy.

From our systems thinkers, from our risk modelers, from our data scientists, we need models that surprise us before the future does.

我們需要系統思考者、風險模型師、資料科學家，提供能讓我們在未來來臨前就感到驚喜的模型。

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氣候衝擊如何摧毀經濟？| Edmond Rhys Jones | TED (How Climate Shocks Could Break the Economy | Edmond Rhys Jones | TED)

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infrastructure