Half a Degree Hotter Will Cost $30 Trillion / Beyond The Headlines / A Record Hurricane Disaster in Puerto Rico / Final Generation for the Marshall Islands? / Nooks for Nesting Islands that were once paradise are turning into places of peril, threatened by rising seas and intense hurricanes. This week we discuss Puerto Rico's high mortality in the wake of Hurricane Maria; a new study estimates thousands died as a result of the island's devastated infrastructure, which delayed medical services and cut off access to clean water and electricity.
Meanwhile, on the other side of our blue planet, kids as young as age nine share what it's like to see their beloved Marshall Islands, low-lying and far-flung across the Pacific, inundated by rising seas. They fear they may be "The Last Generation" to live there.
There's no way to put a price on the loss of lives, or of a homeland. But it is possible to estimate the economic costs of climate change, and a Stanford study finds a whopping $30 Trillion gap in GDP between a 1.5 degrees Celsius versus 2 degrees C rise in global mean temperature. Those stories and more, in this episode of Living on Earth from PRI.
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