Damage control: Reducing the costs of climate impacts in Canada

This report documents a study on the combined direct and indirect costs of climate change in Canada, integrating economy-wide macroeconomic analysis with bottom-up studies, including those from previous  Costs of climate change reports. Damage control is the culmination of the Canadian Climate Institute’s  Costs of climate change series, a multi-year modelling and research project that aims to better understand and quantify the potential costs of a changing climate in Canada. 

Several high-level policy imperatives emerge from this analysis:

1. Governments should build climate impacts and adaptation policies into their own economic decision making. 
2. Governments should encourage—and where appropriate, mandate—accounting for climate change risks in private-sector decision making. 
3. Governments should scale-up adaptation measures to match the magnitude of the risk Canada faces. 
4. Governments should double down on aggressive reductions in emissions both at home and abroad. 
5. Governments should invest in understanding and preparing for the economic risks of climate change that have not yet been modelled.