Climate change will act as a massive “brake” for the global economy, draining up to 50% of countries’ growth potential towards the end of the century, warned Frenchman Adrien Bilal, who has just won the award for best young economist in his country.
“By analyzing the global temperature instead of the local temperature, we discovered that the economic damages are seven times greater than we thought,” said Bilal (35 years old), a professor at Stanford University and awarded Best Young Economist of 2026 by Le Monde and the Circle of Economists of France.
The main novelty of the study is the change of scale. “In previous analyzes they were based exclusively on local temperature; that is, the temperature in a given country. And that is only part of global warming. It is far from representing all the consequences of climate change,” he said in an interview done by videoconference.
In this way, the academic decided to introduce “a geoscientific logic” to more accurately specify both the origin and the impact of global warming, a phenomenon that does not occur locally, but due to a series of global factors.
As an example, Bilal refers to the temperature of the water surface of the oceans, which span several countries and continents. “It is responsible for a series of climatic events, sometimes extreme, that can cause significant economic damage,” he analyzed.
The assessment of these damages towards the end of this century, if measures are not taken to stop emissions, is what has attracted the most attention from the academic community. “Each country loses, on average, 50% of its purchasing power between now and the end of the century,” he stated.
“Now,” he added, “that does not mean that we will be poorer at the end of the century than we are today, because it is expected that, despite everything, there will be economic growth regardless of global warming.”
This reduction in global growth potential could be avoided if certain public policies are implemented.
According to the young economist, the European Union (EU) has implemented some of them, such as the subsidy of renewable energies and the carbon credit market (a system designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through financial incentives).
Added to this is another controversial measure that Bilal supports: the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which imposes a tariff on the carbon content of imports.
“This allows European companies to maintain the competitiveness of our trading partners, based on carbon pricing. The interesting thing is that this has generated a domino effect,” he argued.
The idea is that this mechanism encourages exporting countries, such as China or India, to adopt their own carbon taxes, to prevent the money from the tariff from staying in the coffers of the European Union.
Bilal, whose initial training is as a physicist – a branch that has helped him approach his studies in a more multidisciplinary way – was cautious about whether or not to adopt policies focused on stopping climate change on a global scale.
“There are reasons to be optimistic about the transition towards renewables. At the same time, we still do not have the necessary batteries,” said the academic, for whom “there are still many energy dependency problems.”