The study, published in Nature on Wednesday, calculates how much global heating has constrained GDP and assigned responsibility for this to countries based on their emissions since 1990. The research found China is responsible for $9 trillion in GDP damage since 1990, while US emissions have caused an estimated $500 billion of economic damage to India and $330 billion in damage to Brazil over the same period. The exact methodology used to calculate the $10 trillion in damages and how economic damage is defined remain unclear, as do the specific years covered by the past three decades and which other countries were analyzed.
The US has long resisted the idea of being held legally liable for its planet-heating pollution. Under Donald Trump, this stance has accelerated with the withdrawal of the US from a loss and damage fund, though the current status and impact of this withdrawal are not detailed in the study.