(NewsNation) —  Climate change will lower the income of every person in the world in the next quarter-century, no matter what we do to slow it down. That’s the conclusion of a new study from the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany, published in the journal Nature.

The study says the world is already headed to a 19% permanent average reduction in incomes due to climate change by 2050. That’s six times larger than the cost of limited global warming by two degrees worldwide.

“Climate change will cause massive economic damages within the next 25 years in almost all countries around the world,” said PIK scientist Leonie Wenz who led the study.

In pure dollars, the study estimates that global annual damage from climate change will be $38 trillion. By comparison, the cost of slowing climate change until 2050 will be about $6 trillion.

“This clearly shows that protecting our climate is much cheaper than not doing so, and that is without even considering non-economic impacts such as loss of life or biodiversity,” said Wenz.

He also says the 19% worldwide income loss will increase until the world makes big changes. “We have to cut down our emissions drastically and immediately – if not, economic losses will become even bigger in the second half of the century, amounting to up to 60% on global average by 2100.”

The study predicts the future with numbers from the past: temperature and rainfall levels from more than 1,600 places worldwide measured over the past 40 years.

The study pegged the worldwide average lost income at 19%, but only about 11% in Europe and North America. It says the lost income percentage could be about 22% in South Asia and Africa.