Climate change costs in the U.S. are mounting, watchdog warns Congress

With three major hurricane strikes, devastating wildfires, and deadly floods, 2017 is likely to set a record for the greatest number of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in a single year in the United States.

Damaging and expensive years like this one are likely to become the norm around the world as climate change shifts the odds in favor of particular extreme weather events, according to a new report by Congress' official auditing arm. In fact, toward the end of the 21st century, climate change-related cuts to agricultural production, along with sea level rise, wildfires, and heat waves, could rack up a bill into the trillions of dollars.

The Government Accountability Office released a report Tuesday that warns about the growing economic threat that climate change poses. In just the past decade, the report found, extreme weather and wildfire events have cost the federal government $350 billion, based on figures provided by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

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"These costs will likely rise as the climate changes," the report found, citing scientific studies. Two senators requested the report: Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington, and Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine.

These lawmakers say they are concerned about the mounting costs from climate change, especially given the Trump administration's moves to dismantle the steps taken under former president Barack Obama to reduce the pace and magnitude of global warming.

“We cannot ignore the impact of climate change on our public health, our environment, and our economy," Senator Collins said in a statement.

Houses are perched just above sea level in the Manhattan Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn. Credit: AP/REX/Shutterstock

"I hope the release of this analysis will cause all of us to think more broadly about this issue, take a harder look at the economic consequences of inaction, and use what is known about climate risks to inform federal policy."

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Unlike with other areas of climate science, such as the well-established link between the increase in global average surface temperatures and the heightened risk of punishing heat waves, this GAO study rests more heavily on a few emerging studies that have looked at how climate change impacts could alter economic activity.

The GAO reviewed two national-scale studies and 28 other studies for the report. The organization also conducted interviews with more than two-dozen experts involved in what is still an emerging area of climate research.

One of the main reports used by the GAO comes from a project involving the consulting firm Rhodium Group, which released a report called the American Climate Prospectus in 2014, and has since refined some of their projections.

That report found that rising sea levels and the changes in intensity and frequency of storms could run up a tab of $89 billion per year by the period between 2080 to 2099, along with up to $150 billion in labor productivity losses.

A more recent study from this group, published in the journal Science, mapped out the economic impacts of climate change across the U.S., finding that the South would bear the brunt of the economic losses overall. The GAO report also incorporated results from a 2015 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report, among other research.

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The GAO recommends that the federal government take steps to prepare for climate change and make the country more resilient to its effects. One such step would be to have the government take into account the economic and social costs of climate change when considering policy actions.

The Trump Administration has been moving in the opposite direction, however, by dismantling policies the Obama administration put in place that would incorporate the costs of climate change into decision-making.

For example, mere days before Hurricane Harvey produced the most extreme rainstorm ever recorded in the U.S., flooding huge portions of the Houston metro area, the Trump White House rescinded an Obama-era executive order requiring climate change to be taken into account when spending federal dollars on infrastructure projects and backing mortgages of homes located in flood zones.

“My colleagues no longer have to take it from me—the Government Accountability Office tells us climate change will cost taxpayers more than a half a trillion dollars this decade, and trillions more in the future unless we mitigate the impacts," Cantwell said, in a statement.

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