A non-partisan federal watchdog says climate change is already costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars each year, with those costs expected to rise as devastating storms, floods, wildfires and droughts become more frequent in the coming decades.
A Government Accountability Office report released Monday said the federal government has spent more than $350 billion over the last decade on disaster assistance programs and losses from flood and crop insurance. That tally does not include the massive toll from this year’s wildfires and three major hurricanes, expected to be among the most costly in the nation’s history.
The report predicts these costs will only grow in the future, potentially reaching a budget busting $35 billion a year by 2050. The report says the federal government doesn’t effectively plan for these recurring costs, classifying the financial exposure from climate-related costs as “high risk.”
“The federal government has not undertaken strategic government-wide planning to manage climate risks by using information on the potential economic effects of climate change to identify significant risks and craft appropriate federal responses,” the study said. “By using such information, the federal government could take the initial step in establishing government-wide priorities to manage such risks.”
And of course this does not calculate the cost of human life that will also rise exponentially as these devastating weather patterns worsen.
Just imagine for a minute how much less all of this would have cost if thirty years ago people had listened to those wacky climate scientists and started working toward weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, and moving toward renewable energy sources.
We could have literally saved billions and billions of dollars.
But then how would those poor oil companies have made their billions and billions of dollars?
Source http://ift.tt/2yWeSIH
