How Much Does Climate Change Cost? Try $1.5 Trillion (and Counting)
Why you can trust us
Firefighters clear debris from a mudslide in Los Angeles, California on January 9, 2018. The deadly rain storm claimed the lives of 13 people in Santa Barbara County. Flash flooding also occurred in the recently burned areas of Ventura and Los Angeles counties.
Photo by Ronen Tivony/NurPhoto via Getty Images.
The Trump administration, and its allies in Congress, are fighting a losing war. They continue to press forward for the development of oil, gas, and coal when the rest of the world understands the implication of that folly. Global warming is the most pressing issue for our time. Period.
The thing is governments really have two choices when it comes to managing the impact on its people from global warming: spend money on trying to reduce the problem or spend money on cleaning up the catastrophes.
The Trump administration is on the hook for the catastrophe. 聽pegged the total cost this year at $1.5 trillion, including estimates for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. (And that doesn鈥檛 even begin to count the human toll, lost lives, lost jobs, lost opportunity.)
I witnessed firsthand the impact of Hurricane Maria on the island of Dominica last month. We keep hearing stories about the power grid being down (similar to Puerto Rico) and you think, Why? It鈥檚 been months. Why aren鈥檛 the lights on? Then you see nearly every electrical pole on the island sideways. The entire grid needs to be rebuilt (or better, rethought) and that鈥檚 decades of infrastructure. So the figure of $1.5 trillion is far short of what will be needed. Nearly every electrical line, every other house, the damage was so widespread it鈥檚 impossible to overstate. And that鈥檚 just one island. Multiple the effect across the region. The planet.
Even the United States.
The Centers for Environmental Information says there were 16 weather and climate disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion each across the country last year. These events included one drought, two flooding events, one severe freeze, eight severe storms, three cyclones, and one extraordinary wildfire. These 鈥渆vents,鈥� as the center defines them, resulted in 362 deaths.
Turns out 2017 was a record-breaking year. 鈥淚n total, the U.S. was impacted by 16 separate billion-dollar disaster events tying 2011 for the record number of billion-dollar disasters for an entire calendar year,鈥� the report said. 鈥淚n fact, 2017 arguably has more events than 2011 given that our analysis traditionally counts all U.S. billion-dollar wildfires, as regional-scale, seasonal events, not as multiple isolated events. More notable than the high frequency of these events is the cumulative cost, which exceeds $300 billion in 2017鈥攁 new U.S. annual record.鈥�
A similar report was published by the Government Accountability Office, including a recommendation that Executive Office of the President 鈥渋dentify significant climate risks and craft appropriate federal responses.鈥�
But instead of trying to reduce the impact鈥攁nd the costs of weather-related catastrophe鈥攖he Trump administration continues on course for new development of oil and gas. The Interior Department announced new rules that, if enacted, will open up nearly all of the United States coastal waters to more oil and gas development beginning next year.
鈥淏y proposing to open up nearly the entire OCS for potential oil and gas exploration, the United States can advance the goal of moving from aspiring for energy independence to attaining energy dominance,鈥� 聽鈥淭his decision could bring unprecedented access to America鈥檚 extensive offshore oil and gas resources and allow us to better compete with other oil-rich nations.鈥�
Or as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke put it: 鈥淭he important thing is we strike the right balance to protect our coasts and people while still powering America and achieving American Energy Dominance.鈥�
Dominance is such a funny word. How can any nation be dominant in the face of hurricanes that are ever more powerful and destructive? How does energy dominance work when tens of thousands of Americans will have to move because their homes are no longer there because of fire or storms? What happens if that number grows into the hundreds of thousands? Millions? How can we afford to spend trillions of dollars rebuilding what we have now?
A group of elders on the Bering Sea immediately condemned the Interior Department鈥檚 offshore drilling plan. 鈥淲e told them that in person last October and again in writing, that there were 76 tribes in these regions opposed to this,鈥� said the statement from the elders. 鈥淭he draft plan implies that Bering Sea communities were 鈥榞enerally supportive of some鈥� oil and gas activity. This is not accurate and there is no evidence of this from Bering Sea communities. For decades, our people have opposed oil and gas activity and we continue to oppose it today. The northern Bering Sea is a very fragile ecosystem. The marine mammals that we rely on use it as their highway and they follow specific migration routes. That is how we know when and where to find them. The noise and vibration associated with drilling will interfere with their sonar and disrupt their migrations. Then we the coastal people will lose our primary food source.鈥�
There is a connection between developing oil and gas and paying the high costs to clean up after a storm. One side of the ledger goes to a few; the oil and gas 鈥渋ndustry.鈥� The folks who bought and paid for this administration.
The other side of the ledger is the rest of us. The taxpayers who will foot the bill for this continued folly.
And on the Bering Sea? The folks who live there are one storm away from a tragedy. As the elders put it: 鈥淥ur people and our way of life are being exposed to danger and we do not understand why.鈥�
Editor鈥檚 Note: This article was originally published with a headline stating the cost of climate change is $1.5 billion. The actual figure is $1.5 trillion. Corrected January 12, 2018.
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Mark Trahant
is editor-at-large for Indian Country Today. Trahant leads the Indigenous Economics Project, a comprehensive look at Indigenous economics, including market-based initiatives.聽Trahant is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and has written about American Indian and Alaska Native issues for more than three decades. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has held endowed chairs at the University of North Dakota and University of Alaska Anchorage, and has worked as a journalist since 1976. Trahant is a 猫咪社区! contributing editor.
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