On Friday, the White House released a wide-ranging report mandated by Congress and compiled by numerous federal agencies that confirmed what previous prognoses have suggested: that the ramifications of climate change are coming hard, fast, and—barring immediate human intervention—irreversibly. The fourth National Climate Assessment, which numbers some 1,600 pages, also lays out the dire toll climate change is expected to take on the U.S. economy, as the planet becomes increasingly uninhabitable, and prone to extreme climate events, such as the wildfires so recently raging in California. “With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century—more than the current gross domestic product (G.D.P.) of many U.S. states,” the authors warn. All told, upcoming economic losses could more than double those posted during the Great Recession, per The New York Times:
The report puts the most precise price tags to date on the cost to the United States economy of projected climate impacts: $141 billion from heat-related deaths, $118 billion from sea level rise and $32 billion from infrastructure damage by the end of the century, among others.
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