Climate change will come with a serious price tag, says a report by the Government Accountability Office, urging President Trump to take the phenomenon seriously.
The study “says that different sectors of the economy and different parts of the country will be harmed in ways that are difficult to predict,” according to The New York Times. “But one estimate projects that rising temperatures could cause losses in labor productivity of as much as $150 billion by 2099, while changes in some crop yields could cost as much as $53 billion. The Southwest will suffer more costly wildfires, the Southeast will see more heat-related deaths and the Northwest must prepare for diminished shellfish harvests.”
The report was two years in the making and jointly requested by Sens. Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, and Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. Collins has become a climate-change renegade in her party, opposing the nomination of EPA chief Scott Pruitt and criticizing President Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Climate Agreement, explains the Los Angeles Times.
While the Trump administration has largely opposed the idea of human-caused climate change, the report called on the president’s office and other agencies to make a concerted effort to find solutions. “The federal government does not have government-wide strategic planning efforts in place to help set clear priorities for managing significant climate risks before they become federal fiscal exposures,” the report said. “[G]iven the potential magnitude of climate change and the lead time needed to adapt, preparing for these impacts now may reduce the need for far more costly steps in the decades to come.”