The High Cost of Climate Change Inaction

We're already paying the price and it's going higher 

By Gina-Marie Cheeseman 

Key Takeaways

• The Trump administration underestimates climate change, leading to significant economic damage estimated at $10.2 trillion since 1990.
• Climate-related disasters could shrink U.S. GDP by 10% by 2050, with poorer communities bearing the brunt of the costs.
• Climate change has already cost the U.S. economy over $750 billion in the last five years due to weather disasters.
• The impact of climate change on households includes rising costs from property damage, healthcare, and insurance gaps, disproportionately affecting minority communities.
• A 2023 EPA report highlighted that underserved communities, particularly Black individuals, face the highest risks and costs associated with climate change.

From the first day of Donald Trump’s second term, he has made it clear his administration does not take climate change seriously. 

That is a very costly mistake, as a recently published study shows. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions since 1990 have caused $10.2 trillion in global economic damage, with U.S. carbon emissions the largest source.

 Almost $3 trillion in damage from U.S. emissions occurred within the U.S.

“We see in the data that the effects of a really hot year can persist for a long time,” Marshall Burke, an environmental social sciences professor at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, said. “When you include the long-run effects, the damage estimates get bigger.”

A Swiss Re report estimated that climate disasters could wipe out 10 percent of U.S. GDP by 2050. The world economy could decline by 18 percent over the next 30 years. However, the impacts could be lessened if the Paris Agreement targets are met.

A study by researchers at the University of Chicago found that the U.S. would lose between 1 and 4 percent of GDP annually by the end of the century with modest levels of temperature rise. The poor will feel the biggest effects. The researchers predict that the poorest third of U.S. counties will experience damages of 2 to 20 percent of their county income if emissions are high.

Climate Change Has Already Cost the U.S. Big Bucks

Climate change has already affected the U.S. A Deloitte survey found that 97 percent of businesses say it has negatively impacted them. The 431 weather disaster events causing over $1 billion in damage have cost a total of $3.1 trillion since 1980. Climate-related weather disasters in 2021 alone cost the U.S. economy more than $165 billion (6.6 times the cost of the Iran war under the administration’s current accounting), almost a 50 percent increase from 2020. In the last five years, weather disasters have cost the U.S. $750 billion.

Climate change has reduced annual U.S. income by 0.32 percent. In some regions, climate change has cost households more than $1,000 annually, researchers from MIT estimated. “A key lesson from our work is that climate change has disparate impacts and those Americans most affected by the devastating consequences of natural disasters bear very high costs,” the paper’s co-authors wrote in an opinion piece.

“A lot of the ways in which we discuss climate now are kind of abstract and in the future — maybe these impacts happen in 2050 or 2100 — but we really wanted to emphasize that this is already occurring and it’s having negative financial implications for households.” Catherine Wolfram, an MIT professor and co-author of the paper

Households feel financial strain from the impacts of climate change. The strain comes from multiple sources, including damage and destruction of property from weather events and wildfires, added healthcare costs, and insurance gaps. The people experiencing increased costs of living are real people, and disproportionately, they are racial and ethnic minorities.

A 2023 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency analysis found that the worst harms from climate change affect “underserved communities.” The analysis estimated that Black individuals will face the highest impacts of climate change. They are 34 percent more likely to live in polluted areas with the highest projected increases in childhood asthma. In comparison, 40 percent are more likely to live in areas with the highest projected deaths from extreme temperatures.

Gina-Marie Cheeseman http://www.justmeans.com/users/gina-marie-cheeseman is a freelance writer/journalist/copyeditor