Inside Climate News: US Unprepared to Face Costs of Climate Change, GAO Says
The United States is not saving money by ignoring the risks of climate change. "The Government Accountability Office, in a report issued on Tuesday, cited a range of research concluding that the costs of worsening droughts, floods, wildfires, heat waves and storms will run into hundreds of billions of dollars and threaten many parts of the economy, while hitting some regions particularly hard,” reports Georgina Gustin for Inside Climate News. The US government is failing to develop strategic plans or set priorities to minimize costs. Direct costs for climate events totaled more than $350 billion over the past decade. The current administration rejects the increasing risks of climate disasters while blocking policies that aim to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and emissions. The administration is also insisting on new ways to calculate the effects of climate-change costs while ignoring the economic impact for every industry as well as food production, labor productivity and public health. Assessing the risks and planning could reduce future pain. – YaleGlobal
Inside Climate News: US Unprepared to Face Costs of Climate Change, GAO Says
Climate change risks are rising, notes a US Government Accountability Office report, as government changes how it calculates costs to make them look smaller
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Georgina Gustin is a Washington-based reporter who has covered food policy, farming and the environment for more than a decade. She started her journalism career at The Day in New London, Conn., then moved to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where she launched the “food beat,” covering agriculture, biotech giant Monsanto and the growing “good food” movement. At CQ Roll Call, she covered food, farm and drug policy and the intersections http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/node/add/news?render=overlay#topbetween federal regulatory agencies and Congress. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post and National Geographic’s The Plate, among others.
Read the US Government Accountability Office report on the costs of climate change.
Inside Climate News