Climate Change, Infrastructure & Hard Dollar Cost

 

As Senate Republicans vow to continue to block even bare bones budgetary expenditures aimed at addressing the ravages of climate change, such disasters continue to accelerate to record levels. Directly or by promising to block any future effort to raise the national debt ceiling, these GOP stalwarts – bolstered by the filibuster/cloture rule that allows this minority to control whether most critical legislation ever reaches the Senate floor for a vote – seem willing to tolerate only major deficit increases to support tax cuts for the rich, as they did in 2017. 

Without looking at gradual losses, from desertification of once productive agricultural land to health challenges from searing heat and migrating disease-carrying insects and creeping coast erosion, the hard dollar cost of major (each generating at least one billion dollars in damage) climate change disasters so far in 2021 suggest the folly of head-in-the-sand politics. The expected cost of climate change damage represents a multiple of the proposed budgetary infrastructure commitments on the table. Some of these disasters, mainly tornadoes, may not be directly related to climate change, but these exceptions represent only a small fraction of the total natural disaster inflicted damage.

An analysis of such major climate change-related natural disasters by AccuWeather.com (updated October 8th) presents the numbers that the GOP continues to ignore or deny: “As of Oct. 8, 18 billion-dollar disasters have occurred in the United States in 2021, with the country on pace to surpass 2020, which saw a record high of 22 billion-dollar disasters, according to a new report released Friday [10/8] by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) [the source of the above map].

“In 2021, the cost of disasters in the country has already exceeded the economic cost of all of 2020's disasters. Weather and climate disasters have not only killed 538 people thus far this year, but they have also cost the U.S. $104.8 billion in damages. Of the 18 disasters, one was a drought, two were flooding events, nine were severe weather events, four were tropical cyclones, one was a wildfire and one was a winter storm… In 2020, the 22 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the U.S. cost just under $100 billion in damages, according to NOAA. 

“The southern United States has been dealt a significant blow this year, with Hurricane Ida standing as the most damaging disaster of the year to date, costing at least $64.5 billion in damages and leading to 96 deaths. Ida caused near-total destruction in coastal Louisiana, where it made landfall before knocking out power to a significant part of the New Orleans area. Ida then tracked through the Northeast as a tropical rainstorm, spawning an EF3 tornado and record flash flooding in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey, killing dozens.

Other tropical systems made the list too, with Hurricane Nicholas and Tropical Storms Elsa and Fred all causing more than $1 billion in damages after striking the Gulf Coast.

“Ida was not the deadliest disaster of the year, though. That unwanted distinction goes to the still-ongoing drought and unprecedented June heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, which has killed at least 229 people… Compounding the economic toll that these disasters are taking on the U.S. is the increasing frequency of these devastating blows to the country. The time between billion-dollar disasters has dropped to just 18 days on average between 2016-2020, according to Climate Central's analysis of new NOAA data. The number of days between disasters has quickly accelerated; in the 1980s, a span of 82 days was the average time between billion-dollar disasters in the United States.

“‘The time between billion-dollar disasters was calculated by measuring the number of days between the start date of each disaster as recorded by NOAA/NCEI,’ Climate Central's Erika Freimuth said, explaining the methodology behind how the averages were calculated. ‘The difference in days was only for calendar year events, with the first event of the calendar year set as the first date.’…

“Since 1980, the toll of disasters in the United States has been steep. With 308 billion-dollar disasters, the total economic cost of these events has exceeded $2 trillion, a figure that will only increase in the future.” That does not include the continuing “slow” damage from climate change that just might eclipse the cost of single event natural disasters: desertification, loss or severe value reduction of coastal properties, health deterioration and deaths from excess heat, loss of potable water to large cities, loss of production food-producing farms, armed conflicts over diminishing resources, job loss, to name a few. If we think we can continue to kick the can down the road, we just may begin to understand the concept of “irreversible consequences.” “Too little, too late” just might be the harshest lesson humanity may ever learn.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the alarm clock for our climate change wake-up call seems to be out of order.