Climate change could cost U.S. $2 trillion each year by the end of the century, says White House

Dry cracked earth is visible in an area of Lake Powell that was previously underwater on March 28, 2022 in Page, Arizona. As severe drought grips parts of the Western United States, water levels at Lake Powell dropped to their lowest levels since the lake was created by damming the Colorado River in 1963.

The White House said on Monday that climate change could cost the US $2 trillion a year by the end of the century.

The Office of Management and Budget, which administers the federal budget, found that climate change could cause a 7.1% annual loss in federal revenues by the end of the century.

The report found that the government could spend an additional $25 billion to $128 billion each year on expenditures like coastal disaster relief, flood insurance, crop insurance, healthcare insurance, and wildland fire suppression.

The OMB's associate director for climate and its chief economist wrote on Monday that the fiscal risk of climate change is immense.

They wrote that climate change threatens communities and sectors across the country, including through floods, drought, extreme heat, wildfires, and hurricanes that affect the U.S. economy and the lives of everyday Americans.

On the same day as the U.N. climate science panel's highly anticipated report, the news came.

The world has warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and is on track to experience a global temperature rise of 2.4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

The OMB's analysis showed that the federal fire suppression costs could increase by between 22% and 480% by the end of the century. Spending on coastal disaster response could increase by between $22 billion and $94 billion each year by the end of the century.

The analysis said that 12,000 federal buildings across the country could be flooded by ten feet of sea level rise. It would be an extreme sea level rise figure. The sea level in the US is predicted to rise between 0.6 and 2.2 meters by the end of the century.

President Joe Biden last week released a budget proposal that called for nearly 45 billion dollars in new funding for climate change, clean energy and environmental justice programs. The president's core legislation to address climate change is stuck in Congress and the budget includes an increase in climate funding over the next fiscal year.

The climate portion of the bill would be the largest-ever federal clean energy investment and could help the U.S. get halfway to the president's pledge to curb emissions.

Biden said earlier this year that he would probably need to break up the plan, but he still believed that Congress would pass some of it.