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 These are among the economic costs that climate change is expected
to exact in the United States over the next 25 years, according to a
bipartisan report released on Tuesday. And that's just for starters:
The price tag could soar to hundreds of billions by 2100.
Commissioned by a group chaired by former New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg, former Secretary of the Treasury and Goldman
Sachs alum Henry Paulson, and environmentalist and financier Tom
Steyer, the analysis "is the most detailed ever of the potential
economic effects of climate change on the U.S.," said climatologist
Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University.
The report lands three weeks after President Barack Obama ordered
U.S. regulators to take their strongest steps ever to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, including requiring power plants to cut
carbon dioxide emissions to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
 Called "Risky Business," the report projects climate impacts at
scales as small as individual counties. Its conclusions about crop
losses and other consequences are based not on computer projections,
which climate-change skeptics routinely attack, but on data from
past heat waves.
It paints a grim picture of economic loss. "Our economy is
vulnerable to an overwhelming number of risks from climate change,"
Paulson said in a statement, including from sea-level rise and from
heat waves that will cause deaths, reduce labor productivity and
strain power grids.
By mid-century, $66 billion to $106 billion worth of coastal
property will likely be below sea level. There is a 5 percent chance
that by 2100 the losses will reach $700 billion, with average annual
losses from rising oceans of $42 billion to $108 billion along the
Eastern Seaboard and Gulf of Mexico.
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Extreme heat, especially in the Southwest, Southeast and upper
Midwest, will slash labor productivity as people are unable to work
outdoors at construction and other jobs for sustained periods. The
analysis goes further than previous work, said Princeton's
Oppenheimer, by identifying places that will be "unsuited for
outdoor activity."
Demand for electricity will surge as people need air conditioning
just to survive, straining generation and transmission capacity.
That will likely require the construction of up to 95 gigawatts of
generation capacity over the next 5 to 25 years, or roughly 200
average-size coal or natural gas power plants.
As utilities add the construction costs to customers' bills, people
and businesses will pay $8.5 billion to $30 billion more every year
by the middle of the century.
The report does not make policy prescriptions, concluding only that
"it is time for all American business leaders and investors to get
in the game and rise to the challenge of addressing climate change."
(Editing by Douglas Royalty)
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