Time to Join Forces on Climate Disruption

Over 40 percent of Americans live in counties hit the hardest by climate disasters in 2021. Another big year and another big bill for the nation to pay for it all. Not only are these climate catastrophes – flood, fire, drought, hurricanes, tornadoes – killing people and destroying communities, but they are increasingly costly. Tax payers have had to come up with dramatically more money to deal with all this disruption. 

In 2021, there were 20 weather/climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each to affect the United States. These included 1 drought, 2 floods, 11 severe storms, 4 tropical cyclones, 1 wildfire, and 1 winter storm, all of which have led to 688 lives lost. 

Over the past forty years (’80-’21), the United States experienced, on average, 7.4 events every year. However, the national average has more than doubles in the last five years alone to 17.2 catastrophic events annually (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/). Since 1980 the costs for dealing with these have been staggeringly high, over $2.2 trillion. In the last four decades, the annual cost of America’s emergency response to these disasters has grown dramatically from $190 billion in 1980s to $873 billion in last decade. And deaths have gone up in equally dramatic fashion, from approximately 300 every decade to over 900 lives lost in the last five years alone.

And yet there are still many who choose to deny climate change that is responsible for the violent weather disruption we are all experiencing, instead of demanding that American ingenuity be deployed to solve this challenge - starting by tapping into the right sources of alternative energy - before disruption becomes the new normal.  Rather than giving lip service about the climate change we are experiencing, Americans should be focused on improving their way of life to avert further climatic catastrophes. It is time for a concerted and unified legislative approach across party lines to address this whole problem, and save trillions more in future dollars and many, many more lives to be lost unnecessarily.