The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released findings about climate and weather disasters for 2021 this week. Last year, we had 20 separate weather and climate disasters that each caused more than $1 billion in physical damage (buildings, crops, and infrastructure), almost 700 deaths, and a total of $145 billion to fix the damage caused by the disasters.
It doesn’t include heat waves such as the one in the Pacific Northwest that killed hundreds of people, melted telephone wires and damaged roads, but didn’t reach $1 billion in physical damage.
Here in the Southeast, we had multiple billion-dollar disasters, including tropical storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, and severe weather.
As Vijay Limaye at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) notes, NOAA’s cost estimate is just to fix the physical damage caused by the disaster (buildings, roads, restoration, etc.). It doesn’t include the health costs of injuries, hospitalizations, and deaths from the disasters – people injured by floods, flying objects, or damaged houses, air pollution from wildfires, PTSD and mental health issues from surviving a disaster, and also the loss to our country of people dying prematurely.
Over the last 5 years, NOAA data shows that the U.S. has spent an average of almost $150 billion PER YEAR responding to climate disasters. These weather/climate disasters include drought, flooding, freezes, severe storms, hurricanes, and wildfires.
At the same time, other data shows that the last 7 years have been the 7 hottest years EVER RECORDED. The heat we are seeing is caused by greenhouse gases, which come from burning fossil fuels and biofuels. The heat is what is causing the climate to change, making all the weather incidents stronger and more extreme, causing more damage and costing more to repair.
In addition to the cost of climate dissasters, air pollution itself damages crops, reduces worker productivity, and also costs us billions each year in lost economic output.
Because of our country’s environmental racism, black and brown people and communities bear the brunt of climate disasters and are most exposed to health-damaging air pollution.
If we are spending $148 billion per year repairing climate disasters, it only makes sense to pass federal legislation that creates funding for more clean energy, clean transportation, and energy conservation. $550 billion over 10 years is $55 billion per year, not even close to the $148 billion each year we spend repairing disaster.
01/14/2022
