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Where the Climate Change Rubber Meets the Road – Money [1]

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Date: 2023-05-11

Our NOAA-enabled kitchen friend

Our late breakfast this morning was interrupted by the NOAA radio in the kitchen crackling to life.

Since we’ve been staying at the family farm in northeast Iowa, we’ve heard it twice. The first time was our 2nd night on the farm, and the warnings were hair-raising – lots and lots of tornados rampaging through.

This morning, it announced flash flood warnings for a county just to the north.

The unit looks like the header image – an innocuous little white box with an ‘80s vibe, which sits demurely on a shelf by the kitchen table and can safely be ignored until it springs to life with potentially life-altering weather updates.

NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards (NWR) is a nationwide network of radio stations broadcasting continuous weather information directly from the nearest National Weather Service office. NWR broadcasts official Weather Service warnings, watches, forecasts and other hazard information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Working with the Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) Emergency Alert System , NWR is an "All Hazards" radio network, making it your single source for comprehensive weather and emergency information. In conjunction with Federal, State, and Local Emergency Managers and other public officials, NWR also broadcasts warning and post-event information for all types of hazards – including natural (such as earthquakes or avalanches), environmental (such as chemical releases or oil spills), and public safety (such as AMBER alerts or 911 Telephone outages). Known as the "Voice of NOAA's National Weather Service," NWR is provided as a public service by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), part of the Department of Commerce. NWR includes more than 1000 transmitters, covering all 50 states, adjacent coastal waters, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Pacific Territories. NWR requires a special radio receiver or scanner capable of picking up the signal.

This is a great service, and is an example of why need to keep funding science and infrastructure in the United States. But I digress.

This diary is about the weather: the droughts, flash floods, tornados, wildfires and hurricanes that are becoming bigger – faster – louder – harder with the changing climate. And it is about how much these weather disasters will collectively cost us.

Weather disasters are terrifying on a personal level – but they’re also terrifying from a long-term budget perspective, because they cost money. Lots and lots of money.

Oh – and they can be deadly, too, if a little thing like loss of human life bothers you.

On July 27, 2022, a flood swept through 14 counties in East Kentucky, killing 45 people and displacing thousands more. More than six months later, the affected communities remain on a long road to recovery.

As for what it cost? If you’re a Republican, that should worry you – right? Grand Old Party of Fiscal Responsibility, what?

In January of this year, FEMA was estimating the cost of those 2022 East Kentucky floods at over $150 million.

Hurricane Ian in 2022 was briefly a Category 5 monster storm, as well as the costliest in Florida history, at $109 billion.

In April 2023 the Tampa Bay Times reported:

The aftershocks of Hurricane Ian’s mammoth human and financial toll are still rippling through Southwest Florida. The storm caused more than 150 deaths, directly or indirectly, and its towering storm surge claimed 36 lives in Lee County alone. The extent of the storm’s damage was detailed in a report released by the National Hurricane Center… Ian has racked up more than $112 billion in damage worldwide. Of that, more than $109 billion was in Florida.

For reference, please note that Florida’s annual budget in 2022 was $105.3 billion.

How about wildfires? Accuweather has reported that the 2021 wildfire season in California cost between $70 and $90 billion dollars.

Are droughts pretty inexpensive, though? Nah. No such luck. Here’s NOAA:

Since 1980, the U.S. has sustained 258 weather and climate disasters where the overall damage costs reached or exceeded $1 billion (including adjustments based on the Consumer Price Index, as of January 2020). Among these, 26 droughts cost the nation at least $249 billion, with an average cost of more than $9.6 billion incurred during each event. Only hurricanes were more costly. The cumulative cost for all 258 events exceeds $1.75 trillion. The number and cost of disasters are increasing over time due to a combination of increased exposure (i.e., values at risk of possible loss), vulnerability (i.e., how much damage does the intensity [wind speed, flood depth] at a location cause) and that climate change is increasing the frequency of some types of extremes that lead to billion-dollar disasters (NCA 2018, Chapter 2). Number of events The U.S. has experienced 69 separate billion-dollar disaster events over the last 5 years (2015-2019), an inflation-adjusted average of 13.8 events per year. Over the last 40 years (1980-2019), the years with 10 or more separate billion-dollar disaster events include 1998, 2008, 2011-2012, and 2015-2019. (my bolding)

So yes. Climate change is killing people. It’s destroying homes and businesses. It’s getting worse every year, and will not stop getting worse for some time, even if we were to stop all GHG emissions starting tomorrow.

As it worsens, it will cost us MONEY. When we are talking billions and TRILLIONS, we are “talking real money,” as the pundits would say.

The majority of Republican politicians know this. They have been briefed, and many of them are not as stupid as they playact on TV. There are a few unregenerate climate deniers and low-information dimwits out there (Tuberville, Greene, Bobert, etc.) – as well as Democrats who should know better but would prefer to line their own filthy wallets (Manchin, [D, Coal Mine Hell] – but there are also many more GOP politicians who know the truth but dare not speak it because of the “culture wars” veneer this issue has (enragingly) acquired.

Republicans are addicted to saying that we must balance the budget and “pay our bills, just like the average American family,” so where do they think the additional billions and trillions are coming from to cover the “Texas Strong” and “Louisiana Strong” building back that will need to be done as the climate worsens?

For now, of course, red states will get that money from the blue states, who perennially fund their abject nonsense. But there is only so much we can collectively pay before we will have to decide to make sacrifices. All the local charities and GoFundMe accounts in the world won’t be able to make up the shortfall as hurricanes bloom like toxic blossoms over the Gulf of Mexico, and wildfires rampage through Sacramento and downtown LA.

The rubber is going to meet the road very soon. The butcher’s bill is starting to come due. Is it even marginally plausible to consider that there might be a way to talk to Republicans about the changing climate if we invite them to join us in talking to Americans about what this is costing them AS TAXPAYERS every year?

It seems impossible that no argument – no appeal to fiscal policy or budgetary reason – will break through to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle.

And yes, I can hear people now – “Republicans are scum!” and “they’re hopeless” and “we have bigger fish to fry what with creeping fascism and the death of democracy!” and I hear you, I really do. But if we don’t start to put more pressure on not just our Democratic elected leaders, but Republicans too, we really don’t have a hope in hell of moving the needle on any of this.

And maybe appealing to the GOP love of money – filthy lucre – good old American greenbacks – and presenting them with the unappetizing prospect of shoveling endless amounts of it into an ever widening money pit of climate disasters, is a place to start.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/11/2168799/-Where-the-Climate-Change-Rubber-Meets-the-Road-Money

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