Pirate's Cove

Because the world is on the brink, you know, because if we don’t spend it now we’ll spend it later, you know

When the World Is on the Brink, $3.5 Trillion Is a Pittance
What we don’t spend now to deal with climate change will cost us much more later.

See?

Mr. Lustgarten is an environmental reporter for ProPublica.

This article is copublished with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.

That’s weird, since ProPublica is a vastly Progressive outlet, and is advocating for legislation that is an abuse of power and will lead to more

There will be no bargains with an overheating climate.

The $3.5 trillion price tag that President Biden proposed for his climate-heavy Build Back Better Act might seem enormous. But over the long term, it will be a pittance.

By zeroing in on that number, the public debate seems to have skipped right over the economic ramifications of climate change, which promise to be historically disruptive — and enormously expensive. What we don’t spend now will cost us much more later.

No bargains!

The bills for natural disasters and droughts and power outages are already pouring in. Within a few decades, the total bill will be astronomical, as energy debts surge, global migration swells and industrial upheaval follows. The scale of the threat demands a new way of thinking about spending. Past budgets can no longer guide how governments spend money in the future.

New ways! Which, for Democrats, usually involves taxing and feeing citizens. When do he Dem legislators and activists pushing for this all buy EVs and make their own lives Net Zero?

Some economists and climate scientists have calculated that climate change could cost the United States the equivalent of nearly 4 percent of its gross domestic product a year by 2100. Four percent is likely a conservative estimate; it leaves out consequential costs like damages from drought and climate migration. It assumes the United States and other nations eventually move away from energy generated by oil, coal and natural gas, though not as immediately as many say is needed. In this scenario, the planet will still warm by around three degrees Celsius by the end of the century from preindustrial levels, a change that would be disastrous.

“Could.” That’s another word for “we’re guessing”

The warming climate will worsen virtually every existing service, from water and sewage treatment to mass transit to food distribution to health care, and erode the wealth of millions. Dr. Hsiang, who presented his findings to Congress in 2019, estimates that over the next 80 years intensifying heat alone will reduce Americans’ incomes by $4 trillion to $10.4 trillion as farming becomes more difficult, food prices rise and labor productivity falls. Climate risks are already undercutting the value of real estate in the most vulnerable parts of the country, including the roughly $1.6 trillion worth of private property directly threatened by sea level rise and wildfires.

Doom! Yet, Democrats are spending only a tiny bit of their “infrastructure” bill on this stuff. Weird, eh?

Just as economists have linked hotter temperatures to declining crop yields, they have also linked them to more disease, more crime, more suicides and other effects on people’s health and well-being. All of them result in losses — both social and economic — and threaten the country’s strength and stability.

More doom! Everything is horrible! Anyone else tired of the constant prognostications of doom, especially since Mankind has moved further ahead more than any other period?

Not to invest in these societal defenses today looks like an embrace of chaos and a choice to roll the dice on a period of unpredictable and disruptive change probably greater than anything in human existence.

When the stakes are viewed this way, investing in defending economic stability seems conservative. Failing to respond to the scientific and economic forecasts is what seems dangerously radical.

Tell you what, you Warmists spend your own money. It will make no difference.