In a stark analysis based on a study published by the journal Science, the New York Times examines the economic impact of man-made climate change on the United States over the next century.
Its conclusion? Southern states will be devastated.
In a new study in the journal Science, researchers analyzed the economic harm that climate change could inflict on the United States in the coming century. They found that the impacts could prove highly unequal: states in the Northeast and West would fare relatively well, while parts of the Midwest and Southeast would be especially hard hit…
The worst-hit counties — mainly in states that already have warm climates, like Arizona or Texas — could see losses worth 10 to 20 percent of G.D.P. or more if emissions continue to rise unchecked.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the greatest impact will be felt in deaths due to extreme heat.
If communities do not take preventative measures, the projected increase in heat-related deaths by the end of this century would be roughly equivalent to the number of Americans killed annually in auto accidents.
This is in addition to the massive infrastructure costs needed just to keep people alive, such as expanding exponentially the utility power grids to accommodate abnormally large spikes in the use of air conditioning in businesses and residences, and losses in labor productivity due to simple inability to work in the intense heat. Coping with coastal flooding, already a real-world concern in places like Norfolk, Virginia and Miami, will also create enormous demands on state government resources.
The study published in Science (ironically, a forbidden word in the Trump Administration) was conducted by The Climate Impact Lab and relied on new data enabling a group of economists, scientists and climate researchers to predict impact of climate disruption down to the county level in the U.S. The map above assumes—as we must—that greenhouse gas emissions will continue unabated at the current pace “in absence” of meaningful climate change policies. Prior studies had examined the impact to the U.S. as a whole—the current research demonstrates how the warming of the planet will forcibly disrupt specific regions and create economic imbalances that will be difficult, if not impossible, to compensate for.
The map at the top of this post demonstrates the losses to GDP on a county-to-county basis. The Southern United States is going to be, quite literally, burned up, with states like Florida, Texas, Arizona and Mississippi hit the hardest.
The study provides a perverse sense of solace in that it suggests that as states like Arizona become uninhabitable their citizens will most likely be inclined to move to states such as Oregon or Montana that might see a a rejuvenation of their own economies as industry and business relocate to more hospitable climates. But the authors caution that, overall, the news is anything but positive, particularly taking the visible trends in Arctic and ice sheet melting into account :
Economic losses on the coasts could be far higher if ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland disintegrate faster than expected. And climate change could bring other calamities that are harder to tally, such as the loss of valuable ecosystems like Florida’s coral reefs, or increased flows of refugees from other countries facing their own climate challenges.
The whole point of this research is to give states and cities an opportunity to prepare for these outcomes. That is the intrinsic value of science to all of us, be it in the United States or anywhere —it gives us the information we need to prepare sufficiently to survive.
But if our states (and federal government) continue to be governed by climate-change denying idiots bought and paid for by a fossil fuel industry bent on exacerbating the disaster that is plainly coming, there will be no room for excuses, and no one to blame, when the Southern half of this country begins to suffer through temperatures wholly inhospitable to human existence.