Climate-change denial will cost the U.S. billions of dollars, said Shaun Donovan, the new director of the Office of Management and Budget, during his first speech Friday.
Acting appropriately regarding the real threat of climate change is extremely important to Donovan and may even be essential to our ability to "fund and operate the government in a responsible manner," Donovan said at the Center for American Progress event, without even so much as mentioning the $17.8 trillion U.S. national debt, according to The Hill.
"From where I sit, climate action is a must-do; climate inaction is a can't do; and climate denial scores - and I don't mean scoring points on the board. I mean that it scores in the budget. Climate denial will cost us billions of dollars," said Donovan according to the Washington Post.
"The failure to invest in climate solutions and climate preparedness doesn't get you membership in a Fiscal Conservatives' Caucus - it makes you a member of the Flat Earth Society. The costs of climate change add up, and ignoring the problem only makes it worse."
Climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of bad weather events like super storm Sandy and Katrina, according to Donovan. These events are a major source of drain on the economy, with extreme weather events costing $188 billion in damage in 2011 and 2012, according to a Center for American Progress report from 2013.
Coastal storms are expected to bear a price tag of $35 billion each year, reported the Washington Post. Add in droughts and wild fires amplified due to climate change, and the U.S. is dealing with quite a hefty price tag.
Such warnings aren't just coming out of the White House. The nonpartisan and independent General Accounting Office added climate change to its high-risk list last year, said the Washington Post.
Effects of climate change "will result in increased fiscal exposure for the federal government in many areas," such as damage to federal property, federal insurance claims and increased disaster relief, the GAO said.
The International Monetary Fund and the New Climate Economy Project also recently released reports claiming that cutting greenhouse gases could lead to faster economic growth, reported Think Progress.
President Obama is scheduled to speak at the United Nations climate summit in New York on Tuesday, where he will lay out his plan for climate action. Lawmakers have also introduced several climate-related bills leading up to the event, one targeting super-pollutants and one that will help the U.S. prepare for possible health impacts of climate change, reported the Hill.
"We made sure that science was at the heart of this work," Donovan said. "It is our job to ensure the capacity to fund and demand data and data-driven climate action. We need to make sure we know that we're rebuilding stronger. And we need to collect the data to verify our assumptions."
