President Trump did not mince words in his response to the U.N.’s major climate report on Monday. While he conceded that our climate is changing, he isn’t sure if it’s manmade, he thinks it will change back again (though didn’t specify the timeframe), and he definitely does not want to pay to fix it.
But here’s the problem: The president of the United States is already spending money on climate change—loads of it, in fact—and so are businesses, communities, and Americans from every walk of life. And the bill is only going to soar further in the coming years.
Consider a report released last year from the Government Accountability Office—one of President Trump’s own federal agencies—which found that climate change has cost the federal government over $350 billion in the last decade, largely due to extreme weather and wildfires. Without immediate government action, the costs created by environmental change will continue to climb, generating a mind-boggling economic price tag that will near $300 billion annually by 2050, according to EPA projections. Let that sink in.
