A New Government Report Gives a Dire Warning About Climate Change

Gabrielle Bruney
Updated
Photo credit: David McNew - Getty Images
Photo credit: David McNew - Getty Images

From Esquire

While Americans were gorging ourselves on leftovers and checking for the latest Black Friday deals, the White House released a damning report that warns that by 2100, climate change will likely have cost America more than 10% of its economy as well as thousands of lives.

The report was issued by the US Global Change Research Program, a joint venture of 13 federal agencies that enlisted 300 scientists from both within and outside the government. It predicts that billions of hours of labor will be lost as more days each year become too hot for people to work. Midwestern farmers will see corn yields shrink by 75 percent. Rising sea levels will imperil a trillion dollars in coastal real estate. The wildfires that have left portions of California devastated in recent weeks will become even more destructive. Natural disasters as well as tic and mosquito-borne illnesses will kill thousands.

This report comes on the heels of last month’s paper from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which forecast similarly dire warnings. This new investigation, however, comes from inside the U.S. government, making the Trump administration’s climate change-denials seem all the more stark in comparison. On Wednesday, the President expressed skepticism about climate change when he took to Twitter ahead of a Thanksgiving that was record setting in its coldness. But short stretches of cold weather don't disprove the long-term warming that marks global climate change.

And when visiting wildfire-destroyed Paradise, California last week, the president confirmed that the sight of the devastation hadn’t changed his opinion about climate change. "I have a strong opinion," said the President. "I want great climate, we’re going to have that, and we’re going to have forests that are very safe."

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