SPRING WISRD MAGAZINE, VOL 6, ISSUE 2

water and energy costs? would siphon $1.9 tr illion from the nat ion?s GDP by 2100. These project ions from the Nat ional Resources Defense Council (NRDC) are based on an adapted version of a model employed by Nicholas Stern, author of 2006 report The Economicsof Climate Change . The 2008 NRDC report uses the model to assess the costs of climate change across the four high-r isk key indicators ment ioned above. Without running any of the numbers, we know this: every Amer ican will be impacted by the consequences of climate change, from pr ivate cit izens to lawmakers to public inst itut ions to corporat ions. In 2025, hurr icane damages are expected to pull $10 billion dollars from the economy, with that number increasing four-fold by 2050 and r ising to $422 billion by 2100. Rising temperatures on the surface of the At lant ic Ocean create opt imal condit ions for hurr icanes, intensifying storms, and flooding, which results in erosion. These trends have played out in recent years with storms like Hurr icane Dor ian which ravaged states border ing the At lant ic in 2019, leaving 29,500 people without homes or jobs, and result ing in more than 69 confirmed casualt ies and upwards of 282 people missing. By 2100, the annual death toll as a result of climate change is forecast to reach 760, not unlikely consider ing just one event in 2019 killed at least 11% of that annual project ion. At lant ic and Gulf Coast states will bear the brunt of these disasters, which can create significant

loss of life, property damage, and disrupt crucial sectors of the economy. Most ly target ing the same region, real estate losses are projected to account for a $34 billion decrease in USGDP by 2025, increasing to $80 billion in 2050 and $360 billion by the end of the century. Along with a 13 degree Fahrenheit temperature increase (by some est imates), NRDC researchers expect to see a 23 inch sea level r ise by 2050, which is on track to r ise to 45 inches by 2100, threatening resident ial, commercial, and industr ial real estate in coastal areas and inland as oceans expand in surface area. In 2020, it can be argued that real estate losses due to climate disasters extend well beyond that region and into the Western United States, with devastat ing losses due to wildfires in California and Colorado, which are increasing in magnitude and frequency each year. In the energy sector, costs are expected to reach $28 billion by 2025, $47 billion in 2050, and $141 billion by 2021, impact ing most ly the Southeast and Southwest United States. If weather pat terns become more extreme in the coming decades, air condit ioning, heat ing, and refr igerat ion costs will skyrocket to match demand. Not only will this demand require addit ional heat ing, air condit ioning, and vent ilat ion infrastructure, electr icity use will increase. This will impact resident ial structures as well as commercial, because many industr ies rely on refr igerat ion systems to funct ion. Account ing for the greatest loss of annual GDP, water costs will likely reach $200 billion by 2025, $336 billion by 2050, and swell to $950 billion by 2100, affect ing most ly Western states prone to drought 13