Today's scientists point to climate change as "the biggest global health threat of the 21st century." It's a threat that impacts all of us-especially children, the elderly, low-income communities, and minorities-and in a variety of direct and indirect ways. A warmer, wetter world is also a boon for food-borne and waterborne illnesses and disease-carrying insects such as mosquitoes, fleas, and ticks.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, heavier rains cause streams, rivers, and lakes to overflow, which damages life and property, contaminates drinking water, creates hazardous-material spills, and promotes mold infestation and unhealthy air. Elsewhere around the world, lack of water is a leading cause of death and serious disease. Drought conditions jeopardize access to clean drinking water, fuel out-of-control wildfires, and result in dust storms, extreme heat events, and flash flooding in the States. Prolonged dry spells mean more than just scorched lawns. The increasing number of droughts, intense storms, and floods we're seeing as our warming atmosphere holds-and then dumps-more moisture poses risks to public health and safety, too. If you zero in on the years between 20, you see an annual average cost of $10.8 billion.
For context, each year from 1980 to 2015 averaged $5.2 billion in disasters (adjusted for inflation). "The number of billion-dollar weather disasters is expected to rise."Īccording to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in 2015 there were 10 weather and climate disaster events in the United States-including severe storms, floods, drought, and wildfires-that caused at least $1 billion in losses. "Extreme weather events are costing more and more," says Aliya Haq, deputy director of NRDC's Clean Power Plan initiative. A warmer climate creates an atmosphere that can collect, retain, and drop more water, changing weather patterns in such a way that wet areas become wetter and dry areas drier. Higher temperatures are worsening many types of disasters, including storms, heat waves, floods, and droughts. This warming is altering the earth's climate system, including its land, atmosphere, oceans, and ice, in far-reaching ways. Evidence shows that 2000 to 2009 was hotter than any other decade in at least the past 1,300 years. The carbon dioxide, methane, soot, and other pollutants we release into the atmosphere act like a blanket, trapping the sun's heat and causing the planet to warm. But for the world in which we live, which climate experts project will be at least eight degrees warmer by 2100 should global emissions continue on their current path, this small rise will have grave consequences, ones that are already becoming apparent, for every ecosystem and living thing-including us.Īccording to the National Climate Assessment, human influences are the number one cause of global warming, especially the carbon pollution we cause by burning fossil fuels and the pollution-capturing we prevent by destroying forests. It may not sound like much-perhaps the difference between wearing a sweater and not wearing one on an early-spring day.