Pay Now or Pay Later I: report finds all states lose from inaction on climate change

A recent report released by the American Security Project, a think tank whose bipartisan board of directors  brings together a broad range of experts, gives a sobering picture of what we stand to lose by failing to tackle climate change.

The report draws upon various state-level studies and economic statistics, a sort of hodgepodge of what we know, and might reasonably speculate upon. It details past and current climate events likely caused by our greenhouse gas emissions, others expected to occur with or without mitigation and, most of all, how much worse things might get if we continue doing nothing. No state is spared.

The report is extensive, so my humble goal with this blog (and two more to follow) is to give you a taste of it, and hopefully entice you to take a deeper dive. The table below gives examples from a few states, including Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. These by no means include all damages in these states; that’s simply not possible.

Given the uncertainty of future impacts, many damages are not quantified. Instead, the size of the economic sector exposed is given. Note that this does not mean that the entire sector will be lost. It is simply intended to give the reader a sense of the potential magnitude of an impact: the larger the sector or economic activity exposed, the higher absolute damages are likely to be. Where years in which damages occur by are given, they are reported in the table. Otherwise, no date was specified.

For an excellent overview of impacts in the US as a whole, I also recommend a 2009 report from the US Global Climate Change Research Program, and a new report just released by the National Academies of Science.

(Blog updated July 11 and August 2, 2011--table reformatted and links updated).