The high costs of fossil fuel dependency: climate change-related health and economic costs, and a costly dirty energy economy

Following on the tails of the recent IPCC report documenting the connection between extreme weather events and climate change (click here for excellent NBC coverage, and here for here for other summaries, stories and reports) comes two analyses attaching dollar figures to these and other types of events. One looks at health costs, the other economic damages. The numbers are staggering.

The health cost analysis, the first-of-its-kind published in the November 2011 edition of the journal Health Affairs and co-authored by NRDC scientists, looks at health costs from six climate change-related events over the 2002-2009 period. The second analysis, from weatherunderground.com, provides an updated tally of economic damages caused by billion dollar extreme weather events in 2011 (to date), which hit a record annual number of fourteen. While the estimated costs are not solely attributable to human-induced climate change, our global warming pollution has increased the severity and number of such events. These analyses suggest how much worse things might become in the future if we continue doing nothing to reduce emissions.

Table 1 summarizes the health costs by event and type of health impact.

Between 2002 and 2009, health costs from the six events exceeded $14 billion dollars, caused an estimated 1,689 premature deaths, and generated over 760,000 interactions with the health care system. These included an estimated 8,992 hospitalizations, 21,113 emergency room visits, and 734,398 outpatient visits.

But these are examples of just health impacts from climate change-related events. We can also calculate economic damages from extreme weather events (e.g. destroyed homes, flooded crops, crushed bridges, etc.). This year gives us an idea of what we might be looking at, so far mounting to a whopping $53+ billion, and the year isn’t over yet. Table 2 summarizes these events (click here for more details).

The figures are sobering. As climate change progresses so too will the number, severity, and price tag of such events.

But…there is more bad news (sorry). The story does not end with climate change damages. We’ve incurred many other costs from our fossil fuel dependency. Here are some of them: 

• Deaths, brain damage, and respiratory diseases caused by traditional fossil fuel pollutants (e.g. toxics and soot) (click here and here to see the benefits of reducing them, and Congressional attempts to undermine them)
• Trillions of dollars on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
• Hundreds of thousands of lives lost in the U.S., Iraq and Afghanistan (click here and here)—with some estimates reaching more than a million for Iraqi civilians
• Billions of dollars sent every year (via oil purchases) to regimes hostile to U.S. interests
• Devastating oil spills (click here for the Deepwater Horizon and here for Exxon Valdez, for two of the worst)
• Polluted rivers, streams and aquifers from mining coal, natural gas, and oil
• Ruined landscapes from mountaintop removal mining
• Vulnerability to oil price shocks as supplies dwindle
• Billions of dollars in fossil fuel subsidies

It’s all very depressing, I know, but there is a ray of hope. We don’t have to sit idly by and do nothing. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions presents an opportunity to promote a stronger economy through developing our clean energy industries. While the fossil fuel lobby would like us to believe the opposite, the facts tell us that addressing climate change and promoting a healthy economy are inseparable. Sure, in the short run cleaner energy might be more expensive on a cent-per-kilowatt basis, but this pales in comparison with all the costs enumerated above. And cleaner energy will only get cheaper in the future, with economies of scale and innovation.

What are we waiting for?