Press. voanews.com / Reuters.
Weather extremes and air pollution from
burning fossil fuels cost the United States $240 billion a year in the past
decade, according to a report Wednesday that urged President Donald Trump to do
more to combat climate change.
This year is likely to be the most expensive
on record, with an estimated $300 billion in losses from Hurricanes Harvey,
Irma and Maria and a spate of wildfires in Western states in the past two
months, it said. "The evidence is undeniable: The more fossil fuels we
burn, the faster the climate continues to change," leading scientists
wrote in the study published by the nonprofit Universal Ecological Fund.
Costs to human health from air pollution
caused by fossil fuels averaged $188 billion a year over the past decade, it
estimated, while losses from weather extremes such as droughts, heat waves and
floods averaged $52 billion.
Trump could curb the $240 billion cost,
equivalent to 1.2 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, by revising his plans
to promote the U.S. coal industry and to pull out of the 195-nation Paris
climate agreement, it said.
"We are not saying that all [weather
extremes] are due to human activity, but these are the sorts of events that
seem to be increasing in intensity," co-author Robert Watson, a former
head of the U.N. panel of climate scientists, told Reuters. Higher ocean
temperatures, for instance, mean more moisture in the air that can fuel
hurricanes.
And, in a sign of increasing risks, there were
92 extreme weather events that caused damage exceeding $1 billion in the United
States in the decade ending in 2016, compared with 38 in the 1990s and 21 in
the 1980s.
The combined cost of extreme weather and
pollution from fossil fuels would climb to $360 billion a year in the next
decade, the study said. Trump's pro-coal policies could mean more air
pollution, reversing recent improvements in air quality.
Last month, the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency accused scientists who linked record extreme rainfall from Tropical
Storm Harvey to man-made climate change as trying to "politicize an
ongoing tragedy."
Wednesday's study has been in the works for
months, said co-author James McCarthy, professor of oceanography at Harvard
University. He said there was widening evidence that a shift from fossil fuels
made economic sense.
"Why is Iowa, why is Oklahoma, why is
Kansas, why is Texas investing in wind energy? Not because they are interested
in sea level rise or ocean temperatures but because it's economically
sensible," he told Reuters.