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Executive Summary

Global warming may be the most serious environmental threat we face today. The Red Cross has warned, "Few scientists now doubt that climate change will be among the most pervasive environmental threats of the coming century." Caused primarily by power plant, industry, and automobile pollution, scientists predict that global warming will lead to rising sea levels, the spread of disease and hunger, species extinction, and increases in extreme weather events. Many of these projected impacts of global warming are by nature slow and gradual. Small changes in average global temperatures can, however, produce dramatic changes in extreme weather.

Scientists have linked rising global temperatures to increases in the frequency and severity of weather phenomena such as extreme heat, droughts, fires, intense precipitation, floods, hurricanes, and the shift in ocean systems known as El Niño. Recent increases in such extreme weather events are consistent with scientists’ predictions. Weather-related disasters have devastated American communities in every part of the country, and killed tens of thousands of people around the world. This report looks in depth at the rising rates of a number of extreme weather phenomena and their link to global warming. This report also documents a portion of the growing economic costs due to extreme weather and their impact on American communities throughout the 1990s and in 2000.

A powerful coalition of electric power producers, auto manufacturers, and oil and coal companies have worked for years to slow any efforts to control global warming pollution. These industries maintain enormous influence over decision-makers by contributing to political campaigns. In 2000, fossil fuel industries gave over $55 million to candidates, with more than three-quarters of that going to Republicans. 5 Their investment appears to have paid off. Shortly after taking office, President Bush reversed his campaign promise to reduce global warming pollution from power plants, bowing to pressure from the coal industry. He then decided to withdraw from international negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty intended to curb global warming.

Fossil fuel industries claim that efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are too expensive to contemplate. This argument blatantly ignores the enormous economic and human costs of living with the impacts of a warming planet. The reality is that the tragic destruction of homes, businesses, and lives surpasses economic analysis. Nevertheless, the economic costs of extreme weather events can be used as a crude measure of a portion of the price exacted by our changing climate. Economic impacts can show that, as global temperatures continue to rise, the costs too expensive to contemplate are the costs of doing nothing.

Among the major findings of this report are:

• Weather related deaths and economic losses:

• In 2000, there were a record 730 weather-related natural catastrophes reported worldwide, ninety more than the previous record year of 1999.
  
  
• Worldwide, the number of great weather disasters in the 1990s was more than 5 times the number for the 1950s, and damages were more than 10 times as high (adjusted for inflation).
  
  
• In the 1990s, American communities experienced more than $87.2 billion in weather-related insured losses, and the government spent more than $65.5 billion in government assistance. In 2000 alone, insured losses in the United States totaled $4.3 billion while the government spent nearly $6.2 billion to respond to and mitigate extreme weather damages.
  
  
• The average number of weather-related disaster declarations has more than doubled in recent years, with the 45 declarations in 2000 far exceeding the average 21.7 disaster declarations per year during the 1980s.
  
  
• Weather-related damage throughout the 1990s was not centralized in one area of the country. The five states experiencing the most damage for the decade were, in descending order: Florida, Texas, California, North Carolina, and Minnesota.
  
  
• Farm states and states struck by hurricanes bore the largest burden per capita. States with the most damage per capita in the 1990s were, in descending order: North Dakota, South Dakota, Hawaii, Florida, Kansas, and Oklahoma. In 2000, the highest per capita costs occurred in North Dakota, South Dakota, Louisiana, Nebraska, and Montana.

U.S. PIRG Education Fund is a non-profit, non-partisan consumer and environmental watchdog organization. U.S. PIRG Education Fund, in association with the state PIRGs in 26 states, conducts research and public education on public health, environmental, consumer, and democracy issues.