Republican lawmakers from President Trump on down are bristling at the idea of taking steps to mitigate climate change for fear of disrupting the economy in the wake of a U.S. government report outlining the dangers to the environment. Before there can be any discussion of what is an acceptable trade-off, it’s important to know what is at stake. The Fourth National Climate Assessment found that annual losses could reach hundreds of billions of dollars, more than the output of some states. The report arrived at the “hundreds of billions of dollars” conclusion by referencing the Lab's 2017 study in Science, which mapped the impact on agriculture, crime, coasts, energy, heat mortality, and labor as a function of global average temperature change, the report notes.