Trump’s inaction on climate change carries a big price tag, federal report finds

The Trump administration's reluctance to confront climate change threatens to create a massive burden on taxpayers, as a lack of planning by federal agencies leaves the government ill-equipped to deal with the fallout from rising temperatures, according to independent congressional investigators. The report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office presents a bleak picture in which the economic costs of climate change spiral ever further upward in the coming decades. The effects of climate change cut across many sectors of the economy, the report says, pointing as an example to the conclusion of scientists and economists that warming-induced ocean acidification could cut the shellfish harvest in the Pacific Northwest by as much as half in the next 80 years. The annual burning of forestland in the Rocky Mountains could grow by 1.9 million acres over that same time period, according to an exhaustive national climate study conducted by the researchers at the Lab, cited frequently in the report.