The US Government Accountability Office is a nonpartisan organization that performs analysis and investigations for the Senate and House. Recently, two senators—Maine Republican Susan Collins and Washington Democrat Maria Cantwell—asked it to look into what has become a contentious political issue: the government's response to climate change. The report that resulted suggests that the US is already spending money to respond to climate change, and it will likely spend more as the Earth continues to warm. But it suggests that the US has no plans for figuring out how best to minimize these costs.

It's a message that's unlikely to go over well with either the current administration or the Republican majority in either house of Congress.

Climate and the economy

The report focuses on the economic costs of climate change and how those costs end up being covered by the federal government. It concludes that the feds faced a bill of $350 billion due to extreme weather and fires, including more than $200 billion for aid and recovery, $90 billion for payouts on crop and flood insurance, and nearly $30 billion for repair to federal facilities. US government scientists expect that extreme events are likely to increase in a warming climate, and the GAO sees no reason to doubt that conclusion, accepting a figure of between $12 and $35 billion of added annual expenses by mid-century. For comparison, the annual budget of NASA is $18 billion.

Given the federal government's financial interests, "Information on the potential economic effects of climate change could help federal decision makers better manage climate risks," the GAO suggests.

Do we have that information? To find out, the GAO searched the literature on climate economics, identifying relevant reports and publications. From these, they identified experts in the field and got them on the phone to find out what they think. They also found stakeholders—people and companies who could be affected by the changing climate.

Unfortunately, it seems that there's not a lot of information available. The GAO was only able to identify two detailed analyses that focused on the US. Part of the problem here is that the development of coupled economic-climate models is relatively new and has mostly been applied to global issues. Nevertheless, there were two detailed studies of likely climate impacts on the US. But these studies, as well as experts in the field, acknowledge the large uncertainties involved, both in the individual climate and economics models involved and in their ability to project human responses to climate change decades out.

Nevertheless, everyone the GAO talked to suggested that these analyses were valuable. They're able to identify areas of concern that seem to be especially sensitive to climate change—ocean-front property comes up consistently as problematic—and they can give a rough picture of the scale of some problems. For an example of the latter, it appears that the entire US South and Southwest will face increased mortality and reduced labor efficiency due to high temperatures. The analyses also offer a few cases of economic benefits, such as improved agricultural yields and reduced cold-driven mortality in the northern Great Plains.

By changing certain assumptions in the models, it's also possible to figure out just how sensitive some economic activities are to different climate scenarios.

Rising oceans and costs

In any case, the climate-economic models identify a variety of ways that the US economy will suffer as a result of the warming climate, and they highlight that there are many issues, like property damage and agricultural losses, that the federal government will end up paying for, at least partially. Yet the government hasn't done anything much to prepare for this future. The GAO notes that, in an earlier report, "we found that the federal government had no comprehensive, strategic approach to identifying, prioritizing, and implementing investments for disaster resilience risks."

Things had been getting better by the end of Obama's term, as individual agencies had started to engage in strategic planning. But it wasn't clear that the agencies were cooperating with each other or creating a government-wide approach to what the GAO termed "reducing federal fiscal exposures" to climate change. But rather than improving things, the Trump administration made matters worse: "a March 2017 Executive Order rescinded some of these planning efforts and created uncertainty about whether other planning efforts would continue or take their place."

And that, according to the GAO, is where we're stuck. All the experts and published analyses agree that the changing climate will increase federal spending, possibly at a rate of nearly double NASA's annual budget. Climate change will also pose a variety of risks to the US economy and the health of its citizens. But the preliminary efforts of the government to prepare for these issues has ground to a halt, with no sign of picking up again.

Collins and Cantwell, who requested the report, are in a position to at least agitate for a response to the GAO report, arguing that it would represent fiscal prudence. But the legislative branch is currently focused on a tax package that is widely recognized as likely to vastly expand budget deficits, so it seems unlikely that calls to fiscal prudence will be heeded.