CLIMATE CHANGE/ECONOMY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Fighting climate change could be America’s new New Deal. The effects of global warming on virtually all aspects of American society could be devastating, according to a government report released on Friday. Rather than seize on its findings as a way to boost American innovation, economic output and jobs, President Trump’s administration pushed the report out late on Friday after Thanksgiving — and then played down its devastating findings. That’s a big missed opportunity. Unchecked, climate change could cut as much as a tenth off the nation’s gross domestic product by the end of the century, according to the authors of the 1,656-page assessment. That overall figure probably underestimates regional variances. The overall cost of the wildfires that hit California in 2017, for example, amounted to 6.5 percent of the state’s economic output, according to estimates by the weather forecasting company AccuWeather. Factor in everything from water scarcity to pollution to energy production to human health, and in some parts of the country the economic impact could be far worse.”
–Antony Currie, “President Trump Overlooks an Investment Opportunity in Climate Change,” The New York Times online, November 27, 2018