Hot off a summer of record heat, a savage wildfire that destroyed Lahaina, and hurricanes that rapidly intensified into monsters, the United States today released its Fifth National Climate Assessment. The report—done with input from over 750 experts from every US state—exhaustively lays out the already severe effects climate change is having on the country, how bad those are expected to get in the coming decades, and what we can do about it. Think of it like the domestic version of those increasingly dire reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which spell out the latest science on global warming and strategies for how to slow it.
“The National Climate Assessment to me shows both the impacts of a changing climate and the increasingly irresistible economic opportunity of deploying clean-energy solutions,” says Ali Zaidi, assistant to the president and national climate adviser. The report is a topography of the risks, Zaidi says, but also an atlas of opportunities “to create good-paying jobs, to reopen shuttered factories, to build sorely needed infrastructure, and to do it all with products made in America.”
First off, the (somewhat) good news: Between 2005 and 2019, greenhouse gas emissions in the US decreased by 12 percent, even though the population and gross domestic product have grown. That’s due in large part to the shift away from coal power generation and toward natural gas, plus the plummeting costs of renewable sources like wind and solar. But, the report says, “the current rate of decline is not sufficient to meet national and international climate commitments and goals.” To reach net-zero emissions by midcentury—meaning that the US is capturing as much greenhouse gas as it’s emitting—we need a decline of 6 percent each year on average. Between 2005 and 2019 in the US, it was less than 1 percent per year on average.
The more solar panels and wind turbines the nation can deploy, the faster it can get to that 6 percent. To that end, last year’s Inflation Reduction Act allocated hundreds of billions of dollars to accelerate decarbonization; for instance, tax breaks for home improvements like better insulation and switching to electric appliances and heat pumps. It was also meant to juice the domestic green economy: According to one study, it has already created almost 75,000 jobs and spurred $86 billion in private investments.
The Biden sdministration also announced today that it’s providing more than $6 billion in investments for climate action, $3.9 billion of that going toward modernizing the grid. “Clean electrons are really the way we’re going to decarbonize most of the economy,” says Zaidi. “That’s going to require us to upgrade our local grid infrastructure, for example, for charging of heavy-duty vehicles.”
The nation’s creaky energy grid desperately needs an overhaul, both to cope with increasingly extreme weather and to accommodate more renewable energy. Today’s report notes that the average number of power outages affecting more than 50,000 customers jumped by about 64 percent in the period from 2011 and 2021, compared to the period from 2000 to 2010. The US needs a grid that’s better able to ferry electricity from renewable-energy hot spots, like solar power generated in the sunny Southwest and wind power from the gusty Midwest. “Undergrounding” more powerlines, especially in the parched West, would prevent the infrastructure from igniting catastrophic blazes, like the Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise in 2018.
The assessment notes the already staggering cost of climate change in the US, beyond wildfires. In the 1980s, on average, the US experienced one billion-dollar disaster every four months. That’s now one every three weeks. Between 2018 and 2022, the country suffered 89 billion-dollar events. Extreme weather now costs the country nearly $150 billion annually. But, the report emphasizes, that’s a conservative estimate, because it doesn’t consider the costs of the aftermath, like loss of life, health care for survivors, or the damage done to ecosystems.
“I think this report really highlights how the changes we’re experiencing now are unprecedented in our nation’s history,” says Kristina Dahl, a technical contributor to the assessment and principal climate scientist for the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The US has warmed more quickly than the planet as a whole. So the US is really feeling this.”
The assessment also points out that in the next three decades, scientists expect sea levels along the contiguous US to rise nearly a foot. By 2050, coastal flooding will happen five to 10 times more often than today, and by the end of the century, millions of seaside residents could be displaced. But we’re dealing with a lot of uncertainty. Sea level rise could accelerate if the ice sheets atop Greenland and Antarctica start declining faster. Just last week, a study found that northern Greenland’s ice is in much worse shape than previously understood. “Uncertainty in the stability of ice sheets at high warming levels means that increases in sea level along the continental US of 3-7 feet by 2100 and 5-12 feet by 2150 are distinct possibilities that cannot be ruled out,” the assessment warns.
And keep in mind that sea level rise will not unfold uniformly across US coastlines, due to quirks in the physics involved. Some places, like the Gulf Coast, are also rapidly sinking, a phenomenon known as subsidence, which exacerbates the problem. When sea levels rise even a little bit, it’s easier for hurricane storm surges to shove water farther inland—and warmer ocean water is making those hurricanes more intense.
Places that aren’t flooding are rapidly drying out, the report notes. Droughts—which are getting more common, more severe, and longer-lasting—and related heat waves caused about $328 billion in damages between 1980 and 2022 in the US. Water shortages are forcing the overextraction of aquifers, in some cases getting so extreme that the ground collapses like an empty water bottle.
Ever-drier conditions are also helping supercharge wildfires. In forests across the western US, 55 percent of the changes in fuel aridity (think dried-up vegetation) are directly attributable to climate change, the assessment says. This can turn into a “compound event,” or the intertwining of hazards across space or time. “A wildfire may not be only happening by itself, but it could be combined with other types of extreme events, such as drought,” says Ruby Leung, a climate scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and one of the authors of the new report.
And in a sort of environmental whiplash, even rain can worsen fire, as heavy precipitation can lead to the growth of more plants. “Some of this vegetation, like shrubs and things like that, can grow really fast,” Leung adds. “So then you have fuel for the wildfires.”
Bigger fires mean more smoke, which has been pouring into heavily populated regions, like the Bay Area. Even the East Coast is now inundated with the haze: This summer, out-of-control wildfires in Canada spewed smoke across New York City and down as far south as Georgia. That smoke is terrible for human health, especially if it arrives during a heat wave, when air pollutants are already higher. Thus a compound event can keep compounding.
Climate change is also exacting severe costs on the country’s agriculture. The report notes that agricultural productivity is slowing while the food supply’s vulnerability is increasing. Flooding and heat waves can destroy crops, as can the proliferation of pests and diseases. (Heat waves are also growing increasingly dangerous for the farmworkers who power the food system.) At the same time, the global food system generates 35 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, thus contributing to climate change while suffering from it.
Moving from the country into cities, the assessment notes how urban areas are both drivers of climate change and powerful tools for fighting it. Urban and suburban areas contribute about three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions, with the 100 biggest cities accounting for 18 percent of global emissions. In the US, the transportation sector is the biggest source of these emissions, so bolstering public transit can make cities more sustainable and improve the lives of their residents. Same goes for switching from fossil-fuel power plants to clean energy. “When you clean up the pollution that comes out of a smokestack, you don’t just get after the climate challenge, you improve the air quality of everyone that lives in that neighborhood,” says Zaidi. “Kids, families literally breathing easier—fewer asthma attacks, fewer days of work and school that are missed.”
The urban heat island effect also plagues American cities, because the built environment absorbs the sun’s energy and gets much hotter than surrounding rural areas. Even within cities, this effect varies quite a bit: Richer neighborhoods tend to have more green spaces, which cool the landscape, while low-income areas lack trees and parks. The latter can get 12 degrees Fahrenheit hotter during a heat wave, the assessment points out.
The new report repeatedly emphasizes that these inequities harm some groups more than others. “These include BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), individuals and communities with low wealth, women, people with disabilities or chronic diseases, sexual and gender minorities, and children,” the report reads.
So in addition to the $3.9 billion going toward the grid, the White House is today also announcing $2 billion for community-driven climate projects. “We have to be intentional about making sure it lifts up those communities that have been left behind so many times before,” says Zaidi. “This has to be the moment when we pull in all of those folks who felt left out of economic prosperity for decades.”
Scientists and activists are pushing for climate strategies that solve several problems at once. Greening up low-income neighborhoods would simultaneously reduce temperatures, absorb stormwater to prevent flooding, and improve people’s mental health. Urban farms produce food, reduce shipping distances, and can even produce clean energy if the crops are grown under solar panels. Prioritizing low-income neighborhoods when deploying EV charging networks could boost adoption rates, lowering emissions while improving air quality.
“There are immense benefits to tackling the climate crisis,” says Zaidi. “It accrues in terms of public health, in national security, economic growth, and resilience. And really, it’s about making life better for folks.”
