CLIMATE CHANGE: THE FISCAL RISKS FACING THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Research Act, USGCRP is implementing a sustained NCA process that enables new information and insights to be synthesized as they emerge.
The Sustained Assessment will enable new information and insights to be synthesized on a continuous basis, drawing on input from groups that use NCA information in assessments and planning. In this way, the Sustained Assessment will allow future fiscal and economic risk assessments like this one to build on an ever-growing body of relevant and reliable scientific information. The Sustained Assessment will be guided in part by a Federal Advisory Committee (FAC) comprised of non-Federal experts.
Finally, more work is needed to identify and quantify the impact of factors that can mitigate or compound climate change fiscal risk. With a few exceptions, this report mainly focuses on increases in expected multi-year average costs due to unmitigated climate change, holding demographic, economic, and policy factors constant or in line with current trajectories. Yet, investments in adaptation can significantly reduce the costs that will be realized in practice. Conversely, increased development in coastal communities could compound the economic and fiscal impact of hurricanes, for example, just as growth of the wildland-urban interface could further magnify the costs of fire suppression. Understanding these factors and how they interact with the impacts of climate change is important for identifying the conditions under which climate impacts could pose potentially catastrophic risks, as well as for taking steps to mitigate risk.
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