{"id":6205,"date":"2013-04-11T19:34:09","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T01:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/?p=6205"},"modified":"2013-04-12T09:48:51","modified_gmt":"2013-04-12T15:48:51","slug":"climate-changes-effects-on-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/?p=6205","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change’s Effects on Taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"

As April 15th<\/sup> nears and millions of Americans rush to get their taxes filed, many people are not aware of how climate change and catastrophic weather events are affecting their taxes.<\/p>\n

Wildfires, floods, hurricanes, drought\u2026all of these disasters are taking a toll on Americans and their wallets. \u00a0While many people view climate change in terms of its future effects on the economy and environment, Michael Zammit Cutajar, former Executive Secretary of the UN\u2019s Convention on Climate Change, says \u201cClimate change is not just a distant threat but a present danger\u2014its economic impact is already with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

In February, the U.S. Government Accountability Office<\/a> (GAO) warned that \u201cClimate change is a complex, crosscutting issue that poses risks to many environmental and economic systems\u2014including agriculture, infrastructure, ecosystems, and human health\u2014and presents a significant financial risk to the federal government. Among other impacts, climate change could threaten coastal areas with rising sea levels, alter agricultural productivity, and increase the intensity and frequency of severe weather events. As observed by the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), the impacts and costliness of weather disasters\u2014resulting from floods, drought, and other events such as tropical cyclones\u2014will increase in significance as what are considered \u2018rare\u2019 events become more common and intense due to climate change\u2026These impacts will result in increased fiscal exposure for the federal government.\u201d<\/p>\n

And anything that causes the government \u201cincreased fiscal exposure\u201d is usually passed on to taxpayers.\u00a0 Take the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP)<\/a> for example.\u00a0 The NFIP was designed to be self-supporting, but the GAO reports that since 2003, repetitive catastrophic losses have cost taxpayers more than $200 million dollars per year.<\/p>\n

According to Mindy Lubber<\/a>, President of Ceres<\/a>, a nonprofit organization preparing business leadership on climate change, \u201cThe National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is staggering under massive losses after Superstorm Sandy\u2026Although the NFIP collects about $3.5 billion a year in premiums, the amount of claims the agency has paid out has exceeded the amount collected in four of the past eight years, leading to increased borrowing by the Federal government (in other words, taxpayers) to fill the gap.\u00a0 Last year\u2019s losses in Sandy\u2019s wake are expected to approach $8 billion.\u00a0 That\u2019s $25 for every American.\u201d<\/p>\n

And those figures do not take into account the $50.5 billion dollars in disaster relief Congress approved this January for Sandy victims.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith sea levels rising and storm surges reaching farther inland because of climate change, risks to coastal communities and costs to taxpayers will continue to rise,\u201d says Lubber.<\/p>\n

While the NFIP is drowning in claims, last year\u2019s third-worst wildfire season in U.S. history has left the West scorched and burned a hole in the budgets of those states affected.\u00a0 More than nine million acres burned<\/a>, and the U.S. Forest Service \u201coverspent its available fire suppression budget by $400 million, as it has almost every year for the last 20 years,\u201d says Lubber.<\/p>\n

Climate change models<\/a> predict \u201cthat in a warming world, the West and Southwest will become drier and hotter\u2014conditions ripe for wildfires.\u201d \u00a0With increasing numbers of wildfires as well as increasing costs to suppress them, taxpayers will get burned from both sides.<\/p>\n

The extended drought across the country is also costing taxpayers.\u00a0 The Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP), subsidized by taxpayers, was created during the Dust Bowl to protect farmers against crop losses.\u00a0 According to Ceres, federal crop insurance payments have increased dramatically in the past decade from $4.2 billion to $16 billion in 2012, costing every American an additional $51 per year.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd these costs are likely to continue \u2014 the latest numbers from the U.S. Drought Monitor show nearly 67 percent of the contiguous U.S. is now experiencing some level of drought,\u201d says Lubber.<\/p>\n

There are other risks to taxpayers from extreme weather events as well.\u00a0 As Lubber points out, \u201cState governments are increasingly liable for the cost of damages as private insurers pull out of at-risk locations, leaving state taxpayers subsidizing insurance loss claims for homes and businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Extreme weather events pose threats to our nation\u2019s well-being as well as being destabilizing fiscal risks.\u00a0 Neither the NFIP nor FCIP are prepared to deal with climate change.\u00a0 Whether recent extreme weather events are the direct result of climate change or random acts of nature doesn\u2019t matter in the end, because we all eventually suffer the economic consequences.<\/p>\n

Link:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.gcnlive.com\/wp\/2013\/04\/12\/climate-change%e2%80%99s-effects-on-taxes\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As April 15th nears and millions of Americans rush to get their taxes filed, many people are not aware of how climate change and catastrophic weather events are affecting their taxes. Wildfires, floods, hurricanes, drought\u2026all of these disasters are taking a toll on Americans and their wallets. \u00a0While many people view climate change in terms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6205","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-articles","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6205"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6229,"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6205\/revisions\/6229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbadamslive.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}