Climate crisis poses 'serious risks' to US economy, Biden administration warns - The Guardian

White House issues 40-page report and sets out steps for action as ‘climate impacts already affecting’ jobs, homes and businesses.

Joe Biden’s administration on Friday issued a 40-page report warning that the climate crisis “poses serious and systemic risks to the US economy and financial system” and setting out steps for action as “climate impacts are already affecting American jobs, homes, families’ hard-earned savings, and businesses”.

“The intensifying impacts of climate change present physical risk to assets, publicly traded securities, private investments, and companies,” the US president said in the report.

Gina McCarthy, Biden’s top climate advisor, said that the climate crisis “poses a risk to our economy and to the lives and livelihoods of Americans, and we must act now”.

Prominent figures from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth to Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg have in recent days expressed, in their very different ways, exasperation with leaders favoring talk over action on the climate emergency.

The White House report on Friday was a follow-up to a May executive order from Biden that essentially called on his own administration to analyze how the world’s largest economy could be affected by extreme heat, flooding, storms, wildfires and the broader adjustments needed to address climate change.

It also noted: “In August 2021, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report in which 234 of the world’s leading scientists, citing over 14,000 different studies, concluded with high confidence that the climate crisis is a ‘code red for humanity’.”.

Keeping them from rising more than 1.5C and avoiding environmental catastrophe would require unprecedented action to begin phasing out fossil fuels within the next 12 years, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“If this year has shown us anything, it’s that climate change poses an ongoing urgent and systemic risk to our economy and to the lives and livelihoods of everyday Americans, and we must act now,” Gina McCarthy, the White House national climate adviser, said.