WASHINGTON (CN) — Senator Sheldon Whitehouse pushed the Congressional Budget Office on Monday for a timeline on when extreme weather events and other risks related to climate change will affect the national economy and federal spending habits.
The Rhode Island Democrat has made environmental issues one of the central pillars of his work on the Senate Budget Committee, of which he became chair in February. Under Whitehouse’s watch, the spending panel explored the financial toll of climate change in its first hearing of the session — during which he stressed the need for Congress to get out ahead of the possible economic turmoil.
“Already, climate-related natural disasters increase federal spending on disaster assistance, flood insurance, crop insurance and other programs we fund,” Whitehouse said in an opening statement during the Feb. 15 hearing. “We are on a bad trajectory. It’s time for us all to wake up to face the problem before coastal cities flood with water or Southwest cities can’t get water.”
Behind the scenes, Whitehouse has also been working to build his case for shoring up the economy against climate change. The lawmaker has prodded the CBO — Congress’s independent watchdog for federal spending issues — for updates on its ongoing research into the issue.
The office has for years published its projections about the effects of climate change on individual industries as well as the economy writ large. In a 2020 white paper, the watchdog concluded that the U.S. GDP in 2050 may be about 1% lower than it would have been absent the effects of climate change.
There’s more where that came from, though, budget watchdog director Phillip Swagel told Whitehouse in a letter dated Monday. Responding to questions from the lawmaker, Swagel said that his office plans to issue a new climate change report that will, among other things, examine “potential climate-related tipping points or long-tailed risks and the substantial effects they could have on the United States.”
The forthcoming report will attempt to predict the economic impacts of climate change beyond the 30-year timeframe used in the 2020 report, Swagel continued, explaining that such effects could accelerate later in the century. The review will also go beyond GDP estimates, covering what climate change is doing to public health and other issues not necessarily explained by that metric.
The watchdog report will also “discuss the potential implications of climate risks for federal spending and revenues,” Swagel added.
The budget watchdog is taking a multipronged approach to its review of economic climate risks, Swagel told Whitehouse. Beyond the planned report, the office is looking into how climate change affects the availability of insurance for Americans looking to protect property against increasingly frequent natural disasters such as wildfires and floods. The CBO is also analyzing policies such as electric vehicle tax incentives and evaluating how they could affect U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, Swagel said.
The CBO director did not provide any hint about when the office’s climate change report may be published. “CBO will continue to make progress in addressing those and other areas that are of critical interest to you and your colleagues,” Swagel wrote.
A spokesperson for Whitehouse’s office declined to comment on whether the lawmaker was satisfied with the watchdog’s response.
Congress has increased its scrutiny on the future impacts of climate change in recent weeks — especially in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Earlier this month, as smoke from wildfires raging in Canada enveloped the eastern seaboard in an orange haze and forced millions of Americans indoors, experts urged lawmakers on the upper chamber’s energy and natural resources panel to improve working conditions for federal wildland firefighters. The White House has also joined in calls to implement a permanent pay hike for the government’s firefighting services.
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