Fallout from last month’s deadly deep freeze in Texas has quietly spread to people living hundreds of miles away. Minnesota utilities have warned that monthly heating bills could spike by $400, after the crisis jacked up natural gas prices across the country. Xcel Energy’s Colorado customers could face a $7.50 per month surcharge for the next two years. This is a subtle demonstration of the way Americans already share the collective financial burden of climate change, even if we don’t realize it. The national bill for global warming is here, and it’s rising.
Perhaps it’s easier to see this dynamic playing out beyond February’s Texas cold snap. That disaster left dozens dead, stranded millions in dark homes, and sent a shockwave of higher gas prices across the nation. But since there remains scientific uncertainty over the role of global warming, let’s examine two other calamities for which the climate link is clearer: wildfires and tropical storms.
The federal government spent about $2.3 billion fighting fires last year, roughly 10 times what it spent in 1985, an increase tied to the hotter, drier conditions of global warming has created in the western U.S. That money comes from taxes. So, too, does funding for the National Flood Insurance Program, which has piled up $20.5 billion in debt after a record-setting hurricane season across the Southeast and Gulf Coast. The program now pays about $1 million in interest per day, according to a recent federal report, and won’t be able to repay its existing debts in the next decade as warmer oceans bring more flooding.