In recent testimony to the Senate Budget Committee, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) said the federal government should invest in resilience, and Committee Chairman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) sent a "Dear Colleague letter" urging her Democratic colleagues to address the “budgetary costs and economic risks brought on by climate change.”
In his testimony, GAO Director of Natural Resources and Environment Alfredo Gomez said the U.S. could limit “federal fiscal exposures” by investing in resilience. He defined fiscal exposures as responsibilities, programs and activities that will require the federal government to spend money in the future. Resilience investments are actions to reduce the vulnerability of federal, state and local facilities and lands to climate change and extreme weather events.
While investing in resilience would require up-front costs, benefits such as a reduction in future damages from climate and extreme weather events could be realized, Gomez said. GAO’s testimony was based on several reports the office issued between August 2007 and May 2014. The testimony also referred to previous recommendations by GAO that the federal government help state and local resilience efforts by “improving access to available climate-related information, providing officials with improved access to technical assistance and helping officials consider climate change in their planning processes.” Specifically, GAO recommended in 2013 that the Executive Office of the President work with relevant agencies to identify for decision makers the “best available” climate information for infrastructure planning and update the information over time, noting that Executive Order 13653 directed federal agencies to develop climate information that is authoritative and timely. GAO is currently working to assess the government's ability to meet the climate information needs of decision makers at the state, local and private sector level.
In her letter to Democratic colleagues, Chairman Murray said climate change is not only an environmental issue, but also a budgetary issue. She noted that the government’s failure to address climate change will have “serious ramifications for our economy and the federal budget, and failure to confront it will make it harder to meet our nation’s long-term fiscal challenges.” Her letter provided examples of how climate change would “worsen the fiscal outlook” in four areas, specifically: extreme weather, transportation and water infrastructure, national security and agriculture.