While Canada’s government yesterday was telling everyone that meeting the country’s obligations under the Kyoto Protocol will put Canada into its worst recession since the Second World War, the U.S. General Accounting Office — a rough equivalent to the Auditor General here — was telling legislators in the U.S. that the effects of climate change will force U.S. federal insurers to pay out billions over the coming years …
Recent assessments by leading scientific bodies provide sufficient cause for concern that climate change may have a broad range of long-term consequences for the United States and its citizens. While a number of key uncertainties regarding the timing, location, and magnitude of impactsremain, climate change has implications for the fiscal health of the federal government, which already faces other significant challenges in meeting its long-term fiscal obligations. [National Flood Insurance Program] and [Federal Crop Insurance Corporation] are two major federal programs which, as a consequence of both future climate change and substantial growth in exposure, may see their losses grow by many billions of dollars in coming decades.