Climate change will affect US economy

Washington: A new US government report (Fourth National Climate Assessment) which has documented climate change and its devastating impacts, saying that the economy could lose hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century.

 The costs of climate change could reach hundreds of billions of dollars annually, according to the report. The Southeast alone will probably lose over a half a billion labor hours by 2100 due to extreme heat.

Farmers will face very tough times. The quality and quantity of their crops will decline due to higher temperatures, drought and flooding.

Heat stress could cause average dairy production to fall between 0.60 and 1.35 per cent over the next 12 years — having already cost the industry $1.2 billion from heat stress in 2010.

Higher temperatures will also kill more people, it added.

The Midwest alone, which is predicted to have the largest increase in extreme temperature, will see an additional 2,000 premature deaths per year by 2090.

There will be more mosquito-borne and tick-borne diseases like Zika, dengue and chikungunya. West Nile cases were expected to more than double by 2050 due to increasing temperatures.

Wildfire seasons — already longer and more destructive than before — could burn up to six times more forest area annually by 2050 in parts of the US.