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The wildfires rampaging through Southern California this week are only a hint of the climate-change-caused devastation that is likely to grow far worse during President-elect Donald Trump's second term. These changes will bring more misery and massive costs to tens of millions of average American citizens in every region. As president in less than two weeks, the mercurial climate change denier will have to deal with a problem that undermines public safety, national security, and economic growth to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
But could Trump change his tune, and do so effectively?
Even as the recent campaign was going on, climate impacts from Hurricane Helene killed more than 225 people and decimated North Carolina and other parts of the southeast. Like Hurricane Milton and other major storms, these hurricanes were made far more damaging due to extreme high temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean caused by global warming. In total, the 2024 hurricane season was the most destructive in U.S. history, causing an estimated $500 billion in damage to property, the economy and health. Meanwhile, all Trump did was blame others, including FEMA workers who were helping average Americans recover.
As he did in his first term, on the campaign trail Trump has vowed over the next four years to overturn every climate protection policy possible, leading to increasing greenhouse emissions as part of an unfortunate culture war against political opponents and clean energy sources.
Horrific climate change impacts like these may turn out to be Trump's political Achilles' heel, as they increasingly undermine the lives and livelihoods of the very working-class Americans he claims to represent. This may someday turn the political tide against him. Far better, however, if Trump looked at today's overwhelming evidence—and made up his mind to act against climate change now.
For one thing, climate impacts are beginning to inflict huge kitchen-table costs on American families. According to a Walton Family Foundation survey conducted last year, three-fifths of Americans say that climate impacts and costs are undermining their quality of life, public safety, health, or family finances. More than $800 billion in extra US health care costs each year can be attributed to climate and pollution. A Senate report finds that flooding made worse due to climate change is costing Americans as much as $500 billion every year. Hundreds of thousands of homeowners around the country are being priced out of insurance or are unable to get it at all, as companies have pulled back from a losing proposition.
Meanwhile, the federal budget is creaking under climate change impact costs so great on an annual basis that Congress can't keep up—it appropriated $20.26 billion for disaster relief for the 2024 fiscal year, but mounting costs made that totally insufficient to meet FEMA's needs even before Hurricanes Helene and Milton. From 2010 to 2019, there were an average of 13 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters per year—in 2023 there were 28, and 24 in 2024.
And a new study in the journal Nature on deaths in the aftermath of U.S. storms is indicative of how we have been woefully underestimating the long-term costs of climate change impacts. Of more than 500 recorded hurricanes that have hit the United States, the average storm caused up to 11,000 excess deaths over several years, hundreds of times higher than official estimates have historically found.
Globally, projections are that climate impact costs will skyrocket to tens of trillions annually within just two decades, even as our experience over the last quarter century tells us we are still likely underestimating the costs from the disruption of our climate systems. These massive costs will subvert global stability, risking our long-term national security, and that of our allies.
Those around Trump should be warning him of these impending catastrophes. Unfortunately, Elon Musk, after championing climate protection for years, has suddenly become a bizarre climate fatalist. Meanwhile, military and national security experts have been ringing the alarm bells for years about climate change's impact on global stability and U.S. national security. And business leaders around the world call climate change the number one threat to economic growth and stability.
Finally, Trump and his advisors are ignoring the much more devastating possibility that tipping points in natural systems may set off runaway global warming that will inflict catastrophic impacts on average Americans so that even heroic adaptation and resilience will offer limited protection. Last month, a group of the world's most respected scientists warned that the world is "stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis," putting our planet and people "on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster." They added that five "tipping points" that could plunge us into an even more hostile climate are just ahead of today's record level of warming, with 11 additional climate trip wires lurking beyond them.
Trump may not yet accept it, but our climate is changing rapidly. The fabled Santa Ana winds in California have suddenly become a blowtorch to the lives of regular folks.
As he starts his second term with unique political power, the goal must be to help Trump realize that climate change is not an environmental issue in any normal sense—but instead one in which America's national security, public safety and economic stability are all at risk. There's still time for Trump to change his approach. Most Americans—and many around the world—will thank him if he does.
Paul Bledsoe is a professorial lecturer at American University's Center for Environmental Policy. He served on the White House Climate Change Task Force under President Bill Clinton.
Durwood Zaelke is president of the Institute of Governance and Sustainable Development and adjunct professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
