Another tax cost of warming hanging over us
To climate-proof our nation’s assets and security,
the longer we wait the more we pay.
We all know our highways and bridges are deteriorating faster thanks to warmer weather and sea-level rise. Now consider America’s deteriorating seapower. Warming is rapidly opening the Arctic Ocean, with its time-saving shipping lanes, fisheries, and oil, gas and mineral deposits. But America can’t get to it. More than 40 icebreakers support Russia’s shipping, drilling, mining and other operations. The US has one, yes one, icebreaker and it’s 40 years old. It takes up to 10 years and $1-2 billion apiece to build new ones.