OMB Director: Climate ‘Denial’ Will Cost America ‘Billions and Billions’

Speaking this morning at the Center for American Progress, Shaun Donovan, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, attacked skeptics of the global warming theory as members of the "Flat Earth Society." He said that these kinds of views will cost America "billions and billions."

“One of the reasons I’m glad this is my first public speech on this subject is because climate action is enormously important to me professionally. As OMB director, due to the wide ranging effects that climate change is having, and will continue to have, it’s critical to our ability to operate and fund the government in a responsible manner. From where I sit, climate action is a ‘must-do.’ Climate inaction is a ‘can’t do.’ And climate denial scores. And I don’t mean scores like the average person would think scoring points on the board. I mean that it scores in the budget. Climate denial will cost us billions and billions of dollars. The failure to invest in climate solutions and climate preparedness doesn’t get you membership in a fiscal conservative caucus, it makes you a member of the Flat Earth Society. Climate denial doesn’t just fly in the face of the overwhelming judgment of science, it is fiscally foolish. And while we cannot say with certainty that any individual event is caused by climate change, it’s clearly increasing the frequency and intensity of many different kinds of severe weather events. The costs of climate change add up and ignoring the problem only makes it worse. But it’s also a subject that is personally important to me as well. As a native New Yorker, super-storm Sandy brought home the impact of extreme weather in a very direct way. New York is where I grew up. It’s where I was married. It’s where I raised my children for most of their lives. And it’s also where after super storm Sandy, I saw my neighbors displaced from their homes, I saw friends who lost their businesses that they worked so hard to build, and literary, the road where I took my driving test, a whipped away by hurricane Sandy.”