[hodgesrm]

> The very worst fears about climate change won’t come true. But a nagging succession of storms, plus required adjustments along the coasts to accommodate a rise in sea level, will eat up about 0.5 percent worth of economic growth.

For a 'clean tale of hypothetical decline' this really seems to undersell the climate problem. As of the weekend along the Norther American West coast there was almost continuous forest fire smoke from southern BC to near the middle of the Central Valley. It's not implausible we will see a sizable percentage of the Western US forests destroyed by fire in the next couple of decades. For anyone who has observed the ecosystems over the past few decades the changes are starting to become quite alarming.

So the climate problem is pretty big. At least at the national level the US is basically ceding responsibility for developing technologies to address it to other nations. This looks like a big future opportunity loss in addition to the actual costs imposed by climate changes.