For a slightly more local and recent example, the cost of California's 2017 wildfire season exceeded $9.4 billion (http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/f

For a slightly more local and recent example, the cost of California's 2017 wildfire season exceeded $9.4 billion (http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/fires/article188377854.html http://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/fires/article188...), and became a serious political football between the country's wealthiest state and the federal government. The federal government additionally had hurricane and flood damage events, among others, totaling a record-breaking $306 billion for 2017 (https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2017-us-billion-dollar-weather-and-climate-disasters-historic-year https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/2017...). These numbers aren't going to trend downward anytime soon. A lot of the cost is absorbed through private means -- insurance, private funds and donations, and a lot of unfortunate people just end up eating the cost -- but if the federal government were to try to cover everything related to natural disasters, it would approximately rival the interest paid each year on federal debt. We are seeing now the beginnings of the effects that scientists started warning us about 30 years ago. They aren't going to go away. They're only going to get bigger and more expensive and, like frogs in boiling water, we'll continue debating the merits of climate science while paying for the destruction of entire communities and it won't even occur to us that the things are related. So as US deficits continue to increase and the tax-and-spend cycle continues through several different administrations, other programs are going to get cut back in an attempt to reduce debt (or to pay for whatever administration's favorite thing is today). People who don't live in coastal areas or areas prone to wildfire, drought, hurricanes, tornadoes, severe winter weather, or other climate-related natural disasters, might think, hey, I'll be okay. But the money's gotta come out of somebody's pockets.