In 2025, the United States absorbed 23 separate weather and climate disasters that each cost at least $1 billion, with combined damages near $115 billion and 276 deaths. That is roughly two billion-dollar disasters every month. The long-run average, in records going back to 1980, is nine such events in an entire year.
The Bill Is Already Here
The January 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles County were the single costliest event of the year, with about $61.2 billion in damages. That makes them the most expensive wildfire in U.S. history, roughly twice the cost of the previous record holder.
Wildfire was not the whole story. A record 21 of the 23 billion-dollar events were severe-weather outbreaks, concentrated in spring and summer tornado seasons across the central United States. The annual average cost since 1980, adjusted for inflation, is $67.6 billion. The 2025 total ran $115 billion, almost double the historical norm.
These are not abstract figures. They are insurance claims, federal disaster appropriations, rebuilt highways, lost wages, and funerals. The money has already left American wallets, public budgets, and the Treasury. The only question left is whether the next round of spending repeats the pattern or interrupts it.
Why the Market Underprices the Risk
A functioning market prices risk accurately. The market around carbon does not, because the firms and activities that profit from carbon pollution rarely pay for the floods, fires, and crop failures that pollution helps produce. Economists call that gap an externality, and an unpriced externality always ends with the public covering the difference.
The bill is now arriving through the insurance system. Insurers have repriced or withdrawn coverage across high-risk regions, which pushes premiums up for ordinary homeowners and shifts uninsured losses onto taxpayers. A 2025 analysis from Boston Consulting Group and the University of Cambridge estimated that the net cost of climate inaction runs between 11 and 27 percent of cumulative global GDP, while mitigation spending can return 5 to 14 times its original cost.
The $115 billion was spent. The only open question is whether the next $115 billion buys recovery or prevention.
This is the core argument for treating climate as economic policy. Left entirely to an unregulated market, carbon stays mispriced and the damages compound. Handed entirely to central planning, the response would be slow and clumsy. The workable path runs between those poles: a regulated market that prices carbon honestly, paired with public investment in the systems that private firms will not build fast enough on their own.
The Balanced Alternative
Clean energy is already one of the strongest job engines in the country. The U.S. clean-energy workforce stands at about 3.56 million workers, and in 2024 it grew nearly three times faster than the broader labor market, expanding 2.8 percent against 0.8 percent for the economy as a whole. Wind turbine technician and solar installer rank among the fastest-growing occupations in America.
That growth is now being deliberately slowed. Since January 2025, companies have canceled more than $22 billion in planned clean-energy factories and projects, erasing roughly 16,500 jobs that were expected to follow. Pulling federal support out of clean energy does not lower the cost of a warming climate. It shifts that cost from a planned investment with a payroll attached to an emergency appropriation with a body count attached.
A balanced policy is not complicated to describe. Price carbon so polluters carry the cost they create. Invest public money in the grid, in clean generation, and in disaster resilience, because those are public goods that markets undersupply. Regulate insurance and building standards so families are not bankrupted by risks they did not choose. Capitalism is the right engine for this work. It simply needs a price signal that tells the truth.
The 2026 federal budget will decide which path the country pays for. Cutting clean-energy investment will not make the next disaster season cheaper. It moves the spending from prevention, which creates jobs and shrinks future losses, to recovery, which creates rubble. Recovery is always the more expensive option, and the United States keeps choosing it.
Sources
- Climate Central, 2025 in Review: U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters
- NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters
- U.S. Department of Energy, Clean Energy Jobs Grew at More Than Twice the Rate of Overall U.S. Employment
- E2, Clean Energy Jobs Grew 3x Faster Than the Rest of the U.S. Workforce in 2024
- Boston Consulting Group, Why Investing in Climate Action Makes Economic Sense
- NASA Earth Observatory, Fires Tear Through Los Angeles
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