The Economic Impacts of Climate Change in Texas: A Regional Lesson with National Impact

This chapter discusses the economic consequences of climate change in Texas, drawing implications for the impacts of climate change on the broader U.S. economy. As the nation's most weather-vulnerable state, Texas has been bearing the accelerating costs of climate change on its economy. The economic costs and consequences of climate change in Texas include agricultural crop losses, production, supply chain and transportation disruptions, higher shipping, storage, and production costs, rising consumer prices, significant energy sector disruptions, accelerating energy demand, growing energy insecurity and higher energy prices, worsening water shortages and rising water rates, declining labor supply, availability and productivity, rising property damage and destruction, growing infrastructure damage and loss, soaring property insurance premiums and higher financing costs, widening economic inequality, and growing food insecurity, among others. The state's economy and key infrastructure remain increasingly at risk from rising temperatures, worsening droughts, and wildfires, changing precipitation patterns, sea level rise, increased flooding, intensifying storms, stronger hurricanes, and other growing impacts of global warming and climate change. While the economic impacts of climate change are manifest across all income levels, climate change inflicts disproportionate economic costs on the state's most economically vulnerable communities. If left unmitigated, climate change threatens to undermine the Texan economy, undoing the state's economic progress and reversing the state's productivity and employment gains. On the national level, unmitigated climate change poses a growing risk to the country's economic and financial system, and overall societal stability.