In a cover story headlined "It's Global Warming, Stupid," Bloomberg Businessweek calls attention to a report from the German reinsurance giant, Munich Re, titled "Severe Weather in North America." It concludes that from 1980 until 2011 weather-related disasters topped $1 trillion, adding that "nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than North America." Over the last 30 years, Munich Re found that weather disasters along the coast of North America had quintupled. That's a greater increase than on any other continent.
In other words, North America and the United States are being hit harder by global warming than any other landmass. The new industrial powers such as China, India, and Brazil may be more important in that battle over the long run of years. But at the moment, America has the biggest problem, at least measured by dollars — the most to lose.
Unlike the budget crisis, the sad state of the economy, and our various ill-conceived wars, climate change is forever.
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