Sec. 2. Findings
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The Congress finds the following: The Government Accountability Office included the need to address extreme weather in its 2013 and 2015 High Risk List by declaring that this complex, cross-cutting issue presents a significant financial risk to the Federal Government and that the Government would be better positioned to respond to extreme weather events if the Federal efforts were more coordinated. The GAO further found that there are no programs to monitor and independently validate the effectiveness and sustainability of agency measures to address the challenges posed to Federal insurance programs by extreme weather and that there is not a systematic method to distribute information to State and local governments.
The United States has sustained 178 weather-related disasters since 1980 where overall costs reached or exceeded $1 billion, with a total cost exceeding $1 trillion. In the past four years, extreme weather events resulted in 253 Presidential major disaster declarations, 1,286 fatalities, and $227 billion in economic losses with 42 of these events each inflicting at least $1 billion in damage. In 2012, the Federal Government spent nearly $100 billion because of droughts, storms, floods, and forest fires, and the costs of extreme weather in the United States totaled almost 1 percent of the Nation’s gross domestic product.
Every dollar spent on hazard mitigation brings a $4 return on investment. The Federal Government has a number of non-permanent efforts underway to address extreme weather, including those outlined in Executive Order 13693, in Executive Order 13653, in Executive Order 13690, in Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20, in Presidential Policy Directive 8, and in individual Agency Adaptation Plans. The Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force recommendations included taking a resiliency approach to planning, design, and rebuilding in order to mitigate impacts of future extreme weather-related events.
In order to help communities plan for future extreme weather-related events, the National League of Cities urges the Federal Government to provide financial and technical assistance to help local governments assess vulnerabilities and mitigate such future events and to share best practices and resiliency strategies. According to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, future impacts of extreme weather project national economic losses on the order of $1.2 trillion through 2050.
The property insurance industry called for State and local governments to adopt measures to increase resilience to present and future risks of extreme weather and for the sharing of science-based information to better inform public policy and decisionmaking at all levels of government and commerce.
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