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EPA no longer updates EPA's Global Warming Site, but is maintaining this archive for historical purposes. Please see EPA's Climate Change site for current information on climate change and global warming.
You and Your Business
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How might global warming affect my health and well-being?Exactly how global warming will impact individual locations, let alone individuals, is uncertain. But because global temperatures, rainfall, sea levels and the frequency of extreme weather are expected to increase, you could be affected in many ways.
Your health and comfort could be affected if your region experiences more frequent heat waves and worse air pollution. These health concerns are especially serious if you are or care for the very young, very old, or if you have heart and respiratory problems. In the wintertime you may feel milder temperatures. You may pay higher energy bills for air conditioning in summer, and lower bills for heating in winter.
If you live in the country's interior, particularly in dry areas, water shortages may be more frequent, leading to more restrictions on your water usage. If you live along the coast, your home may be threatened by sea level rise and an increase in storm intensity.
The cost of food may change as farmers and the food industry adapt to new climate patterns. And the outdoor activities that you and your family enjoy could be affected by increased beach erosion, decreased snow fall and retreating glaciers, and loss of forests and wildlife, where species are unable to adapt to the changing climate.
How might global warming affect my business?
A lot of attention is paid to estimating the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But what is often overlooked is that global warming and climatic changes can themselves impose economic – as well as health and environmental – costs on people and businesses. |
As a business owner, your costs, competition, and planning decisions may be affected. Your health care costs could increase if the public health sector is burdened by increases in heat and climate-related mortality and illness. Like homeowners, your business's energy costs will reflect the need for greater cooling in the summer and less heating in the winter. Your property insurance premiums could go up due to more droughts and floods and possibly more intense storms.
If your business is located along the coast, sea level rise may also affect property insurance, not to mention how rising seas may directly impact your business. If your business depends on waterways for transportation, those shipping costs could increase in some areas due to reduced river flow and lower lake levels, though in northern areas shipping could be eased by a longer ice-free season.
If you're in the agricultural or food industry, changing climatic and growing season conditions will require adaptations. Your competitors in this sector may experience either more or less favorable climatic changes than you. The same is true if you're in a forestry-related business.
Some of global warming's impacts may be most severe in other nations less capable of adapting. This may create social and economic disruptions that ripple across the globe to affect your business. For all of these reasons, long-term business planning will increasingly have to consider the changing nature of our planet's climate.
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