The Docket | Emerging Science

The Slow Invoice

What a Decade of Climate Costs Looks Like in San Antonio

By Seth D. Carrington— March 31, 2026

Feature image for article: What a Decade of Climate Costs Looks Like in San Antonio

In 2023, San Antonio hit 75 days above 100°F. No president flew in. No anchors stood in anybody's yard. Insurance premiums climbed double digits, a surcharge from a freeze two winters back kept printing on every electric bill, and heat exhaustion cases more than doubled in a single season. The city just got quietly, relentlessly more expensive.

San Antonio's climate story has no dramatic arc. The tab runs across insurance, electricity, hospital visits, and flood exposure simultaneously, in a city that doesn't count certain deaths and doesn't publish certain data. It has been arriving in the mailbox for a decade.

The Slow Invoice

What a Decade of Climate Costs Looks Like in San Antonio

By Seth D. Carrington— March 31, 2026

In 2023, San Antonio hit 75 days above 100°F. No president flew in. No anchors stood in anybody's yard. Insurance premiums climbed double digits, a surcharge from a freeze two winters back kept printing on every electric bill, and heat exhaustion cases more than doubled in a single season. The city just got quietly, relentlessly more expensive.

San Antonio's climate story has no dramatic arc. The tab runs across insurance, electricity, hospital visits, and flood exposure simultaneously, in a city that doesn't count certain deaths and doesn't publish certain data. It has been arriving in the mailbox for a decade.

Where It Lands

A Stanford study published in Nature last week priced three decades of U.S. emissions at $10.2 trillion in global damages, with roughly $3 trillion falling domestically. That number made headlines. What didn't: the researchers' own caveat that it excludes health costs, mortality, and most infrastructure damage.

The figure everyone cited is a floor, not a ceiling.

So where does the rest show up? Not in economic models. In your insurance renewal. Your electric bill. The price of orange juice. Below, six domains where climate costs are already reshaping what households and communities actually pay, most of it invisible to the paper that made the news.

Where It Lands

A Stanford study published in Nature last week priced three decades of U.S. emissions at $10.2 trillion in global damages, with roughly $3 trillion falling domestically. That number made headlines. What didn't: the researchers' own caveat that it excludes health costs, mortality, and most infrastructure damage.

The figure everyone cited is a floor, not a ceiling.

So where does the rest show up? Not in economic models. In your insurance renewal. Your electric bill. The price of orange juice. Below, six domains where climate costs are already reshaping what households and communities actually pay, most of it invisible to the paper that made the news.

Insurance Costs

Your Homeowners Premium Rose 24 Percent Since 2021

The average policy jumped $648 between 2021 and 2024. Nearly two million policies were cancelled outright. The Stanford paper captures some of the underlying physical losses driving this retreat, but not the premium spiral itself, which lands squarely on household balance sheets as a separate, compounding cost.

Food Prices

Heat and Drought Are Repricing the Grocery Aisle

U.S. food prices climbed 24% from 2020 to 2024. Beef rose 5.4% on drought-thinned herds. Orange juice, 50%. This week's compound drought-heatwave research found a single 2021 event slashed spring wheat yields by 31%. The Stanford framework partly captures agricultural losses but misses the markup between field and checkout lane.

Energy Costs

Summer Cooling Bills Just Hit a 12-Year High

Projected summer electricity costs reached $784 per household for 2025. Cooling drove 37% of seasonal demand growth last year alone. The Parsons livability study helps explain the trajectory: older adults have lost roughly 270 safe outdoor activity hours annually, which means more life lived indoors, under compressor, on the meter.

Health Costs

Heat Sends a Billion Dollars Through ERs Each Summer

An estimated 235,000 excess emergency visits and 56,000 hospital admissions per summer, totaling roughly $1 billion. The Stanford paper explicitly excludes health and mortality costs, so this entire burden sits on top of the $10.2 trillion headline. UCLA research shows those ER visits concentrate in lower-income zip codes, where cooling access is worst.

Property Values

Flood-Zone Homes Carry $237 Billion in Phantom Equity

A Nature Climate Change analysis found flood-exposed U.S. properties are overvalued by up to $237 billion, with the gap widest in counties that don't require risk disclosure. When insurance pulls back and buyers recalibrate, low-income homeowners absorb the correction. This repricing risk is entirely outside the Stanford paper's retrospective damage model.

Infrastructure Costs

27 Billion-Dollar Disasters in a Single Year

The U.S. recorded 27 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2024, totaling $182.7 billion. Cumulative costs since 1980 now exceed $3.1 trillion. Wildfire exposure alone adds 14 basis points to school district borrowing costs. The Stanford paper excludes infrastructure entirely, making every dollar here additive to its headline figure.

The Research

$10.2 Trillion in Damages Traced to U.S. Emissions Since 1990. The Researchers Say That Number Is a Floor.

Burke et al. attributed $10.2 trillion in global economic damage to U.S. emissions from 1990–2020, pricing carbon at ~$1,013 per tonne. The figure captures only GDP losses from temperature shifts. Mortality, health impacts, biodiversity, infrastructure? All excluded. A floor, not a total.

Why does $1,013 per tonne matter?

Most government estimates sit far lower. Burke's model connects specific national emissions to documented GDP losses across 143 countries.

Why now?

Climate liability lawsuits seeking to hold emitters accountable for quantified damages just got a peer-reviewed attribution methodology published in Nature.

900 Hours a Year: The Physiological Model Measuring How Much Safe Outdoor Time Has Already Vanished

Parsons et al. built a physiological model showing climate change has doubled the hours when routine outdoor activity is unsafe for older adults since the 1950s. The global figure: roughly 900 hours of severe limitation per year. The southern U.S. concentrates the worst losses.

What counts as "unsafe"?

Not heatstroke weather. Hours when sweeping a porch or walking to a mailbox pushes a body past its physiological cooling limits.

Where is this concentrating?

The southern U.S. has already shed hundreds of safe outdoor hours. Nearly 78% of the world's older adults live in severe-limitation zones.

The Research

$10.2 Trillion in Damages Traced to U.S. Emissions Since 1990. The Researchers Say That Number Is a Floor.

Burke et al. attributed $10.2 trillion in global economic damage to U.S. emissions from 1990–2020, pricing carbon at ~$1,013 per tonne. The figure captures only GDP losses from temperature shifts. Mortality, health impacts, biodiversity, infrastructure? All excluded. A floor, not a total.

Why does $1,013 per tonne matter?

Most government estimates sit far lower. Burke's model connects specific national emissions to documented GDP losses across 143 countries.

Why now?

Climate liability lawsuits seeking to hold emitters accountable for quantified damages just got a peer-reviewed attribution methodology published in Nature.

The Research

900 Hours a Year: The Physiological Model Measuring How Much Safe Outdoor Time Has Already Vanished

Parsons et al. built a physiological model showing climate change has doubled the hours when routine outdoor activity is unsafe for older adults since the 1950s. The global figure: roughly 900 hours of severe limitation per year. The southern U.S. concentrates the worst losses.

What counts as "unsafe"?

Not heatstroke weather. Hours when sweeping a porch or walking to a mailbox pushes a body past its physiological cooling limits.

Where is this concentrating?

The southern U.S. has already shed hundreds of safe outdoor hours. Nearly 78% of the world's older adults live in severe-limitation zones.

The Accruing Interest

The Interest on Emissions We Never Paid For

Solomon Hsiang's analogy is blunt: CO₂ is garbage we never paid to dispose of, and the bill accrues interest. Burke et al. quantify that interest. One tonne emitted in 1990 caused roughly $180 in global damages by 2020. That same tonne will inflict approximately $1,840 more through 2100. Ten times the cost already incurred, from emissions already in the atmosphere.

The crop losses, the productivity declines, the insurance premiums climbing every renewal cycle. All of it represents about a tenth of what those same emissions will ultimately cost. The compounding doesn't stop because we've stopped emitting. CO₂ lingers for centuries, suppressing economic output each year it persists. The bill is mostly still ahead of us.

The Accruing Interest

The Interest on Emissions We Never Paid For

Solomon Hsiang's analogy is blunt: CO₂ is garbage we never paid to dispose of, and the bill accrues interest. Burke et al. quantify that interest. One tonne emitted in 1990 caused roughly $180 in global damages by 2020. That same tonne will inflict approximately $1,840 more through 2100. Ten times the cost already incurred, from emissions already in the atmosphere.

The crop losses, the productivity declines, the insurance premiums climbing every renewal cycle. All of it represents about a tenth of what those same emissions will ultimately cost. The compounding doesn't stop because we've stopped emitting. CO₂ lingers for centuries, suppressing economic output each year it persists. The bill is mostly still ahead of us.

Conservative floor:

The $10.2 trillion U.S. damage estimate excludes mortality, biodiversity loss, displacement, and sea level rise, all of which push the real number higher

Removal timing:

Delayed carbon capture cannot undo economic harm that accumulated between emission and intervention. The interest isn't forgiven retroactively

Wide range:

Future damages per 1990 tonne span $500 to $5,700 depending on discount rate and modeling assumptions. Uncertainty is genuine, not reassuring

Flight math:

One additional long-haul flight per year generates about $165 in damages through 2020 but roughly $25,000 in cumulative damages through 2100

Third leg:

Burke frames loss-and-damage accounting as the neglected complement to mitigation and adaptation, for when both fall short