Next, executive Branch Officials and policy advocates examining the impact of Climate Change on u. S. Household finances, especially for those living in vulnerable communities. The Treasury Department released the report that theyve this event. This is hosted by the urban institute in washington, d. C. And runs about an hour and 20 minutes. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] welcome and good afternoon. I am signemary mckernan, the Vice President here at the urban institute of the center on labor and services and population. And also a Financial Wellbeing expert. So the. Top todays topic near and dear to my heart. Thank you to all of us who joined both in the room today and online. And before i jump in here are a few notes on f housekeeping. One, the event is being recorded and the recording and relevant links will be posted online after the t event. If youre joining us virtually the life captions are turned on and you can adjust those at the bottom off your screen. And if youre in the room you can use the qr code thats on all of your tables to submit your questions, and the virtual audience can submit your questions directly into the questionandanswer box at any time. We are going to be sharing a link with a postsurvey, postevent survey and would ask that you share your feedback with us. Its helpfulba for us and for panelists to hear what you are thinking about and to shape how we do events and what we look at in the future. If you would like to join the conversation online, on twitter please use the hashtag live at urban. So with logistics behind us, i want to thank all of our speakers for joining us for discussion of how Climate Change impacts household Financial Wellbeing. And were going to be exploring both what drives the risks and also the pathways to building resilience. So far in 2023 United States has suffered 23 billion disasters, many of them fueled by Climate Change. The increasing frequency, severity and the cost of the disasters and the warmer temperatures is having an impact on peoples Financial Health. We know that many families in the United States live paycheck to paycheck, and that disasters can push households into financial instability and distress. So its imperative we both consider climate and are policies and programs and that we consider them when were looking at those policies and programs aimed at both Financial Health and wealth. So this conversation today rings together both leading Research Insights and also the perspectives of federal agencies working at the intersection of climate and Financial Health. In a few moments im going to be joineded on stage by graham steele, assistant secretary for Financial Institutions at the Us Department of treasury, and we are going to discuss trenches work on Climate Change in American Household finances. Prior to his role as an assistant secretary he served as director of the corporations and Society Initiative at stanford graduate schoolti of business. And thats a Research Initiative that examines issues at the heart of markets, business and government. To promote more accountable capitalism and governance. So we are pleased to have here with us today, and please join me in welcoming assistant sector grahamam steele. [applause] great to have you. Thanks for coming. Thanks to urban for letting us joined them. We often talk about climate in a variety of different contexts, and today you released a report, treasury released a report, the impact of Climate Change on American Householdha finances. Such an important intersection here of these two. Can you give us some background on the framework that you used in the report and why you chose a framework . A sure. I think we all know we are seeing today at the new york in particular the events of wildfires, flooding, heat waves are as you sit in the opening getting more and more o frequent and more and more intense. We know theres going to be a fivefold increase in the number of billion dollar disaster in the u. S. Going back to 1980 and thats even adjusted for inflation. We that0 things like Hurricane Ian last year where we had 170 people die and the cost of thatt is estimated to be over 100 billion. So we are seeing the intensity and impact here. As you know we released this report ond the impact of Climate Change and impacts on American Household today. Try a to get a close look more because we see these numbers, we see n headline numbers around events like the wildfires in maui where we think it will cost around 4 6 billion. We want to get a little more on human face one these kinds of highlevel events and decemberve stride unpacked what the impacts are to household. Lets take a step back for a moment because some folks, in the position ive been in, sometimes i get why is a Treasury Department talking about Climate Change, like what is your agency have to do with all this . Number one, the white house has told all the cabinet agencies we need to takenc hold of governmet and the whole of executive branch approach to climate comes all the agencies need to think about what our role is here both in addressing the problems and then creating solutions to address the challenges of Climate Change. The secretary herself has spoken repeatedly about the urgency of addressing Climate Change both the cost t and the toll that it imposes on the nation and the globe. But also thinking about what wee can bring to bear as an agency to don that. Shes encouraged all of our office to think what word we can be doing to analyze obama think about solutions. We have done work through the Financial StabilityOversight Council but look at the financial system. There are things happening in the property and Casualty Insurance market that were looking out we threw our partners in a Financial Literacy and Education Commission want to take a closer look at the Household Level and individual level impact of these events to think a particular about how they backed Household Level finances. To go back to the example of the wildfires, we think when that country that happens, what are the impacts on the ground . Theres a catastrophic losss of life for folks exposed to the wildfires but all the people that do work t on maui who may w comes the business may close down, they may be agriculture workers and they cant go to the place of business anymore. Its either not accessible or theyve had their hours cut so theyre not didnt income. Same time may be costs related to relocation, rebuilding their home after the fact. There can be less access to resources on the island which can be to Higher Energy or food prices. That was what our goal with this report was to try to really put the grandeur Household Level focused onn some of the father events where we see that macrolevel and pack and the costs but understand how it reflects in peoples daytoday lives. So important to go see the total cost but also the daytoday lives on people. I know the report primarily focus on flooding is, and that includes extreme weather events, sea levels rising, flooding related to wildfires, extreme heat. Research from my urbanar instite colleagues and others demonstrate that disasters from like this can have a long and an even process in terms of both recovery and rebuilding after, and that it can be really an equal in how different people are affected. I know the trade report also looked at the different impacts. What did you find there . We tried to do a couple of things. One was just look at the broad impact of Climate Change having across all households, so for workers in a place like maui, that kind of dynamic i describe, you could have events and other places that create unsafe working conditions for all workers regardless of what their Household Financial condition looks like. You can imagine events increasing the costu of healthcare, for example, on people would increase property destruction happens with things like hurricanes. You can look at the broad impact of chronic Climate Change that is happening this past summer was hottest summer on record. With disney for workers to do work outside in the agricultural industry, in construction and manufacturing of things like that but also what does it do to energy prices,ai teresa cost f things like airconditioning . One piece of this is looking about the ways, what are the ways this impacts all households within we wanted to drill down on some of the most financially vulnerable households to better understand what the implications would be for b thosend folks. People like the folks in this room who do research on Financial Capability and wellbeing will be aware of things like the 20s when one survey that found onethird household good that cover more than one months worth of expenses if they lost their income, or the annual Federal Reserve survey that say over 60 of households could they even afford a shock 400 expense out of their cash and other available resources. That was one of the things we wanted to look at in addition to the broad impact Climate Change or how does that get exacerbated when household is financiallyn vulnerable . We are in washington. Folks were here this past summer this is the thing i was used to come from california but the wildfire smoke from the canadian fires here in washington, d. C. Even this past summer, so again agricultural workers, construction workers who dont want to or are unable to inhale wildfire smoke who then cant work. What does it mean if it creates unsafe conditions . What does that mean for lowwage workers . Households with Health Conditions within our ingesting the smoke within the increased medical costs what does it mean in terms of increasing the financial precarity . Andre then again this will be a thing i return to repeatedly because my dual roles with consumer policy and insurance is the Property Damage that comes out of this to household second barely afford to really absorb that kind of expense. Thats what were trying to do is think about the broad impact of Climate Change and what does it mean forea the most vulnerab. One section of the report i really recommend people to look at is we try to do a bit of geospatial mapping to try to see where this committees are located, where this overlaps arw happening. The risk you mentioned about heat, wildfire in flooding. What we saw is a little more than 50 of counties in the u. S. Are climate, are exposed to the impacts of climate in one of these three different ways. And thenif you overlay the Financial Vulnerability on top of that, you see theres about 20 of counties that have this overlay of exposure to Climate Change andci Financial Vulnerability as well. I think thats really important for some who works in the federal government to understand the climatest change is a global phenomenon and we are were experiencing it at a National Level but also the different communities are expensing this in very different ways and try to understand what this pockets in this c committees are, what they are experiencing and try to think how we respond to that as well. That mapping is so important to help went to target resources. Where do we go first . I guess where i want to turn to next because we a talked a lot about the problems. What about some of the solutions . What can we do here . Hack and we support . Thinking about supporting states as they are looking at the policies and programs . I wish this report have all ofms the solutions to all of the issues we raise, unfortunately its not thatat ambitious of a project. But yes, you are absolutely right. Treasure does have a role to play to some degree in offering assistance to different kinds of businesses or state and local governments. Treasury was given historic appropriations to administer through the Inflation Reduction Act to help communities with various different kinds of clean energy investment, think multiple governments, individual households to invest in things like evs and other types of, heat pumps, other types of efficiency to invest in some of the technology, new products and services that might help to reduce the impact some of these technologies are having on the climate as well. Thats an important part of it. Some folks were at the white house yesterday for the introduction of the resilient, National Resiliency framework another way we can try to get out ahead of this stuff. I think one piece of the report we can talk more about the recommendations is about a households can be aware and try to protect themselves and think about the ways its impacting thin. Its important thing for policymakers in particular to realize when you look at the impacts of Climate Change, some of these canam be handled on the back it in terms of protection but also a lot of front investment that has to happen. At times policymakers might not connect those things and see the way up front resiliency and investments might actually be to some of the Better Outcomes on the backend when it consumers experience these things. An area where the department we try to think about that it a third office of mine is the office of community and Economic Development. Weve been trying to work in particular with community Financial Institutions to think of to hear from them what kind of investment work they are doing to cut help address both the Clean Energy Transition but also make communities more resilient to the physical impacts of Climate Change and then how could part with them to make that job easier as well. Again, consistent with what the white house w has told the department and what the secretary and sold us would try to think about all the different tools and how we can bring to bear to address a lot of these really thorny problems. I was thinking about you last mention of the Financial Institutions. I know that when the government went out with covert relief checks, often the people who need them the most got them last and this because they didnt have those connections to some of the mainstream Financial Institutions. You touched on so many different aspects under so many different places to come in. Another report touches on credit reports, too. And what happens to credit in the price of credit. So thats great. In terms of thats like statelevel programs. L in terms of people, what can people who are impacted by this can what resources might you point into . Sure. Part of this reportt is identified some of theep issues and problems for academics and policy makers to pick up and think about how the work overlaps with some of the issues were racing in the report. We can talk more about those pieces as well in in a minutf you would like, but also part of a of the report is trying to raise awareness for household about the challenges they may interact they can equip themselves well. But also to tell them they are not necessarily about when we get into these situations. They think probably when people experience catastrophic events, it can feel very isolating and in particular when we experienced Financial Vulnerability and precarity that can feel even more isolating. Like it is our problem to solve ourselves, help is not available to us. But none of the messages that are one of the messages the report is to get across our resources available, agencies like the ones that are joining us today like hhs and fema and Even Small Business Administration that product services, other tools to p offer them when you get into these, when youre in the precarious situations, the our resources they can draw on things like use Climate Resilience toolkit and theres also programs like Energy Assistance when the costo of their energy bills go up. Were trying to do a few Different Things in the report and thats one of them to make sure households are aware of some of the risks but also let them know theyre not on their own. There are some resources available. Good. I know during the covid crisis we really expected Financial Health to take issue to dip, and certainly not everybody fared equally well but the progr