By Cliff Montgomery – July 24th, 2009
John Holdren, President Obama’s Science and Technology Adviser, on June 16th released a major study onthe problems that America may soon face thanks to global climate disruption.
This report is the first scientific study on climate conditions to be released by the Obama Administration. TheGovernment Accountability Project (GAP)–“the nation’s leading whistleblower protection organization,”according to its website–has stated that the report also is “the most significant U.S. climate impactassessment since the first National Assessment was issued in 2000.”
“It’s time to start making up for eight lost years under an administration that left the federal government AWOLin dealing with this problem,” GAP Climate Science Watch Program Director Rick Piltz stated in a June 16thpress release.
The new study, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, has enjoyed a rather high visibility thanksto the Obama White House. The administration also touts an up-to-date website for the United States GlobalChange Research Program, which delivers a clear, straightforward analysis of the impact that continued globalwarming is likely to have on each segment of America.
For GAP and many other groups, such concern is a welcome change from the Bush Administration’s denialsand lack of interest about climate change. But there still are fundamental problems to be addressed.
“Right now the United States doesn’t have the policies, institutions, and research in place to deal with theconsequences of climate disruption…There is a void in the federal system that such a planning andpreparedness capability must now be created to fill,” said GAP’s Rick Piltz.
“We have inherited the situation left behind by the Bush Administration, under which, with climate change, wewitnessed a familiar modus operandi: deny and misrepresent the intelligence, suppress honestcommunication, block the proactive use of government to diagnose and solve problems, evade governmentaccountability, and thereby fail to sufficiently prepare for urgent challenges and impending crises.”
The climate report–a wide-ranging scientific study by a number of top scientists and experts–reveals thatglobal climate disruption probably will have a large number of damaging effects on the United States.
The assessment suggests that among these impacts will be a stress on water resources, which will worsen theeffect of regional droughts. It also will be an added drain on already strained water supplies in the West.
The study reveals a need for tough climate change legislation. The more America curtails its greenhouse gasemissions, the greater its chance of limiting harmful impacts on our air, our water and our food supplies.
“The report shows that the need for strong climate change legislation is about more than clean energy andgreen jobs,” Piltz stated in GAP’s press release.
“It’s [also] about the potentially devastating costs and consequences of inaction. The need to jump-startfederal action is urgent and should not be delayed by the daunting challenge of enacting major legislation toestablish a cap-and-trade system for reducing emissions,” continued Piltz.
“The Obama Administration can take important steps right now on its own initiative. This will require WhiteHouse leadership. The President should talk to the American people about the findings of this new report,about why climate change is an urgent problem, and about the risks of inaction,” he added.
But will Obama actually do this? Only time will answer such a question. He often has said the right things, suchas this statement on global warming in March:
“So we have a choice to make. We can remain one of the world’s leading importers of foreign oil, or we canmake the investments that would allow us to become the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy. Wecan let climate change continue to go unchecked, or we can help stop it. We can let the jobs of tomorrow becreated abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America and lay the foundation for lasting prosperity.”
Strong words. But whether the president will follow up these words with strong actions remains to be seen.
