The harmful effects of global warming are being felt "here and now and in your backyard,"
Pastor Dale Morgan
The harmful effects of global warming are being felt "here and now and
in your backyard,"
*
AFP - Wednesday, June 17
WASHINGTON (AFP) - - The harmful effects of global warming are being
felt "here and now and in your backyard," a groundbreaking US government
report on climate change has warned.
"Climate change is happening now, it is not something that will happen
decades or centuries in the future," Jerry Melillo of the Marine
Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, one of the lead authors of the
report, told AFP.
Climate change, which the report blames largely on human-induced
emissions of heat-trapping gases, "is under way in the United States and
projected to grow," said the report by the US Global Change Research
Program, a grouping of a dozen government agencies and the White House.
The report is the first on climate change since President Barack Obama
took office and outlines in plain, non-scientific terms how global
warming has resulted in an increase of extreme weather such as the
powerful heatwave that swept Europe in 2003, claiming tens of thousands
of lives.
Hurricanes have become fiercer as they gather greater strength over
oceans warmed by climate change.
Global warming impacts everything from water supplies to energy, farming
to health. And those impacts are expected to increase, according to the
report titled "Global Change Impacts in the United States."
Areas of the country that already had high levels of rain or snowfall
have seen increases in precipitation because of climate change, says the
report, which focuses on the United States but also tackles global
climate change issues.
"We focused on regions of the US because another big message we wanted
to get across is that not only is climate change happening now, but it's
happening in your backyard," said Melillo.
"You care a great deal more about a tornado in your own backyard than
one half a world away," said David Doniger, senior policy director at
the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Arid areas, such as the largely desert US Southwest, are experiencing
more droughts.
On the US Gulf Coast, sea level rise is particularly pressing; in the
Northwest, how long snowpack sits on the mountains might be an issue,
and farmers in the Midwest are concerned because winters have become
milder, allowing more pests to survive the season.
But climate change also operates in a global nexus and the United States
cannot be viewed in isolation, the 196-page report says.
Climate change-related food production problems in one part of the world
can affect food prices and production decisions in the United States, he
added.
"There is a whole host of connections when you discuss climate change;
the US cannot be viewed as an island," Melillo said.
The chief aim of the report is to help US policymakers and the general
public make decisions on how to act to halt climate change, Melillo said.
The report's release comes just six months before countries from around
the world meet in the Danish capital Copenhagen for a UN conference that
aims to produce an ambitious, new climate pact aimed at rolling back
global warming.
Experts have been thrashing out a draft of a negotiating text for the
new pact meant to take effect from the end of 2012, spelling out curbs
on emissions by 2020 that will be deepened by 2050.
Reports issued by the previous administration of president George W.
Bush -- who famously rejected the Kyoto Protocol, the previous UN
framework on climate change -- were highly technical and did not cover
as many issues as the sweeping first report issued by the Obama White
House, said Melillo.
The report stresses the need for immediate action against global
warming, saying: "Future climate change and its impacts depend on
choices made today."
"We have the power to determine how bad this could be and to avoid the
worst impacts of global warming," said Doniger.
"It's like Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol,' where the ghosts come
and show Scrooge the way the future could unfold into either a happy
future or a disastrous future.
"This shows us that the future is in our hands, just as it was in
Scrooge's hands," said Doniger.