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U.S. Report Provides Assessment of National, Regional Impacts of Global Climate Change Climate change is already having visible impacts in the United States, and the choices made now will determine the severity of its impacts in the future, according to a new federal study assessing the current and anticipated domestic impacts of climate change. The report, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” (http: //www.globalchange.gov/usimpacts), compiles several years of scientific research and takes into account new data not available during the preparation of previous large national and global assessments, including the last major report on global climate change released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The new report was produced by a consortium of experts from 13 U.S. government science agencies and from several major universities and research institutes. “This new report integrates the most upto-date scientific findings into a comprehensive picture of the ongoing as well as expected future impacts of heat-trapping pollution on the climate experienced by Americans, region by region and sector by sector,” said John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “It tells us why remedial action is needed sooner rather than later, as well as showing why that action must include both global emissions reductions to reduce the extent of climate change and local adaptation measures to reduce the damage from the changes that are no longer avoidable.” The report, which confirms previous evidence that global temperature increases in recent decades have been primarily human-induced, incorporates the latest information on rising temperatures and sea levels; increases in extreme weather events; and other climate-related phenomena. Adding to its practical value in the realm of policy and planning, the report breaks out those impacts in detail by U.S. region and by economic sector, including water resources, energy supply and use, and transportation. The 190-page report, produced under leadership of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is a product of the interagency U.S. Global Change Research Program. The report was commissioned in 2007 and completed this spring. The report is not intended to direct policymakers to take any one approach over another to mitigate climate change or adapt to it. But it emphasizes that the choices 632

made now will determine the severity of climate change impacts in the future. “Implementing sizable and sustained reductions in carbon dioxide emissions as soon as possible would significantly reduce the pace and the overall amount of climate change,” the report states, “and would be more effective than reductions of the same size initiated later.” The report confirms that about 87% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from energy production and use. “In turn,” the report said, “climate change will eventually affect our production and use of energy,” an area in