Bangkok Post

US climate report issues stark warnings

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>> WASHINGTON: A major scientific report issued by 13 federal agencies on Friday presents the starkest warnings to date of the consequenc­es of climate change for the United States, predicting that if significan­t steps are not taken to rein in global warming, the damage will knock as much as 10% off the size of the US economy by century’s end.

The report, mandated by Congress and made public by the White House, is notable not only for the precision of its calculatio­ns and bluntness of its conclusion­s, but also because its findings are directly at odds with President Donald Trump’s agenda of environmen­tal deregulati­on, which he asserts will spur economic growth.

Mr Trump has taken aggressive steps to allow more planet-warming pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestack­s, and has vowed to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement, under which nearly every country in the world pledged to cut carbon emissions. Just this week, he mocked the science of climate change because of a cold snap in the Northeast, tweeting, “Whatever happened to Global Warming?”

But in direct language, the 1,656-page assessment lays out the devastatin­g effects of a changing climate on the economy, health and environmen­t, including record wildfires in California, crop failures in the Midwest and crumbling infrastruc­ture in the South. Going forward, American exports and supply chains could be disrupted, agricultur­al yields could fall to 1980s levels by mid-century and fire season could spread to the Southeast, the report finds.

“There is a bizarre contrast between this report, which is being released by this administra­tion, and this administra­tion’s own policies,” said Philip B Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Research Centre.

All told, the report says, climate change could slash up to a tenth of gross domestic product by 2100, more than double the losses of the Great Recession a decade ago.

Scientists who worked on the report said it did not appear that administra­tion officials had tried to alter or suppress its findings. However, several noted that the timing of its release, at 2pm local time the day after Thanksgivi­ng, appeared designed to minimise its public impact.

Still, the report could become a powerful legal tool for opponents of Mr Trump’s efforts to dismantle climate change policy.

“This report will weaken the Trump administra­tion’s legal case for undoing climate change regulation­s and it strengthen­s the hands of those who go to court to fight them,” said Michael Oppenheime­r, a professor of geoscience­s and internatio­nal affairs at Princeton.

The report is the second volume of the National Climate Assessment, which the federal government is required by law to produce every four years. The first volume was issued by the White House last year.

The previous report, issued in May 2014, concluded with nearly as much scientific certainty, but not as much precision on the economic costs, that the tangible impacts of climate change had already started to cause damage across the country. It cited increasing water scarcity in dry regions, torrential downpours in wet regions and more severe heat waves and wildfires.

The results of the 2014 report helped inform the Obama administra­tion as it wrote a set of landmark climate change regulation­s. The following year, the Environmen­tal Protection Agency finalised President Barack Obama’s signature climate change policy, known as the Clean Power Plan, which aimed to slash planet-warming emissions from coal-fired power plants. At the end of 2015, Obama played a lead role in brokering the Paris Agreement.

But in 2016, Republican­s in general and Mr Trump in particular campaigned against those regulation­s. In rallies before cheering coal miners, Mr Trump vowed to end what he called Mr Obama’s “war on coal” and to withdraw from the Paris deal. Since winning the election, his administra­tion has moved decisively to roll back environmen­tal regulation­s.

The report puts the most precise price tags to date on the cost to the US economy of projected climate impacts: US$141 billion (4.6 trillion baht) from heat-related deaths, $118 billion from sea level rise and $32 billion from infrastruc­ture damage by the end of the century, among others.

The findings come a month after the Intergover­nmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations, issued its most alarming and specific report to date about the severe economic and humanitari­an crises expected to hit the world by 2040.

But the new report also emphasises that the outcomes depend on how swiftly and decisively the United States and other countries take action to mitigate global warming. The authors put forth three main solutions: putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions, which usually means imposing taxes or fees on companies that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; establishi­ng government regulation­s on how much greenhouse pollution can be emitted, and spending public money on clean-energy research.

A White House statement said the report, which was started under the Obama administra­tion, was “largely based on the most extreme scenario” of global warming and that the next assessment would provide an opportunit­y for greater balance.

 ??  ?? MORE FIRES IN THE FUTURE: A firefighte­r fights a blaze at a residence in California earlier this month. The findings of a report issued on Friday cited increasing water scarcity in dry regions, torrential downpours in wet regions and more severe heat waves and wildfires.
MORE FIRES IN THE FUTURE: A firefighte­r fights a blaze at a residence in California earlier this month. The findings of a report issued on Friday cited increasing water scarcity in dry regions, torrential downpours in wet regions and more severe heat waves and wildfires.

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