Background to the EPA Report

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Majuro Attoll, Marshall islands, threatened by sea level rise due to climate change.

Drafted by the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change was jointly written by scientists from government, industry, universities and non-governmental organisations and submitted to the United Nations.

Besides laying the blame for global warming squarely on the burning of fossil fuels, which release greenhouse gases, the report predicts the sort of environmental havoc which the US faces in the next decades:

• A temperature rise of between 3 and 9 Fahrenheit (0.5-1.5 ° Celsius);
• ecosystems such as alpine meadows in the Rocky mountains and some barrier islands are likely to disappear entirely;
• other ecosystems such as Southeastern forests are likely to experience major species shifts or break up into a mosaic of grasslands, woodlands and forests;
• potential droughts in the Pacific Northwest region;
• more stifling heat waves;
• permanent disappearance of coastal marshes;
• a 43 per cent increase in US emissions of greenhouse gases between 2000 and 2020.

Bizarrely, given the seriousness of these findings, the report recommended no major shift policy to reduce burgeoning carbon dioxide levels. Instead of demanding that the Kyoto Protocol be ratified, the EPA proposed that the US should focus on adapting to the impacts of a warmer planet to ensure the economy is not damaged. This fitted in neatly with President Bush´s lamentably weak climate "plan", calling for voluntary measures which would permit gas emissions to rise, with the goal of slowing the rate of growth.

This "fence-straddling" position pleased nobody and left the EPA open to criticism from both sides. Apologists for the oil and auto industries such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute rushed to question the validity of the science, despite an admission from the National Academy of Science in 2001 that "the observed warming is real…particularly… within the past twenty years."

Environmental groups supported the EPA´s findings, but savaged their failure to propose any realistic solutions; "The Bush administration now admits that global warming will change America´s most unique wild places and wildlife forever" said Mark Van Putten of the National Wildlife Federation, "How can it acknowledge global warming is a disaster in the making and then refuse to help solve the problem, especially when solutions are so clear?"

Read the report in full at http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/publications/car/