Episode description

Since 2000, the United States Global Change Research Program has periodically published a report on its assessment of the climate crisis, its current impacts, its potential threats, and the solutions available to mitigate the worst impacts and adapt as quickly as possible.  Last week, the interagency program published the Fifth National Climate Assessment. Despite accounting for just 4% of the world’s population, as a result of burning fossil fuels for more than a century, the US is responsible for approximately 17% of the global warming the planet is facing today. And while US emissions are falling, they’re not falling fast enough to meet the 2050 Net Zero target established by the Biden Administration. The report explores the health, economic, environmental, and social impacts of the climate crisis that Americans are experiencing now and it clearly states that all of those will get worse if America and the world doesn’t start cutting greenhouse gas emissions immediately. 

Allison Crimmins, the Director of the Fifth National Climate Assessment, joins the show to discuss the report’s main findings, the extraordinary costs of the climate crisis that Americans are already facing, and the positive benefits that could be achieved today as soon as we start deploying sufficient mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Read the full report here: https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/

Check out the companion podcast to the Fifth National Climate Assessment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7EIxjQNbD8&t=8s

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