Climate 411

Are We Ready for Climate Change’s Health Impacts?

By Catherine Malina / Published: April 24, 2008

Catherine MalinaThis post is by Catherine Malina, an associate in the Health Sciences Program at Environmental Defense Fund and a survey interviewer for the "Are We Ready?" report.

Environmental Defense Fund released a new report [PDF] today on the U.S. public health system’s state of preparedness for global climate change. It’s based on a survey of local health department directors from across the country. I was one of the survey interviewers.

Is our nation ready to address the public health challenges of a warming planet? Our survey found there’s much work still to be done.

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What Will it Cost to Protect Ourselves from Global Warming?

By Nat Keohane / Published: April 23, 2008

Nat KeohaneThis post is by Nat Keohane, Ph.D., Director of Economic Policy and Analysis at Environmental Defense Fund.

We just released a new report on how climate change legislation will impact the economy [PDF]. There have been many recent cost estimates, but ours provides something unique. To put the numbers in perspective, we looked at model projections in the context of government data on jobs, consumer expenditures, electricity consumption, and so on.

The models – all from highly respected, independent sources – don’t agree on much. But they do agree on one thing: the overall impact on the economy will be very small.  All the models project that, over the next twenty years, the cost of climate policy will be just a few months of economic growth.

The good news coming out of this study is that we can afford ambitious cuts in global warming pollution.

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Vote on Climate Change Bill Scheduled for June

By Elizabeth Thompson / Published: April 23, 2008

Elizabeth ThompsonThis post is by Elizabeth Thompson, Legislative Director at Environmental Defense Fund.

Operation Climate Vote

This post is part of a series on the work of the Environmental Defense Action Fund to enact an effective climate law. You can help by writing to Congress.

A bill has to pass both the House and the Senate to become law (see our previous post on how a bill moves through Congress). A climate change bill hasn’t yet been introduced in the House, but the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act already has passed out of committee in the Senate.

Whether the bill is brought to the Senate floor for discussion and vote is up to majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev), and Reid has taken this step. The bill will be considered by the full Senate in the first week of June.

Will it pass? It’s possible, but we need your support!

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Check Out the Hidden Gold!

By Sheryl Canter / Published: April 22, 2008

Sheryl CanterThis post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

Climate 411 has great content. But you may have noticed that – until today – it’s been hard to find things in our archive. Our topic categories evolved organically as we posted, and what we ended up with wasn’t very useful.

No more! Check out our new, improved, and actually useful "Posts by Topic" list. Click on EPA and Tailpipe Emissions or Climate Change Legislation to learn what’s going on in those quarters. Our Science category is now broken into subtopics like Arctic and Antarctic, Basic Science, and Plants and Animals. Plus you’ll find posts on Health, Green Living, and much more.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

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Global Warming Test: The Real Answers

By Lisa Moore / Published: April 18, 2008

Lisa MooreThis post is by Lisa Moore, Ph.D., a scientist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense Fund.

There’s an email making the rounds lately – an invitation to take a Global Warming Test. It starts off reasonably enough (yes, global warming is real), but then quickly devolves into ridiculousness – ridiculousness presented in a way that looks misleadingly "scientific".

For those interested in truth, here are the real answers to the Global Warming Test.

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How to Win the War on Global Warming

By Sheryl Canter / Published: April 17, 2008

Sheryl CanterThis post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

Time magazine’s cover story in their latest issue is "How to Win the War on Global Warming". It starts this way:

Americans don’t like to lose wars – which makes sense, since we have so little practice with it. Of course, a lot depends on how you define just what a war is. There are shooting wars—the kind that test our mettle and our patriotism and our resourcefulness and our courage—and those are the kind at which we excel. But other struggles test those qualities too. What else was the Great Depression or the space race or the construction of the railroads or the eradication of polio but a massive, often frightening challenge that we decided as a culture we ought to rise up and face? If we indulge in a bit of chest-thumping and flag-waving when the job is done, well, we earned it.

We are now faced with a similarly momentous challenge: global warming. The steady deterioration of the very climate of our very planet is becoming a war of the first order, and by any measure, the U.S. is losing. Indeed, if we’re fighting at all—and by most accounts, we’re not—we’re fighting on the wrong side.

Take a look and tell us what you think!

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