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A congressionally-mandated federal climate report released today delivered a predictable message: the U.S. must rapidly reduce emissions or face even more dire consequences to human health, infrastructure and the economy.
The latest National Climate Assessment includes a comprehensive look at U.S. climate science, impacts and action. More than 750 experts across a number of federal agencies evaluated thousands of academic studies and other reports to compile the report, which is the fifth installment since the law requiring it passed in 1990.
The report found that global warming caused by human activities—primarily the burning of oil, gas, and coal—is raising average temperatures in the United States faster than it is across the rest of the planet.
It includes examples of how climate change is already hitting the U.S. with extreme heat, hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, floods, and swiftly rising sea levels and estimates that “billion-dollar disasters” are happening every three weeks on average—up from every four months in the 1980s.
In coordination with the release of the report, President Joe Biden today announced more than $6 billion in investments to strengthen America’s aging electric grid infrastructure, reduce flood risk to communities, support conservation efforts, and advance environmental justice.
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They have not just intellectually started to appreciate the concept of this crisis—it is their lived experience to see the sky turn orange, to breathe in the smoke from wildfires hundreds of miles away, to see lives and livelihoods washed away by floods and the fury of hurricanes.” 
