The climate crisis is causing the U.S. to heat up faster than the world average, according to a report released just weeks before United Nations climate talks in Dubai by the U.S. government.
The report also added that the citizens are suffering “far-reaching and worsening” consequences.
The new National Climate Assessment (NCA) reveals that every part of the huge country is facing “increasingly harmful impacts” from climate change.
These impacts include extreme heat and rising sea levels in Florida, reduced fish stocks and growing food insecurity in Alaska, NCA dded.
The report says that the U.S. has not reduced its carbon emissions enough to meet the global goals in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.
It also warns that “severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow” without more action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.
The report indicates that the effects of climate change will continue to worsen over the next decade, regardless of significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, as the future of climate change will be determined by the decisions made by the U.S. and other nations.
“We need to be moving much faster and we need to go much further.”, said Allison Crimmins, a climate scientist and director of the NCA.
“We know that each degree, each tenth of a degree, of additional warming brings more severe climate impacts to the US and those impacts are felt more acutely by overburdened communities.”, she further added.
Despite cutting its emissions by 12 percent since 2005 and witnessing a huge drop in the costs of wind and solar energy by 70 percent and 90 percent respectively in the last decade, the U.S. remains the largest historical emitter of global carbon pollution.
