Expert Panel Calls for Federal Leadership, Local Support for Adapting to Climate Change

The United States must move beyond greenhouse gas reductions to develop new strategies to help the public and the economy adapt to the disruptions that will be caused by climate change, a panel of climate experts said at a Capitol Hill briefing co-organized by AAAS.

The panel warned that rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases commit the world to rising surface and ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, retreating glaciers, disruption of biological systems, and weather extremes that will intensify over the 21st century.

By building new homes further inland and renovating existing homes to withstand tidal surges, improving municipal water-efficiency to better cope with droughts, maintaining beaches to resist shore erosion and protect existing coastal communities, and improving weather alert systems, for example, federal and state governments can prepare their citizens and infrastructure for the changing climate, the panel agreed at the briefing for Congressional staff.

“Mitigation and adaptation often get mistaken for competing, mutually exclusive alternatives when they are really complimentary approaches with differing strengths and weaknesses,” said Paul Higgins, senior policy fellow at the American Meteorological Society. “Mitigation gets a lot of attention and appropriately so, but we also need strategies to help us deal with unavoidable climate impacts.”

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