White House Task Force Warns of Global Warming Impacts

On March 16, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported in a White House Press Release on the progress of the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, which includes representatives from more than 20 federal agencies. In October 2009, President Obama ordered the task force to develop federal recommendations for adapting to climate change both domestically and internationally. Their report highlighted six key components for federal strategy on climate change adaptation, starting with the integration of science into adaptation decisions and policy. Five workgroups were formed to assess existing policies, operations, procedures and other tools that affect the government’s response and to suggest improvements. By October 2010, the task force is to present the president a finalized vision of a U.S. approach to climate change and the role agencies will play. The report urged federal agencies to fundamentally change how they plan for the future, by factoring the potential risks and opportunities of a changing climate into their decision making. It also advises agencies to rely less on historical climate data when making plans for transportation, energy, infrastructure and natural resource use. The task force concluded that climate change "is affecting, and will continue to affect, nearly every aspect of our society and the environment" through increasingly severe floods, droughts, wildfires and heat waves, along with rising sea levels.
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