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America's Climate Choices (2011) / Chapter Skim
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1 The Context for America's Climate Choices
Pages 7-14

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From page 7...
... , offers advice on how to weigh the potential risks and benefits associated with different actions that might be taken to respond to climate change, and how to ensure that actions are as effective as possible. America's climate choices will ultimately be made by elected officials, business leaders, individual households, and other decision makers across the nation; and these choices almost always involve tradeoffs, value judgments, and other issues that reach beyond science.
From page 8...
... a National Research Council (NRC) , Advancing the Science of Climate Change ( Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2010)
From page 9...
... , and a variety of aerosols that can exert either warming or cooling effects, depending on their chemical and physical properties. Some of these other compounds are explicitly included in climate policy negotiations and emissions reductions plans,but in general it is much more difficult to measure and verify reductions in emissions of many of these substances than for CO2.b See NRC, Advancing the Science of Climate Change and Limiting the Magnitude of Climate Change for more extensive discussion of these other gases and aerosols.
From page 10...
... , CO2 emissions will grow by an average of roughly 0.2 percent per year.5 This is a slower growth rate than that of the past three decades, but it does indicate that emissions will exceed pre-recession levels by the year 2028, and by the year 2035 they will be about 8.5 percent higher than pre-recession levels. Recent studies have highlighted the commitments to further climate change that are implied by construction of new, long-lived infrastructure (e.g., electricity production facilities, highways)
From page 11...
... .a Climate change science is also an inherently international enterprise that has been greatly advanced through programs that coordinate and facilitate cooperative multi-national research efforts, such as the World Climate Research Program. Global observing systems, which provide crucial information about climate system variability and long term change, are advanced through cooperative efforts such as the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GOESS)
From page 12...
... 12 A majority of states have adopted some form of renewable portfolio standard, 13 energy efficiency program requirements, or emissions reduction goal, and some have adopted or plan to adopt cap and trade systems to reduce GHG emissions (for example, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative of the northeastern U.S. states, the Western Climate Initiative, the Midwest 12
From page 13...
... 17 The collective effect of these local, state, federal, and private sector efforts to limit and adapt to climate change is potentially quite significant but, as suggested by recent analyses, it is not likely to yield emission reductions comparable to what could be achieved with strong federal policies. 18 Moreover, it is not clear if the current patchwork of initiatives will prove durable in the absence of an overarching federal policy.
From page 14...
... As described briefly in this chapter and explored in the ACC panel reports, there are already many efforts under way across the United States (led by state and local governments, and private sector and nongovernmental organizations) to reduce domestic GHG emissions, to adapt to anticipated impacts of climate change, and to advance systems for collecting and sharing climate-related information.


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