The Global Change Research Act 1990 is a United States law requiring research into global warming and related issues. It requires a report to Congress every four years on the environmental, economic, health and safety consequences of climate change; however, the first of these, the National Assessment on Climate Change, was not published until 2000.
The law codified the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), set up by presidential authority in 1989, and mandated the creation of the Global Change Research Information Office (GCRIO), which began work in 1993. The act requires extensive reports to be updated and distributed every four years.
To date the 2000 report was the only one produced, and there were accusations that information was being suppressed, leading to complacency around public works, such as New Orleans flood defences. Greenpeace, the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth challenged the delay in federal district court on August 21, 2007. A judge ruled that an updated national assessment must be produced by May 31, 2008.
Famous quotes containing the words global, change, research and/or act:
“Much of what Mr. Wallace calls his global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, still “globaloney.” Mr. Wallace’s warp of sense and his woof of nonsense is very tricky cloth out of which to cut the pattern of a post-war world.”
—Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987)
“We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... research is never completed ... Around the corner lurks another possibility of interview, another book to read, a courthouse to explore, a document to verify.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“We all have—to put it as nicely as I can—our lower centres and our higher centres. Our lower centres act: they act with terrible power that sometimes destroys us; but they don’t talk.... Since the war the lower centres have become vocal. And the effect is that of an earthquake. For they speak truths that have never been spoken before—truths that the makers of our domestic institutions have tried to ignore.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)