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:
“Ours is a brand—new world of allatonceness. “Time” has ceased, “space” has vanished. We now live in a global village ... a simultaneous happening.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“For as change is horror,
Virtue is really stubbornness
And only in the light of lost words
Can we imagine our rewards.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“After all, the ultimate goal of all research is not objectivity, but truth.”
—Helene Deutsch (1884–1982)
“Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)