Climate Report May Have Cut Katrina Impact - Analyst
Date: 30-Aug-07
Country: US
Author: Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
The report, supposed to be finished in November 2004 and
still undone, was meant to be a national assessment that should
have turned up the various problems that added up to
catastrophe, said John Coequyt, an analyst with the
environmental group Greenpeace.
"Part of what happened in Katrina is we didn't know how
important it was to get some of these levees right," Coequyt
said, referring to the barriers that broke and flooded parts of
New Orleans after the hurricane hit two years ago on
Wednesday.
"If we had these national assessments pointing to these
vulnerabilities, the chances that they get fixed are going to
be higher," Coequyt said by telephone. "And if we know that
hurricanes are going to get stronger and if we know that sea
level rise is accelerating, then we can plan for these things.
"If we choose to not actually complete these assessments,
then the chances that we'll get that right are a lot less."
Last week, environmental activists hailed a federal judge's
ruling that orders the Bush administration to complete a global
warming research plan and a national assessment as required by
the Global Change Research Act of 1990.
This act requires extensive reports on global warming's
impact every four years. The last one was completed at the end
of 2000 before President George W. Bush took office.
COURT ORDERS NEW DEADLINES
US District Judge Saundra Armstrong ruled on Aug. 21 that
a proposed research plan is due March 1, 2008, with a national
assessment of the environmental, economic, health and safety
impacts of global warming due May 31, 2008.
The ruling was a victory for environmental groups that sued
the federal government, including Greenpeace, the Center for
Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth.
"This administration has denied and suppressed the science
of global warming at every turn," Brendan Cummings of the
Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement after the
ruling, which he called "a stern rebuke of the administration's
head-in-the-sand approach to global warming."
A spokeswoman for the White House Office of Science and
Technology Policy noted the ruling and said its deadlines were
in line with what the US administration already has planned.
The spokeswoman, Kristin Scuderi, said in a statement that
the Bush administration plans to complete peer-reviewed reports
that comprise the scientific assessment by the end of this
year, five months before the court's deadline.
However, these individual peer-reviewed reports are not
equal to the overview of the science and policy envisioned by
the act, according to Greenpeace's Coequyt.
Rather than a deliberative process that involves the US
public, scientists and government, Coequyt said the
administration might try to do "cutting and pasting" from the
findings of the UN Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change
to meet the court-ordered deadline.
"Whatever this administration does, I think it's now very
likely that the next administration will begin a robust
national assessment and that can be used ultimately to help
guide federal and state policy," he said.
