As a result of climate change people and nations will be threatened by massive food and water shortages, devastating natural disasters, and deadly disease outbreaks. It is critical that policymakers do all they can to prevent the domino of the first major climate change consequence, whether it be food scarcity or the outbreak of disease, from falling.

Recognizing that some climate change is inevitable, Joshua Busby proposes a portfolio of feasible and affordable policy options to reduce the vulnerability of the United States and other countries to the predictable effects of climate change.

Global climate change poses not only environmental hazards but profound risks to planetary peace and stability as well including at a minimum include increased disease proliferation; tensions caused by large-scale migration; and conflict sparked by resource scarcity.

The world has never faced such a predictably massive threat to food production as that posed by the melting mountain glaciers of Asia.

The report examines often ignored costs of the war in terms climate change impacts. Among its findings are that the projected total US spending on the Iraq war could cover all of the global investments in renewable power generation that are needed between now and 2030 in order to halt current warming trends.

This report was prepared for the Department of Defense. The purpose of this report is to imagine the unthinkable -- to push the boundaries of current research on climate change so we may better understand the potential implications on United States national security.

This report, signed by five retired generals and six retired admirals, describes Global climate change as a new and very different type of national security challenge that poses grave implications for our national security. They describe it as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world and the U.S. should begin now to deal with it.

The Federal Government is spending dramatically more on the military than it is on the national security threat of climate change.

Climate change is underway and will have national security impacts that must be anticipated, evaluated, and neutralized to the greatest degree possible.

The 80 percent reduction in U.S. emissions needed to stop climate change may not come cheaply, but the cost of failing to act will be much greater. See the NRDC cost chart showing the numbers.

The report analyzes the effects of global climate change on natural and human environments, agriculture, water, social systems, energy, transportation, and health in the United States vis-a-vis global climate change.

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research released a scientific assessment that provides the first comprehensive analysis of observed and projected changes in weather and climate extremes in North America and U.S. territories. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change previously evaluated extreme weather and climate events on a global basis in this same context. However, there has not been a specific assessment across North America prior to this report.

The U.S. has done the least among the world's eight largest economies to address global warming.

As the 2008 presidential election heads into the final stretch, it is clearer than ever before that American energy policy is at a crossroads.

Investing in clean energy would create four times as many jobs as spending the same amount of money within the oil industry.

Distributing carbon permit or tax revenues equally among U.S. residents would widen the already yawning income gap between rich and poor.

The world’s energy system is at a crossroads. Current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable — environmentally, economically, socially. But that can — and must —be altered; there’s still time to change the road we’re on.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has released its 2007 Greenhouse Gas Emissions report, outlining the the latest trends in US energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions: Total greenhouse gas emissions in 2007 were 1.4 percent higher than in 2006.