2023 National Climate Assessment paints grim picture while offering hope

Enlarge / Climate change presents risks while action to limit warming and reduce risks presents opportunities for the US. (credit: 2023 National Climate Assessment)

In a sprawling, multimedia report that stresses it is not too late to act, the Biden administration on Tuesday delivered a sobering catalog of climate change’s impacts in every corner of the United States—from battered coasts to parched cornfields to blazing forests. It measures the human toll, including at least 700 people dying of heat-related illness each year, in a nation warming 60 percent more quickly than the world as a whole.

“The effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States,” the report says. But it adds that each increment of warming avoided through cutting carbon emissions will reduce the risks and harmful impacts.

“While there are still uncertainties about how the planet will react to rapid warming, the degree to which climate change will continue to worsen is largely in human hands,” the report says.