EPA's Carbon Dioxide Challenges

摘要

With President Obama's recently renewed climate change clarion call, and Gina McCarthy's confirmation as the Environmental Protection Agency's new administrator, will we see the actions necessary to swiftly and decisively regulate carbon dioxide emissions from human activities? The need grows more urgent. At a July 18 Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing titled "Climate Change: It's Happening Now," Franklin Nutter, Reinsurance Association of America president, noted that in the 1980s, the global average of natural catastrophes was 400 per year, but in recent years it has been 1,000. Reinsurer Munich Re's analysis suggests that the increase "is driven almost entirely by weather-related events." No wonder Swiss Re, another major reinsurer, has commented, "Climate change has the potential to develop into our planets greatest environmental challenge of the 21 st century."