Report Warns California to Prepare for Climate Change

As if the threat of massive recession busting budget cuts were not enough, California is now being warned of a more dangerous threat.

Climate change is threatening California, one of America’s biggest polluting States, as hotter weather will cause havoc and threaten low lying areas as sea levels rise, a new report claims. The report warns that rising temperatures over the next few decades will lead to more heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and floods. Over the last century in California, the sea level has risen by 7 inches, average temperatures have increased, spring snow melts earlier in the year, and there are hotter days and fewer cold nights.

Even if a global effort is made to curb carbon emissions, the report claims California needs to start preparing for rising sea levels, hotter weather and other effects of climate change. It encourages local communities to rethink future development in low-lying coastal areas, reinforce levees that protect flood prone areas and conserve already strapped water supplies in the most highly populated US state.

The report was compiled after the governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, directed agencies in November to devise a state climate strategy. It comes three years after the Republican governor signed California’s landmark global warming law requiring the state to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

Many states are facing similar problems caused by climate change over the coming decades, with water shortages set to be a major issue across the country. Most countries have focused on cutting greenhouse gases in the future, but researchers say those efforts will take decades to have an effect while the planet continues to warm. States have only recently begun to consider what steps they must take to minimise the damage expected from sea level rise, storm surges, droughts and water shortages because of the climate changes.