Climate Reports Belong to the Public - Not the Shadows
Average citizen that I am, I’d heard about climate change and wanted some accurate information about it. Someone recommended the national climate assessments, so I looked for them. They were gone. What happened?
Blame the White House. They hid the national climate assessments which, according to NPR, are “the most influential source of information about how climate change affects the United States.”
Once upon a time, they were available on the official government website globalchange.gov. I tried to log on and got back, “This site can’t be reached.” While the national climate assessments won’t go extinct - we hope - finding them might resemble a scavenger hunt. NASA said the White House would host the reports. But despite a 1990 law, the Global Change Research Act of 1990, which required them to do so, NASA has yet to. Contradicting the July 3 White House statement, NASA said it won’t post the climate report to its website. There’s no legal obligation, it claims. Somewhere, this material will continue to exist, but in light of the federal government’s current attitude, good luck finding it.
These reports deserve far better than to languish in the dark corners of the internet. They should be broadcast across as many computer screens as possible. It is vital that these reports be exposed to the country. Says Former Obama White House science advisor and climate scientist John Holdren, national climate assessments are “useful to people who need to understand what climate change is doing and will do to them, their loved ones, their property and their environment.”
Peter Gleick, one of the authors of the first National Climate Assessment in 2000, called the White House action the “modern version of book burning.” Another author, of four previous versions, said, “It’s information that I, as a scientist, can say is absolutely critical to making good decisions for the future, whether you’re a farmer, a homeowner, a business owner, a city manager, or anyone really who wants to ensure a safe and resilient future for themselves and for their children.”
How do we keep this information from leeching away? Here’s a suggestion: add each national climate assessment to state government websites. To County websites. To City websites. Feed them to schools, libraries, to your hometown press, to your social media. Watch for updates and post them. Include the information in email blasts. The goal is to get this information into the hands of as many as we can.
This is not an original idea. In Europe, local and regional governments (LRGs) produce local action reports. But while they seek peer-to-peer exchanges and access to finance, they don’t appear to be reaching out to the citizenry at large. What’s original is boosting the activity into dozens of websites.
In the United States, National Public Radio has announced where to find the national climate assessment. “An archived version of the most recent edition is available through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. All five editions of the National Climate Assessment that have been published over the years will also be available on NASA's website, according to NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens. But NASA doesn't yet know when that website will be available to the public.” An archived version of the original, searchable website is available through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine tool here. This is laudable, but this is not enough. Not many will think about logging onto NOAH, NASA, or other less prominent government websites. We need to spoon feed them the data.
This action may not start a trend. It won’t spur everyone to action. It may catch the attention of no more than a few. But think how many movements got their start from just a few.
About the Author:
Anthony J. Mohr is a distinguished jurist with extensive experience across California’s criminal and civil justice systems. He most recently served as a judge of the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles County, presiding over civil and felony trials, and previously sat as a judge pro tem on the California Court of Appeal. He has held several judicial leadership roles, including service on the Executive Committee of the Los Angeles Superior Court and as chair of both the court’s ethics review and response committee and the California Judges Association’s Committee on Judicial Ethics. Tony Mohr is affiliated with the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative and currently serves on the Regional Board of Directors for the Anti-Defamation League’s Los Angeles Region.