FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
May 6, 2014
Minnesotans Vulnerable to Extreme Weather, Climate Disruption
New National Climate Assessment Shows Urgent Need for Action to Protect Minnesota Families
Minnesota — A national committee of experts in agriculture, climate science, commerce, and disaster relief released its National Climate Assessment (NCA) today. The report is the nation’s foremost comprehensive, peer-reviewed analysis of the impacts of climate disruption, showing us the effects of climate change in Minnesota and across the country.
The report shows the significant toll on our health and wallets that extreme weather is already exacting, and it also makes clear that these impacts will only grow worse if we fail to curb carbon pollution, the main culprit behind climate disruption.
Minnesota is part of the NCA’s Midwest Region, which predicts that direct effects from climate change will include increased heat stress, flooding, drought, and late spring freezes, altering ecosystem and socioeconomic patterns and processes in ways that most people would consider detrimental. Warm-season events, such as the large-scale flooding that occurred in Rush Creek and the Root River in Minnesota in August 2007, and multiple rivers in southern Minnesota in September 2010, are projected to increase in magnitude.
“The report makes it clear that climate disruption threatens Minnesota families and communities’ health and economic security now,” said Michelle Rosier, campaign representative for the Sierra Club North Star Chapter. “It’s time to act on climate in Washington and in Minnesota. Governor Dayton needs to continue to show his leadership on this critical issue. Minnesota families deserve a strong, common-sense plan to protect our health and security.”
“The need to move away from dirty fossil fuels such as coal and fracked gas, the leading sources of climate-disrupting carbon pollution, could not be clearer or more urgent,” said Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club. “It’s time that we as a nation end our dependence on fossil fuels and hasten the shift to readily available, cost-effective clean energy sources, like wind and solar. Today’s climate report shows the cost of inaction is far too great.”
More than 240 authors from across the country with diverse expertise helped create the National Climate Assessment. The findings are considered conservative estimates of the impacts of climate disruption.