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Jun 25, 2015
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a new report on climate change this week that predicts significant impacts to agriculture stemming from more frequent droughts and flooding, unless there is global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The report titled, “Climate Change in the United States: Benefits of Global Action” predicts that without a concerted effort to reduce greenhouse gasses, sustained droughts such as the one in California now will become more common and yields for soybeans as well as cotton, corn, wheat, potatoes and other crops would drop substantially by the year 2100.
The report was produced by the Climate Change Impacts and Risks Analysis (CIRA) project, led by the U.S. EPA in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Pacific Northwest National Lab, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and other partners.
The report is timed to prepare Americans for the new global climate agreement that is expected to be signed by world leaders at the UN Climate Summit in Paris in December. The new agreement will replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and will include limits on greenhouse gas emissions from both developing and industrialized countries.
