ABSTRACT
Climate change has emerged as a major, if not the most important, world environmental health issue. As the world’s use of fossil fuels has increased, the atmosphere has been warming, and data show increase in temperature, more heat waves, altered patterns of circulation, more tropical storms and droughts, increasing food insecurity, shift of animal pests and destruction of ecological habitats, and other worrisome changes in weather patterns. Chapter 8 shows that burning of coal is said to be the major culprit, but the expanding world economy means more use of natural gas and oil for electricity, housing, transportation and human activities. The Earth’s global temperature has been increasing and is now approaching an increase that many say will mean irreversible damage, including rapid melting of the polar ice and sea level rise threatening life near coasts and rivers. After supporting policies to reduce carbon emissions, the U.S. government has pulled back from commitments. American public perception increasingly acknowledges the problem, but is widely divided along ideological lines about solutions, which means that the most innovate states have been developing policies to reduce emissions to partly compensate for a national policy.
