Energy Future Coalition

The impacts of climate change are predicted to be serious and widespread: more violent weather, shifting patterns of rainfall and drought, the spread of tropical diseases like malaria, and rapidly increasing extinctions of plant and animal species. 

The impacts of abrupt climate change would be even more severe. Sharp temperature increases may cause the world's climate systems to shift into a different state altogether. The melting of the Greenland ice sheet, for example, would cause a rise in sea levels measured in feet, not inches.

Global warming will impact every continent on earth, but will disproportionately harm poorer communities and countries.  While some changes may be positive, such as increasing growing seasons in some areas, the net effect will be greater climate instability and negative overall.  If we act now, we can avoid catastrophic climate change; however, we are locked into a certain amount of change now and must begin preparing for inevitable effects.