Climate crisis threatens 'livability," Haaland tells Western governors - Santa Fe New Mexican
Climate crisis threatens 'livability," Haaland tells Western governors | Local News | santafenewmexican.com
Climate change is being felt throughout the West and is at the center of the federal government’s efforts to build resiliency in the landscape, rivers and communities amid the energy transition, the U.S. Interior Department secretary told Western governors Monday.
“The challenges your constituents face is real,” Secretary Deb Haaland said at a conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., hosted by the Western Governors Association. “The climate crisis ... threatens the very livability of many of the regions we all cherish.”
It can be seen in increasingly scarce waters that feed farmers’ fields and families, including once-bountiful resources like the Colorado River Basin, as well as in “ecosystems and habitats changing right before our eyes, Haaland said.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.