November 15, 2006 — By the Center for Biological Diversity

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — A coalition of conservation groups filed suit today against the Bush administration over its refusal to complete a National Assessment of the impact of global warming on the environment, economy, human health and human safety. The assessment, due in November 2004, is required by the Global Change Research Act of 1990.

Today’s action comes as U.S. representatives complete their participation in the final days of the United Nation’s world climate negotiations in Nairobi, Kenya. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace.

“This administration has denied and suppressed the science of global warming at every turn,” said Julie Teel of the Center for Biological Diversity and one of the attorneys arguing the case.

The last National Assessment was issued October 31, 2000

Scientific conclusions predicted a doubling or tripling of heat-related deaths, intensified floods and droughts and the swamping of coastlines by rising seas and fiercer storms.

Scientific research continues to indicate that rapid climate change from human production of greenhouse gases threatens our economy, public health, water availability and biological diversity. James Hansen, Ph.D., NASA’s leading climate scientist, has warned that just 10 more years on current greenhouse gas emissions trajectories will produce large-scale, disastrous climate impacts.

The administration’s refusal to complete the assessment has been sharply criticized by Michael MacCracken, Ph.D., former director of the U.S. Global Climate Change Research Program and one of the authors of the 2000 National Assessment; Rosina Bierbaum, former acting director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which oversaw the production of the 2000 National Assessment; and Rick Piltz, former senior associate with the Climate Change Science Program

Piltz resigned in March 2005, declaring that the White House’s suppression of the 2000 assessment and subsequent refusal to produce a 2004 assessment comprise “the central climate science scandal of the Bush administration.”

In April 2005, at the request of Senators John Kerry and John McCain, the U.S. Government Accountability Office investigated the Bush administration’s failure to produce a 2004 assessment. It concluded that the administration 1) “did not submit a scientific assessment in November 2004, as required by the {Global Change Research} act,” 2) expressly refuses to complete a National Assessment, and 3) lacks an “explicit plan for…assessing the effects of global change…”

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