State Of The Environment Report

Published to coincide with the Fourth United Nations Environmental Assembly, UN Environment's sixth Global Environment Outlook calls on decision makers to take bold and urgent action to address pressing environmental issues in order to protect the planet and human health. By bringing together hundreds of scientists, peer reviewers and collaborating institutions and partners, the GEO reports build on sound scientific knowledge to provide governments, local authorities, businesses and individual citizens with the information needed to guide societies to a truly sustainable world by 2050. GEO-6 outlines the current state of the environment, illustrates possible future environmental trends and analyses the effectiveness of policies. This flagship report shows how governments can put us on the path to a truly sustainable future - emphasising that urgent and inclusive action is needed to achieve a healthy planet with healthy people. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.

Good environmental information is essential for effective sustainable development policy-making and action planning. Accurate information increases the chances for correct decisions. This does not guarantee a healthier environment, but its absence seriously impedes decisions which would lead to a sustainable future. Ideally, local, sectoral, corporate, national, regional, and global reports should complement one other, using, for example, common spatial units and databases. In reality comprehensive and integrated information is often not available for today's decision makers. The Source Book is designed to help to harmonize environmental reporting by encouraging the development of standard methods, practices, and terminology. It evaluates and compares alternative approaches for the development, production, and dissemination of environmental information, and combines the collective experience of environmental reporting, covering all aspects of reporting from user needs to data supply.

Climate change poses many challenges that affect society and the natural world. With these challenges, however, come opportunities to respond. By taking steps to adapt to and mitigate climate change, the risks to society and the impacts of continued climate change can be lessened. The National Climate Assessment, coordinated by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, is a mandated report intended to inform response decisions. Required to be developed every four years, these reports provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date evaluation of climate change impacts available for the United States, making them a unique and important climate change document. The draft Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) report reviewed here addresses a wide range of topics of high importance to the United States and society more broadly, extending from human health and community well-being, to the built environment, to businesses and economies, to ecosystems and natural resources. This report evaluates the draft NCA4 to determine if it meets the requirements of the federal mandate, whether it provides accurate information grounded in the scientific literature, and whether it effectively communicates climate science, impacts, and responses for general audiences including the public, decision makers, and other stakeholders.

An accessible overview of the most important environmental issues facing the United States, with new and updated material. Americans are concerned about the state of the environment, and yet polls show that many have lost faith in both scientists' and politicians' ability to solve environmental problems. In America's Environmental Report Card, Harvey Blatt sorts through the deluge of conflicting information about the environment and offers an accessible overview of the environmental issues that are most important to Americans today. Blatt has thoroughly updated this second edition, revising and adding new material. He looks at water supplies and new concerns about water purity; the dangers of floods (increased by widespread logging and abetted by glacial melting); infrastructure problems (in a new chapter devoted entirely to this subject); the leaching of garbage buried in landfills; soil, contaminated crops, and organic food; fossil fuels; alternative energy sources (in another new chapter); controversies over nuclear energy; the increasing pace of climate change; and air pollution. Along the way, he outlines ways to deal with these problems—workable and reasonable solutions that map the course to a sustainable future. America can lead the way to a better environment, Blatt argues. We are the richest nation in the world, and we can afford it—in fact, we can't afford not to.

An accessible overview of the most important environmental issues facing the United States, with new and updated material. Americans are concerned about the state of the environment, and yet polls show that many have lost faith in both scientists' and politicians' ability to solve environmental problems. In America's Environmental Report Card, Harvey Blatt sorts through the deluge of conflicting information about the environment and offers an accessible overview of the environmental issues that are most important to Americans today. Blatt has thoroughly updated this second edition, revising and adding new material. He looks at water supplies and new concerns about water purity; the dangers of floods (increased by widespread logging and abetted by glacial melting); infrastructure problems (in a new chapter devoted entirely to this subject); the leaching of garbage buried in landfills; soil, contaminated crops, and organic food; fossil fuels; alternative energy sources (in another new chapter); controversies over nuclear energy; the increasing pace of climate change; and air pollution. Along the way, he outlines ways to deal with these problems—workable and reasonable solutions that map the course to a sustainable future. America can lead the way to a better environment, Blatt argues. We are the richest nation in the world, and we can afford it—in fact, we can't afford not to.