This book presents the latest scientific information and analysis concerning the costs, benefits, and environmental effectiveness of the Acid Rain Program (ARP), a bipartisan mandate under Title IV of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments signed into law by President George H W Bush to reduce sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions from electric generating sources. Notably, the SO2 program includes the use of a creative emissions cap-and-trade program that combines the best of American science, government, and market-driven innovation. This book focuses on emission reductions from power plants, summarises changes in deposition rates and environmental impacts, and evaluates the ecological effects expected to accompany future reduction in SO2 and NOx emissions.

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.

Conventional economic accounts, which measure Gross National Product (GNP)and related indicators of national performance, do not fully allow for the damages caused to the environment in the course of producing and consuming goods and services. Nor do they fully account for the fact that some resources are being depleted in achieving the living standards that we enjoy today. This failure is important, because policy-makers are guided by the changes in macroeconomic indicators such as GNP. Moreover such indicators are not a good guide to the sustainability of present practices of consumption and production. This book provides practical estimates of one key area of neglect in the present national accounts - the measurement of environmental damages. The book sets out the methodology for making such estimates and then applies it to data from four countries: Germany, Italy, The Netherlands and the UK. The results show what can be achieved in the way of consistent damage estimates and what the key problems are.