§8911 Comprehensive study of projected impact on atmospheric levels of fossil fuel combustion, etc.

Summary

The Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy must hire the National Academy of Sciences to study how burning fossil fuels, coal conversion, and related synthetic fuel activities in this law, plus other sources, will affect atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The study must also look at the economic, physical, climate, and social consequences. The Office and the Academy are urged to work with U.S. and foreign governments, private groups, and international organizations to make a worldwide assessment and to recommend any new research the Academy thinks is needed. The President must tell Congress, within six months after June 30, 1980, how negotiations to start the study are going. The Office and the Academy must give Congress a report of findings and recommendations no later than three years after June 30, 1980. The Academy’s part of that report cannot be subject to prior clearance or review. That report must advise how to set up a long-term domestic and international program for research, monitoring, modeling, and assessment of changing carbon dioxide levels. It must include the Office’s view on how federal agencies must work together and the Secretary of State’s view on needed international agreements. The report must say how the United States can help internationally, what domestic resources are needed, how to improve the current U.S. carbon dioxide assessment work for policymakers, and whether regular reports to Congress are needed. The Secretaries of Energy and Commerce, the EPA Administrator, and the NSF Director must give the Office or the Academy any information they ask for. The Office must also provide a separate write-up on how agencies would need to coordinate to run the recommended program.