The Onion featured CGD and president Nancy Birdsall in an article on climate change.
From the article:
According to a report released this week by the Center for Global Development, climate change, the popular mid-2000s issue that raised awareness of the fact that the earth's continuous rise in temperature will have catastrophic ecological effects, has apparently not been resolved, and may still be a problem.
While several years have passed since global warming was considered the most pressing issue facing mankind, recent studies from the Center for Atmospheric Research, the National Academy of Sciences, NASA, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and basically any scientific report available on the issue confirmed that it is not only still happening, but might also be worth stopping.
"Global warming, if you remember correctly, was the single greatest problem of our lifetime back in 2007 and the early part of 2008," CGD president Nancy Birdsall said. "But then the debates over Social Security reform and the World Trade Center mosque came up, and the government had to shift its focus away from the dramatic rise in sea levels, the rapid spread of deadly infectious diseases, and the imminent destruction of our entire planet."
Continued Birdsall, "Because the problem of global warming and massive environmental devastation appears to be lingering, however, the time may be right for the federal government to consider dealing with it again in some way."
According to the 300-page document, though global warming—and the worldwide homelessness and drought associated with it—was a desperate problem immediately following the release of the Academy Award–winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, China's undervalued currency, the midterm elections, and gay marriage have since monopolized lawmakers' time. It concludes that the likelihood of any of these matters flooding the entire Eastern Seaboard and leaving the state of Florida completely submerged is "very slim."