The purpose of Preparing for Climate Change: A Guidebook for Local, Regional, and State Governments is to help decision-makers in a local, regional, or state government prepare for climate change by recommending a detailed, easy-to-understand process for climate change preparedness based on familiar resources and tools. The guidebook begins with an introduction highlighting both the urgent responsibility and opportunity for public decision-makers to prepare for climate change now and in the coming decades. Chapter 2 provides a short overview of the science of global climate change and its projected national and regional consequences. Chapter 3 offers reasons why local, regional, and state decision-makers should prepare proactively for the impacts of climate change to their communities. Chapters 4 through 7 provide suggestions on the critical steps to take to initiate your climate resiliency effort. Specifically, these chapters recommend how to scope the climate change impacts to your major sectors, build and maintain support among your stakeholders to prepare for climate change, build your climate change preparedness team, and identify your planning areas relevant to climate change impacts. This guidebook also provides recommendations for conducting a vulnerability assessment, conducting a risk assessment, set preparedness goals and preparedness actions, identify a list of implementation tools, develop measures of resilience, and more.