© Photri

Global warming is here. It is moving as fast as scientists had feared. If it is not checked, children born today may live to see massive shifting and destruction of the ecosystems we know now. They may witness the proliferation of violent storms, floods, and droughts that cause terrible losses of human life.

The good news is that we are not helpless. We can still curb the greenhouse trend. Our next, best chance will come November 13-24 in the Netherlands, when the nations of the world negotiate again over the terms of the global warming treaty called the Kyoto Protocol. If we lose this chance, we may lose momentum for the entire protocol, and with it five or more years of precious time. But if we win a strong treaty in the Netherlands, it will start real movement on the long road to change.

Evidence and damage

Like trackers on the trail of a grizzly, scientists read the presence of global warming in certain large-scale, planet-wide events. Over the last century, the surface of the planet heated up by about one degree Fahrenheit. More rain and snow began falling worldwide, an increase of 1 percent over all the continents. The oceans rose 6-8 inches. If these numbers applied to local weather, they would be trivial. As planetary averages, they are momentous. The past decade was the warmest in at least a thousand years. A graph of average global temperatures since the year 1000 shows a precipitous rise that starts at about the time of the Industrial Revolution and shoots upward to our own time.

The results may be profound and unpredictable. In altering the climate of the planet, we are playing with a vastly complicated system we barely understand. As Columbia University scientist Wallace Broecker has said, climate is an angry beast, and we are poking it with sticks.

We may already be feeling its anger. Of course, weather happens in spurts, with or without global warming. It is impossible to know whether this storm or that drought was an ordinary event, say the effect of a little extra moisture carried over the West Coast by El Niño, or whether it was a flick of the tail of the global warming beast.

What is certain is that the kinds of catastrophes global warming will cause are already happening all over the world. Hundreds of people died in exceptionally high monsoon floods in India and Bangladesh this fall. Three dozen died last month in mud slides in the Alps; the floodwaters rushing out of the mountains were said to have raised one lake to its highest point in 160 years. A heat wave last year across much of this country claimed 271 lives. Penguins in the Antarctic are finding it harder and harder to find food for their chicks, as the shrimplike krill they eat grow scarcer in warmer waters. Disease-bearing mosquitoes have moved to altitudes and longitudes they usually never reach: malaria has come to the Kenyan highlands; the West Nile virus thrives in New York City.

If global warming continues unchecked, the next hundred years will be a century of dislocations. Ecosystems cannot simply pick up and move north. Many will break apart as temperatures shift too far and too fast for all their plants and animals to follow. Others, such as alpine tundra, will die out in many places because they have nowhere to go.

According to some climate models, by the year 2100 the southern tip of Florida may be under water and much of the Everglades may be drowned. Vermont may be too warm for sugar maples; wide swaths of the forests of the Southeast may become savannah; droughts may be frequent on the Great Plains. Meanwhile, according to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, heat-related human deaths will double in many large cities around the world and tropical diseases will spread. Deaths from malaria alone may rise by more than a million a year.

Problem and solution

There is no scientific question about the cause of global warming. Carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere trap heat. For millennia, the planet's temperature has moved in lockstep with the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Humans have now increased that concentration by 30 percent since the pre-industrial era, principally by burning oil, coal, and other fossil fuels. Today we have the highest atmospheric carbon concentration since the evolution of Homo sapiens.

The United States is the world's biggest greenhouse gas polluter. We have only 5 percent of the world's population, but we produce more than 20 percent of its greenhouse gases. In the face of climate chaos, we continue to increase our pollution. Power plants are the fastest-growing source of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, primarily because we are increasing the output from old, inefficient coal plants, many of which don't meet current standards. Cars are another major and growing source.

To stop piling up carbon dioxide, we need to shift to cutting-edge technologies for energy efficiency and for renewable energy from the sun, wind, and geothermal sources. Prosperity doesn't require fossil fuels. According to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, U.S. carbon intensity (carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product) has been cut almost in half since 1970. Even during 1997-1999 -- at the height of an economic boom and with the subsidies and policies that reinforce fossil fuel use still deeply entrenched-the United States achieved a steep decline in carbon intensity, partly through the use of advanced efficiency technologies. Just tightening up national fuel economy standards would eliminate 450 million tons of carbon dioxide per year by 2010.

As the biggest polluter, the United States should take the lead in dealing with global warming. Instead, for most of the past decade, we have obstructed progress. One reason is obvious: the enormously powerful and wealthy fossil fuel lobby, whose campaign contributions subvert the relationship between Congress and the public.

As a result, the Kyoto Protocol is far weaker than it should be. Though many other industrialized countries had pushed for deep cuts in greenhouse gas pollution, U.S. intransigence kept the final agreement conservative. The protocol requires the industrialized nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions only 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. But for the moment, the protocol is our best hope for nationwide and global progress.

What happens in the Netherlands will be critical in making the Kyoto Protocol work, because the rules on exactly how countries can meet their targets have yet to be written. Three issues stand out:

• The protocol allows a country to meet part of its target by buying greenhouse gas "credits" from nations that emit less than their quota. The negotiators at the Netherlands must make sure that any credits traded represent real pollution cuts, not just paper-pushing.
  
  
• The protocol needs strong rules on enforcement. Countries that fail to act and countries with slipshod accounting cannot be permitted to undermine the effort.
  
  
• Growing trees absorb carbon, and the protocol allows a nation to meet some of its target by planting trees. The negotiators must make sure that the rules do not permit countries either to raze ancient forests and replant (which releases more carbon than it takes up) or to start counting all the plantings they would have undertaken anyway as new, climate-friendly tactics.

The United States must push to eliminate all of these carbon loopholes. If we get a good treaty, it could be the impetus we need to start modernizing our power plants, vehicles, factories, and buildings. Study after study has shown that these steps will create thousands of new jobs and reduce consumers' energy bills. And, for the sake of future generations, it is our responsibility to change our ways.

We have an enormous job to do. It's time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

The Amicus Journal. Winter 2001
Copyright 2001 by the Natural Resources Defense Council

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