drown them in the dark - US policy

[peaccenicked]

Let 'Em Drown in the Dark
David Morris, AlterNet
June 10, 2002

The recent ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by Europe and Japan means the treaty likely will go into effect by the end of this year. Most of the world's nations will then be legally obligated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions within their borders by about l5 percent by 2010 and as much as 50 percent by 2050.


But not us. In one of his first acts in office, President Bush withdrew from the Protocol. And in an exquisite example of in-your-face timing, he recently made clear our position in a report delivered to the United Nations. The report accepts the reality of global warming but then brazenly announces that our country, already responsible for more than a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, will boost emissions even further: by 40 percent by 2020, by more than 100 percent by 2050.


This puts us on a collision course with the rest of the world. What can our political leaders be thinking? At this moment in history do we really want to unmistakably declare our support of gluttony and wastefulness?


Make no mistake about it, this is the way it appears to nations straining to live within their resource budgets.


The same week the President announced his intention to make the world more vulnerable to climate change, he announced the most sweeping governmental reorganization since World War II with the creation of a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. Does he not understand the connection?


Terrorists are challenging us to show that we care about the world, not only ourselves. I'm sure they are overjoyed when the President declares American engineers capable of building a system to destroy incoming missiles but incapable of building an SUV that gets more than 25 miles per gallon.


When it comes to global warming, the Bush Administration prefers adaptation. Such a strategy might work in this country, at least in the short run. But as Robert Watson, chief scientist of the World Bank, has said, "Those with the least resources have the least capacity to adapt." Harvard University scientist James McCarthy, after co-hosting a study on the impacts of global warming in which 700 scientists participated, concluded, "most of the Earth's people will be on the losing side."


For U.S. farmers, the US government recommends "changing planting dates and varieties." For the world's farmers, choosing different crops is not an option. At present, 1.7 billion people live in areas where water resources are tight. By 2025 this will increase to more than 5 billion.


In the United States global warming, in the short run, means that New Jersey may lose 100 feet of coastline. For the 44 members of the Association of Small Island States global warming may mean the disappearance of their countries. The Maldives, Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands and many others may all soon be under water.


In March, Tuvalu's Prime Minister Koloa Talaka announced that his nation is considering suing the US (and nearby Australia, which has the world's highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions) in the International Court of Justice for refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. We can expect more such actions. As Clive Hamilton of the Australia Institute says, "Tuvalu is doing no more than applying a basic principle of law--if someone does you harm, then you should be able to stop the aggressor from harming you and seek restitution."


As the Kyoto Protocol goes into effect, do we think the rest of the world will stand by and allow the United States to become an ever-greater violator of the rights of others? They won't. They'll respond, not militarily but economically. Already, under provisions of the Protocol, American farmers are ineligible from benefiting from one of the most promising strategies to ameliorate global warming: carbon sequestration. America's farmers could potentially receive tens of billions of dollars to use their soil to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They can't because we're not signatories.


We can be certain that at some point a boycott of American goods will emerge. In the context of Kyoto, it will not boycott American corporations but American-made products. If such a boycott were effective, American corporations may well side with the rest of the world. After all, they already manufacture a growing portion of their products abroad and could easily accelerate that process to minimize economic damage from a worldwide boycott.


While President Bush spits in the eye of the rest of the world on global warming, more and more American communities are looking to accept responsibility for their consumption habits.


In 2000, for example, Seattle adopted a policy of no new greenhouse gas emissions from the city after that date. By administrative order, New Jersey established a greenhouse gas reduction goal in 2000 and is making good progress meeting it. Recently, several New England Governors and eastern Canada premiers adopted a goal similar to that embraced in Kyoto. Massachusetts recently became the first state to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. California's two legislative chambers have passed a bill that would force new cars sold after 2008 to meet stringent greenhouse gas emissions. Over 100 cities are going through the process of signing onto the spirit of the Kyoto Protocols.


The federal government should not interfere with these efforts. That means allowing states and localities authority to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One way is to redefine all federal environmental standards as floors rather than ceilings, as minimums not maximums. Another way is to allow states to impose rigorous efficiency standards not only on houses but on appliances and cars.


By his actions this past month, President Bush has declared to the rest of the world that we define national security differently from them. He has asserted our intention to use an increasingly disproportionate share of the world's natural resources for our own consumption. And by implication, he has notified the world of our intention to use our military strength to enable us to do just that.


It is a remarkable message at a remarkable moment in world history.

[vox]

This is another example of capitalist violence against working men and women who will suffer the most while the rich insulate themselves. In a free market economy, when food production decreases, how will the poor compete with the rich?

The arrogance of the Bush administration is matched only by its hypocricsy.

vox

[Capitalist Imperial]

The united states will develop a technological solution to the problem, most likely through the application of nanotechnology, or nuclear fusion.

[vox]

Wow, you're just full of completely unsupported statements, ain't ya? I suggest that your post amounts to nothing more than blind faith. You've the same credibility as a Fundamentalist raving on about the Rapture. Go tell it on the mountain, CI. I'm not interested in your religious fervor, only in the facts, and the fact is there is no reason to believe you at all.

vox

[Conghaileach]

Oh come on, Capitalist Imperialist, if you want to maintain any semblence of credibility on this board, please pull your head out of your ass.

Only a moron doesn't see the problems this is causing, and a miracle solution isn't going to appear at the last minute. Even Bush knows this, but his handlers in the oil companies won't let him do anything to jeopardise their profits.

[vox]

"...and a miracle solution isn't going to appear at the last minute."

Indeed, climatologists agree that it would be ipossible. The climate changes slowly, but I was reading a while back that scientists believe that there is a certain time, a kind of critical mass stage, after which there can be no turning back, and that we are fast approaching it.

None of this will bother the wealthy, of course. The poor will be left to fight each other for the scarce resources left. It's fight ourselves in the future or fight the rich right now.

vox

[Capitalist Imperial]

Quote: from vox on 11:34 pm on June 17, 2002
Wow, you're just full of completely unsupported statements, ain't ya? I suggest that your post amounts to nothing more than blind faith. You've the same credibility as a Fundamentalist raving on about the Rapture. Go tell it on the mountain, CI. I'm not interested in your religious fervor, only in the facts, and the fact is there is no reason to believe you at all.

I can see how you create a "faith" analogy, but i don't think it is a totally accurate analogy.

I am not a religious person, but I understand where you are coming from with this comparison. I submit this: Unlike with religious edict, the US has proven itself, empirically, to be a nation capable of developing technology that can benefit the word tremendously and solve current problems. So, yes, I do have faith in the USA and its technologivcal ability, but it is far from blind, it is well-placed and earned. Nano-tech and fusion are 2 technologies on the verge of breaking through to broad, real-world application, and they will come courtesy of the USA

[Moskitto]

Nuclear Fusion is what is needed to solve a lot of the worlds problems, however, even the US is years away from making it viable. The closest we are to getting nuclear Fusion is an experimental fusion reactor in Sweden I believe.

Likewise, nano-techology has enormous benefits for the enviroment and for medicine. However, we are a long way off developing them.

[Capitalist Imperial]

What do you propose is a long way off? I submit we will ave these technologies at our disposal within 10 years

[Moskitto]

That's not that close. Maybe we'll have fusion by then, but I daubt we'll have nanites by then.

[Capitalist Imperial]

I think we'll nave nano-tech b4 fusion, and if you think about what it will do for humanity, 10 years isn't that long to wait.

[Guest]

Scientists in Oak Ridge Laboratory in the U$ were recently able to carry out a fusion reaction. Even they admit however that a proper fusion reactor capable of producing power is 40-50 years away.

[Guest]

They've been a little anxious of confirming cold fusion however, as 13 years ago scientists in England thought they'd achieved cold fusion, but were wrong.

The scientists say that they had detected all the signs of fusion. I think they're still working to have it confirmed.

[Capitalist Imperial]

Quote: from Guest on 6:58 pm on June 19, 2002
Scientists in Oak Ridge Laboratory in the U$ were recently able to carry out a fusion reaction. Even they admit however that a proper fusion reactor capable of producing power is 40-50 years away.

I think they are selling themselves short. Technology is advancing exponentially, and US scientists did produce fusion somehow with bubbles of acetone. I think 40-50 years is an overshot estimation

[Apache]

In a review of the copious literature available on the subject, H. Sterling Burnett, environment policy analyst for the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), points out that there is no scientific consensus that global warming is a problem or that humans are its cause. While ground-level temperature measurements suggest the earth has warmed 0.3 to 0.6 degrees Celsius since 1850, global satellite data, the most reliable of climate measurements, show no evidence of warming during the last 18 years, Burnett points out. And, he adds, even the slight warming that ground-level thermometers show is well within standard variations over the last 15,000 years. "The earth experienced greater warming between the 10th and 15th centuries," Burnett notes, "a time when vineyards thrived in England and Vikings colonized Greenland and built settlements in Canada."

As to the often-repeated charge that humans are causing global warming, Burnett observes that scientists most directly concerned with climate conditions reject the theory of global warming by a wide margin.

A Gallup Poll found that only 17 percent of the members of the Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Society think that the slight warming experienced in the 20th century has been the result of man-made greenhouse gas emissions--principally CO2 from burning fossil fuels.
Only 13 percent of the scientists responding to a recent survey conducted by Greenpeace believe catastrophic climate change will result from continuing current patterns of energy use.
Another argument often raised in support of global warming is that steadily rising temperatures will lead to more frequent and more violent hurricanes. But recent data show no increase in the number or severity of tropical storms, and the latest climate models suggest that earlier models making such connections were simplistic and thus inaccurate. Burnett points out that:

Since the 1940s, the National Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory has documented a decrease in both the intensity and number of hurricanes.
From 1991 through 1995, relatively few hurricanes occurred, and even the unusually intense hurricane season of 1995 did not reverse the downward trend.
The 1996 IPCC report on climate change concluded that a worldwide significant increase in tropical storms was unlikely; some regions may experience increased activity while others will see fewer, less severe storms.
Even if a slight overall warming of the planet did occur, Burnett says, the effect would likely be positive. "[I]t would primarily affect nighttime temperatures, lessening the number of frost nights and extending the growing season," he writes. "Thus some scientists think a global warming trend would be an agricultural boom. Moreover, historically warm periods have been the most conducive to life. Most of the world's plant life evolved in a much warmer, carbon dioxide-filled atmosphere."

[peaccenicked]

From the Union of concerned scientists



''Mark Twain might as well have been talking about global warming when he famously remarked, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it." For years we have heard so much about the causes of climate change, that we've missed the fact that there are simple, practical solutions that can slow this growing problem. Technologies exist today that can cut emissions of heat-trapping gases and make a real difference in the health of our planet. And these solutions will be good for our economy, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and enhance our energy security.

A Challenge We Can Meet

Global warming doesn't just mean balmy February days in northern climes. It also means increasingly hot days in the summer, and a host of negative impacts that are already under way and are expected to intensify in the coming decades.

More heat waves will likely increase the risk of heat-related illnesses and deaths.


Cities and towns along the nation's major rivers will experience more severe and frequent flooding.


Some areas will likely experience more extensive and prolonged droughts.


Some of our favorite coastal and low-lying vacation areas, such as parts of the Florida Keys and Cape Cod, will be much less appealing as sea levels rise, dunes erode, and the areas become more vulnerable to coastal storms.


Many families and businesses, who have made their living from fishing, farming, and tourism could lose their livelihoods, and others who love hunting, boating, skiing, birdwatching, and just relaxing near lakes, streams, and wetlands will see some of their favorite places irretrievably changed.


The solutions to climate change are here and it's time we put them to use. If we get started today we can tackle this problem and decrease the unpleasant outcomes that await us if we do nothing. The steps we need to take are common sense. And, more often than not, they will save consumers money. The cost of inaction, however, is unacceptably high.



We Must Act Now







Five sensible solutions
Make Better Cars & SUVs
Modernize Our Electricity
Increase Energy Efficiency
Protect Threatened Forests
Support American Ingenuity



The scientific consensus is in. Our planet is warming, and we are helping make it happen by adding more heat-trapping gases, primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), to the atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuel (oil, coal, and natural gas) alone accounts for about 75 percent of the increase in CO2. Deforestation -- the cutting and burning of forests that trap carbon -- accounts for about another 20 percent.

Procrastination is not an option. Scientists agree that if we wait 10, 20 or 50 years, the problem will be much more difficult to address and the consequences for us will be that much more serious.

We're treating our atmosphere like we once did our rivers. We used to dump waste thoughtlessly into our waterways, believing that they were infinite in their capacity to hold rubbish. But when entire fisheries were poisoned and rivers began to catch fire, we realized what a horrible mistake that was.

Our atmosphere has limits, too. CO2 remains in the atmosphere for about 100 years. The longer we keep polluting, the longer it will take to recover and the more irreversible damage there will be.''



© 2002 Union of Concerned Scientists