Conscious Choice: Warming the World, Bush Style

May 2001 | News of the Earth

Warming the World, Bush Style

by Dave Aftandilian

Over the course of several weeks this past March, President George W. Bush and his administration mounted a concerted attack on many of the environmental protections instituted during Bill Clinton’s tenure. For instance, Bush bowed to mining interests in rescinding tougher standards for cancer-causing arsenic in drinking water. According to an Associated Press report, "mining runoff has been identified as a major source of arsenic contamination in drinking water supplies." Mining interests also had a hand in undoing regulations that require hard-rock miners in western states to post bonds equal in value to the estimated cost of cleaning up after their mines. (Companies often mine a site, abandon it, and then declare bankruptcy, thereby sticking the public with often exorbitant cleanup costs.) The Summitville gold mine disaster in Interior Secretary Gale Norton’s home state of Colorado, for example, will cost at least $120 million in public funds to clean up, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Bush administration also tried to delay implementation of a ban on construction of new roads, and thus most logging, in many national forests — a plan that is overwhelmingly supported by the U.S. public, who sent more comments in its favor than had ever been submitted on a federal rule. In addition, the Bush EPA also rescinded a Clinton administration right-to-know proposal that would have increased public access to information about the potential consequences of chemical plant accidents.

Then there was Bush’s repudiation of his campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants as a pollutant. Considering Bush’s close ties to the energy and utility industries, this was a disappointing but not completely surprising move. The announcement that followed stunned the world, though — the Bush administration declared it had "no interest in implementing" the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming. The reason given was that the treaty would harm the U.S. economy and "unfairly" exempt developing nations from cutting their emissions until their economies catch up to those of the West. This latter point is patently ridiculous, since it was the fossil fuel-burning factories of the West’s Industrial Revolution, not the developing nations, that put the vast majority of human-generated (anthropogenic) carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, so it is certainly only "fair" that we take the lead in cleaning up the mess that we made. Given that the United States produces 25 percent of the world’s anthropogenic carbon dioxide, but has only 4 percent of the world’s population, we ought to bear a special responsibility for leading the world on addressing the global warming caused by the gases we emit.

Bush’s decision displays not just shortsightedness, but also contempt for the international community that negotiated the treaty. Officials around the world responded with harsh criticism for his position. "Japan will be dismayed and deeply disappointed" if the United States walks away from the Kyoto Protocol, said Kauo Asakai, Japan’s ambassador for global environmental affairs. Dominique Voynet, the French Environment Minister, called Bush’s "unilateral attitude...entirely provocative and irresponsible." Sir Crispin Tickell, former U.K. ambassador to the UN, commented that "saying Kyoto would harm their economy just shows how inefficient it is. They’re pleading protection for their own inefficiency. The other industrialized countries should certainly go on and ratify the protocol. And they should tell Mr. Bush they’ll apply a compensatory tax on U.S. imports. That would make him think."

Indeed, some see coping with climate change as an opportunity rather than a hardship — a chance for the United States to develop innovative, energy-efficient technologies and export them around the world. In the long run, "it’s American business that will make the administration see sense, because the countries that do ratify [Kyoto] will have the commercial edge over those that don’t. There are huge markets for clean technology," said John Gummer, a former U.K. environment secretary. Some of the world’s largest oil companies agree; BP-Amoco and Shell are two of the biggest investors in solar and other renewable energy technologies.

The Science of Global Warming: Hot and Getting Hotter

Quite aside from shortsightedness and "environmental isolationism" (as Friends of the Earth dubbed Bush’s Kyoto bashing), refusing to act now to address climate change displays a dangerous ignorance of the mounting scientific evidence that global warming poses a threat to human civilization. Reading through the summaries of the soon-to-be-released 2001 reports filed by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change’s (IPCC) working groups on science and impact/adaptation/vulnerability is a sobering, even terrifying experience. Bush should try it. Failing that, he might consider the following "highlights" from the report, which was written by hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists and peer-reviewed by hundreds of others:

• Global average surface temperature has increased by about 0.6 C (1.08 F) since 1861. • The 1990s was the warmest decade since 1861, and according to a January report, 2000 was one of the six hottest years of the past 120 years.

• Snow cover has decreased by about 10 percent since the 1960s (the snows of Kilimanjaro are expected to be completely melted within fifteen years), mountain glaciers have retreated in many non-polar regions during the twentieth century, (scroll down the page at this link for an Andean example), and there has been a 40 percent decline in Arctic sea-ice thickness during late summer to early autumn in recent decades.

• Global average sea level rose between 0.1 and 0.2 meters (0.33 to 0.66 feet) during the twentieth century.

• Heavy precipitation events have increased from 2 to 4 percent in the middle and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere in the latter half of the twentieth century.

• Episodes of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (which warm the Pacific waters, disrupting fisheries and causing rough weather on the West Coast and harsh droughts in Indonesia and elsewhere) have become more frequent, intense, and persistent since the mid-1970s as compared to 100 years previous.

• In some regions, such as parts of Asia and Africa, the frequency and intensity of droughts have increased in recent decades.

All of this has occurred as the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide continues to increase — up 31 percent over values recorded in 1750. This is a concentration level that likely has not been exceeded in the past twenty million years. Could this be natural variation, or have humans caused it? The previous IPCC scientific report concluded that "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." Since then, scientific uncertainties in the climate data have been reduced, while indications of the severity of global warming and its links to human activities have mounted. Therefore, "in light of the new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last fifty years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."

What does the future hold? Bad news if we don’t act swiftly and decisively to address global warming, according to the new IPCC reports. If carbon dioxide emissions due to fossil fuel burning continue without reduction, this will become the dominant influence on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in the twenty-first century. As the carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere increases, ocean and land will take up a decreasing fraction of anthropogenic carbon dioxide, further increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and fueling global warming in a feedback loop. Globally averaged surface temperature is expected to increase by between 1.4 and 4.8 C (2.5 to 10.4 F) from 1990 to 2100; this is considerably higher than the 1.0 to 3.5 C predicted in the last IPCC report. What will happen next? Higher maximum temperatures, more hot days, and increased heat index over nearly all land areas; more intense precipitation events (e.g., torrential downpours); increased summer continental drying leading to higher risk of drought; increased tropical cyclone peak wind intensities and mean and peak precipitation intensities in some areas; continued melting of glaciers and ice caps; and a rise in global mean sea level, perhaps by as much as 0.09 to 0.88 meters (0.30 to 2.9 feet).

What will be the consequences be for human societies and global ecosystems? First, global warming is already altering the planet’s ecology, mainly through increases in temperature. For instance, permafrost is thawing, ice on rivers and lakes is freezing later and breaking up earlier, plant and animal ranges are shifting both in altitude and toward the poles, trees are flowering earlier, and insect emergence and egg-laying in birds are being affected. As the IPCC report on climate change impacts states, "natural systems can be especially vulnerable to climate change because of limited adaptive capacity, and some of these systems may undergo significant and irreversible damage. Natural systems at risk include glaciers, coral reefs and atolls, mangroves [which serve as nurseries for the young of many kinds of fish, including economically important species], boreal and tropical forests, polar and alpine ecosystems, prairie wetlands, and remnant native grasslands.... Climate change will increase existing risks of extinction of some more vulnerable species and loss of biodiversity. It is well-established [emphasis in the original] that the geographical extent of the damage or loss, and the number of systems affected, will increase with the magnitude and rate of climate change."

As if that’s not enough, global warming would also have a number of negative consequences for human populations. While there are some potential positives as well — such as increased crop yields in certain parts of the Northern Hemisphere and reduced winter mortality in middle and high latitudes — most of the signs are not so good. Crop yields would probably decrease for most tropical and sub-tropical regions (i.e., in much of the developing world, where food is already scarce), access to sufficient supplies of clean water will be decreased for many water-scarce regions, vector-borne diseases (e.g., malaria) and water-borne diseases (e.g., cholera) and increased heat stress mortality will affect a greater number of people, and flooding risk will increase for tens of millions of people due to increased precipitation and sea level rise (again, mostly in the developing world).

And who would be hardest hit by the negative consequences of the global warming produced by the West’s fossil fuel gluttony? The wealthy countries that are better able to spend money to adapt to a warming world? No — "the impacts of future changes in climate extremes are expected to fall disproportionately on the poor...the least developed countries...have lesser capacity to adapt and are more vulnerable to climate change damages, just as they are more vulnerable to other stresses." So the poor would get poorer and the rich richer in a warming world — how fair is that, considering that the wealthy nations are responsible for most of the warming?

Solutions — Sticking Our Heads in the Sand Is Not One of Them

What does all this mean? The sky really is falling, and human fossil fuel burning and deforestation are to blame. We must act now to reduce global warming before it spirals completely out of our control. Whether or not we will face economic hardship if we ratify the Kyoto Protocol — and that is an extremely debatable question — we most certainly will face economic, ecological, and worldwide social disaster if we do not. I strongly urge you to contact your elected representatives in Washington, including President Bush, and let them know where you stand on this (see Resources below for contact information). The next international meeting on climate change convenes in Bonn, Germany, in July, which leaves Bush plenty of time to change his mind on the Kyoto Protocol.

You can even suggest some potential solutions, which is more than most of our elected officials have done so far. For one thing, we can increase the fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, especially sport utility vehicles; this would have the added benefits of saving us money at the gas pumps, as well as "reducing our dependency on foreign oil," Bush’s mantra of the moment. The technology already exists to dramatically improve the fuel efficiency of our motor vehicles; all that’s lacking is the willpower to use it. We should increase energy efficiency of all major appliances, requiring their use in government buildings and offering rebates or tax incentives for consumers to purchase them. This would mean replacing most incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents, as well as modernizing refrigerators, washers, air conditioners, and other appliances, better insulating homes and offices, and so on.

Most of all, though, we need to shift our tax structure and research and development funding in such a way that we encourage the development and use of renewable energy sources (such as wind, solar, and biomass) as opposed to fossil fuels. Requiring utilities to purchase a certain amount of their energy from renewable sources is one option; extending the wind power tax credit, due to expire at the end of this year, is another; and getting rid of the many tax breaks and other incentives for oil and gas exploration is still another — and quite the opposite of what Bush and Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-AK) have proposed in their energy policies.

And, of course, we should ratify the Kyoto Protocol. While the protocol only requires modest cuts in greenhouse gas emissions — the U.S. would be required to cut its emissions by 7 percent from 1990 levels, for instance — it is still a good start, and much better than nothing. Once we get the Kyoto mechanisms in place, we can work on further limiting emissions down the road.

Update on Cleaning Up Dirty Coal-Fired Power Plants

February’s "News of the Earth" featured Illinois’s twenty-four coal-fired power plants, which were exempted from the Clean Air Act of 1970 and 1977’s stricter air pollution standards because they had been built before 1977. Power plants such as these are some of the worst pollution sources in the nation. In the EPA’s 1998 Toxics Release Inventory, power plants ranked number one for air emissions of toxic substances and number two for total releases. Other EPA data from 1997 show that power plants emitted 36 percent of the total carbon dioxide pollution in the U.S. that year, 64 percent of the sulfur dioxide, 26 percent of the nitrogen oxides, and 34 percent of mercury emissions from all known sources. According to a National Academy of Sciences report released last June, power plants, especially coal-fired ones, are the single largest source of mercury pollution. While only 56 percent of power plants in the United States are fueled with coal, those coal-fired plants accounted for most of the pollutants emitted by the entire electric industry — more than 93 percent of nitrogen oxides, 96 percent of sulfur dioxide, over 88 percent of carbon dioxide, and 99 percent of mercury emissions — according to EPA’s Acid Rain Program.

A number of recent epidemiological studies have also demonstrated that pollution emitted from coal-fired power plants is extremely hazardous to human health. For instance, a January 2001 study from the Harvard School of Public Health showed that fine-particle air pollution from nine Illinois coal-fired power plants was linked annually to an estimated 300 deaths; 13,900 asthma attacks; 2,600 emergency room visits; and 500,000 incidents of upper respiratory disease. (You can read more details in the February "News of the Earth".)

The good news is that the same Harvard study found that about two-thirds of these health impacts could be avoided by requiring these plants to meet modern air pollution emission limits. Now there are bills before the state legislature and U.S. Congress designed to do just that. The bill before the Illinois Senate is SB 372, which would require the Illinois Pollution Control Board to set statewide air pollution caps for power plants based on what they would emit if they used "best available pollution control" technology. SB 372 would also require that the state adopt rules for reducing air pollutants from power plants by the end of 2002, and that those rules be fully in force by 2007.

The bill introduced in the U.S. Congress is the "Clean Power Act of 2001," co-sponsored in the House by Reps. Waxman (D-CA) and Boehlert (R-NY) and Sens. Jeffords (R-VT) and Lieberman (D-CT) in the Senate. Like SB 372, this one would dramatically reduce levels of power plant emissions by 2007, including those of smog-forming nitrogen oxides, acid rain-forming sulfur dioxide, global-warming carbon dioxide, and highly toxic mercury. In addition, the Clean Power Act would require every power plant to meet the most recent pollution controls required for new sources by the plant’s thirtieth birthday, or five years after enactment of the bill, whichever is later.

You can send a fax to your Illinois Senators asking them to support SB 372 through the Illinois Action Project’s Web site, and you can contact your U.S. Representative and Senators via the U.S. Congress Web sites at the links below.

Resources

Illinois Action Project

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

President George W. Bush

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: