Global Warming Committee

Global Warming - Why it Threatens Us, By Charles Church

Nary a soul realized, over 150 years ago when the Industrial Revolution began, that in the name of economic progress we humans were beginning an uncontrolled experiment. How much carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and other gases could we pump into the atmosphere before there would be a potentially steep price to pay? Since at least 1896, when the eminent Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius warned that CO2 could in due time heat up the earth, we should have realized that there would be a limit. But what would that limit be?

CO2 and the other greenhouse gases (so called, because they create an invisible blanket in the sky which, like a greenhouse, keeps in the heat) long had served us well. Mars has no such blanket, so it is very cold there. Too cold for humans to live. On the other hand, Venus has a very thick blanket, and the result is an extremely hot climate. Too hot for us. But here on earth, we for a long time enjoyed a "Goldilocks" blanket that kept in just the right amount of heat.

With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, humans unwittingly began to change that. We have made the world hotter. Not so much hotter right now. Only about one degree Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. But even that small increase has caused dramatic changes around the world. Both the North and the South Poles are falling apart. Since 1995, three huge pieces of the Antarctic ice shelf have virtually disintegrated. The latest, about the size of Rhode Island, collapsed in just thirty-one days. At the other end of the earth, the Arctic, in September 2003, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf - the largest one there - started to break up. In the last twenty years, the thickness of Arctic ice has dwindled by 50 percent.

The list of clear indicators - actually, damage to the world we have known - can go on and on. Glaciers melting. Frozen tundra starting to thaw. Already, sea levels have begun to rise. Animal species are moving toward the poles in search of temperature stability. The timing of our seasons is changing. Seventeen of the eighteen hottest years on record have occurred since 1980. These are but a few examples.

Far worse, the rate of temperature increase is speeding up. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in the largest and most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history, reported in 2001 that the Earth's temperature could climb by as much as seven degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, and by as much as ten degrees by 2100. That's more than sixty percent higher than the IPCC had predicted six years earlier. Now some are saying that even the new prediction is low.

So, we get the idea. The huge amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases that we send into the air could make bad - even terrible - things happen. So let's just stop doing that. Well, there's a problem. Since about 1850, humans have built great industrial nations based on what has always been very cheap and very plentiful fossil fuels - that is, coal, oil and (more recently) natural gas. The industries of the world cannot convert from fossil fuels to clean ones overnight. Moreover, the carbon that goes up into the atmosphere today stays there for more than 100 years. So, even as you read this, despite the currently modest efforts - efforts which the United States largely has resisted - to reduce CO2 emissions, those levels of CO2 emissions have continued to increase. Rapidly. And they will continue to increase until we, through a program that probably will have to dwarf the Apollo Moon Project, start to clean up our act at a meaningful level. In the meantime, CO2 levels in the atmosphere have risen from 280 parts per million (ppm), when the Industrial Revolution began, to about 380 ppm now. This current level of carbon in the sky certainly has not been seen for at least 420,000 years, and probably 20 million years. And the level keeps rising fast.

So, we have much to do, and can surely use the help of anyone reading this.

Global Warming in New York State

Since our committee belongs to Sierra Club's Atlantic Chapter, we keep a special eye on New York even though global warming is a worldwide problem. After all, our state alone contributes almost one percent of the world's - that's right, the world's - total carbon emissions. More than countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands.

The most important environmental initiative in America right now is RGGI. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Spoken like Reggie. Ignoring the advice of his own hand-picked Greenhouse Gas Task Force to put into effect a carbon cap - that is, a limit on emissions of CO2 - for power generators in New York, Governor George E. Pataki announced that he had asked governors in the northeast to join a regional strategy to develop a market-based cap-and-trade program for CO2 emissions from power plants.

On September 29, 2003 the commissioners of the environmental agencies of nine member states - the New England states, plus New York, New Jersey and Delaware - adopted the program that is RGGI. RGGI represents the first multi-state compact in the nation intended to reduce CO2 emissions from power plants. The idea is to curb these emissions by creating a regional market in which power plants can buy and sell CO2 emission credits among themselves, as each state works toward complying with its cap. Under this cap-and-trade program, power plants that keep their emissions below their allowed level would have credits they could sell, and dirtier plants would be able to buy these credits to meet their obligations. Developers and plant owners would have a financial incentive to build and operate clean, efficient plants, and to modernize dirtier plants through cleaner fuels or new equipment.

The importance of RGGI cannot be overstated. Not only will curtailing CO2 emissions from the region's power plants be a very important step in reducing America's carbon emissions, but it also will serve as a platform and model for future programs - for example, one put forth by the federal government, if it ever gets its act together. Because of its value as precedent especially, we must not allow a weak RGGI regimen to happen.

So the work continues, and the Global Warming Committee is doing its utmost to assure that a meaningful RGGI program will result.

What You Can Do

Just add your voice to those championing meaningful reductions from CO2 emissions from power plants. You can phone or write Governor Pataki and Commissioner Sheehan as follows: Governor George E. Pataki, State Capitol, Albany, New York 1224, 518-474-8390; Denise M. Sheehan, Acting Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation, 625 Broadway, Albany, New York 12233, 518-402-8540.

Should you want to learn more about the activities and efforts of the Global Warming Committee, or wish to join, you can contact Hugh Mitchell or Moisha Blechman.

Click here to learn how Animal Agriculture contributes to Global Warming.

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