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As powerful voices outside Washington, DC, begin to address global warming, our national leaders look increasingly out of touch. Are we approaching the tipping point where the weight of public opinion shifts and forces federal action?
by Kathleen Campbell
During the past year, a notable shift has occurred in both the tone and substance of our national debate over global warming. While the Bush administration continues to resist any mandatory strategies to reduce emissions of the heat-trapping gases that cause global warming, states and cities have stepped up to fill the void by adopting their own emission reduction policies. The national media and even some large corporations have joined scientists in saying global warming must be addressed. And, for the first time, a majority of U.S. senators now supports mandatory limits on global warming pollution.
Why is this happening now? And what does it mean for federal climate policy?
There's No Debating the Science
A few years ago, media coverage of global warming tended to devote equal space to climate scientists and climate skeptics. That is no longer the case. This summer the front page of USA Today announced, "The debate's over: Globe is warming." Other mainstream newspapers and magazines have followed suit; they now accept the reality of global warming and focus their attention on the consequences and policy solutions. For example, when UCS Global Environment Program Director Peter Frumhoff was interviewed by CNN in July, the conversation focused not on whether global warming is taking place, but on whether it is likely to cause more heat waves. And in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, both Fortune and Time noted that the increase in tropical storm intensity over the past several years is linked to global warming.
Editorial pages around the country lamented the absence of a global warming policy in the energy bill that President Bush signed this summer; even conservative voices such as BusinessWeek and the Wall Street Journal have noted that the president is increasingly isolated in his stance. The topic even made its way into the popular media in July when talk-show host David Letterman listed his "Top Ten George W. Bush Solutions for Global Warming."
This shift in media coverage is likely due to an almost universal confidence in our scientific understanding of global warming and the urgency required for effective policy solutions. Several important studies released within the past year confirm that at least one degree of warming—which by itself can cause significant damage—is already inevitable, and serious and immediate action is needed to minimize further warming.
This urgency was emphasized in a joint statement on climate change released in June by the national science academies of 11 countries including China, France, Germany, India, Russia, and—for the first time—the United States. These scientists called on world leaders to acknowledge and address the threat of global warming and take immediate steps to reduce heat-trapping emissions, noting, "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action."
Leaders Emerge outside the Beltway
Despite the scientific consensus on climate change, the Bush administration has refused to take serious steps toward reducing the United States' share of global warming pollution. Instead, the president continues to promote voluntary initiatives that set no specific targets or compliance requirements—allowing emissions to increase unabated. If we are to reduce emissions to levels that climate scientists say will prevent the worst consequences of global warming, a mandatory federal cap on emissions is required.
In the meantime, climate leaders around the country are stepping up to fill the leadership gap by implementing innovative, forward-thinking solutions at the local, state, and regional levels.
Climate Protection Agreement. In June, Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle launched a campaign to lower U.S. global warming emissions on a city-by-city basis. Cities that sign his agreement pledge to reduce emissions at least seven percent below 1990 levels (the same target established by the Kyoto Protocol that went into effect earlier this year without U.S. participation).
To reach this goal, cities will employ various strategies including investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency, "green" building practices, and increased recycling. The agreement urges state governments to take similar actions, and calls on the federal government to pass mandatory global warming legislation. As Catalyst went to press, 174 cities had agreed to participate.
California efforts. Twenty-eight states to date have developed strategies or action plans to reduce global warming pollution, the most significant of which have been undertaken by California. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has set strict targets for reducing his state's heat-trapping emissions (see the sidebar), and because California produces about the same amount of emissions as all of Great Britain, the governor's plan would help make a real dent in overall global warming pollution.
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. A group of New England and Mid-Atlantic states has also been working together to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from area power plants using a "cap-and-trade" program similar to the one that quickly reduced acid rain pollution in the 1990s. This approach allows businesses to cut emissions in a flexible and cost-effective manner, and its success in the Northeast could serve as inspiration for federal global warming policy.
Big Business "Greens" Up Its Act. Most large corporations have historically avoided cleaning up their operations until forced to do so by lawsuits or government regulations. However, as more businesses come to realize that they will eventually have to meet stronger emission standards, and that environmental leadership can improve their image, a growing number have begun voluntary emission reductions.
The most notable is General Electric (GE), the largest publicly traded company in the United States. In May, GE announced that it will address global warming and other environmental issues by doubling its investment in technologies such as cleaner coal-fired power plants and hybrid locomotives to $1.5 billion by 2010. In the process, GE will reduce its global warming emissions by one percent over the next seven years. This might not sound like a significant reduction until you consider the fact that the company's emissions would otherwise grow 40 to 45 percent during that time if the company did nothing to reduce them.
On the eve of the G8 summit in July, 23 other global companies including BP, British Airways, and Ford Motor Company acknowledged the urgency of this problem by asking summit participants—the world's leading industrial nations—to set up a global system for curbing heat-trapping emissions.
Among the dozens of other utilities, financial institutions, and insurance companies that have initiated internal emission reduction programs and spoken out in favor of a new U.S. policy on global warming are American Electric Power, Duke Energy, JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, and Swiss Re. Many of these companies have been pushed in their current direction by shareholder resolutions, an increasingly popular tool for influencing corporate policies and behavior.
Signs of Life in the Capitol
The various initiatives described thus far are a significant first step in reducing the United States' 25 percent share of global warming emissions, but they are not sufficient. Uniform national standards are needed to achieve steep and meaningful emission reductions, and federal leadership is needed to put these standards in place quickly enough to minimize the effects of climate change that are already under way.
The U.S. Senate is beginning to show some encouraging signs of movement in this direction. During the debate over the energy bill in June, for example, a new and unlikely ally joined the effort to craft a global warming agreement: Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), chairman of the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, who had previously expressed hostility toward such legislation. "I am convinced we must proactively address climate change," Domenici announced as he joined the committee's ranking member, Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), in crafting a nonbinding resolution that a majority of senators supported.
For the first time, the Senate has gone on record in support of "a comprehensive and effective national program of mandatory, market-based limits and incentives on emissions of greenhouse gases that slow, stop, and reverse the growth of such emissions." The fact that the resolution was nonbinding, however, means that the Senate has yet to take any real action.
The House of Representatives has made even less progress on global warming, and basically continues to ignore the issue. More than 90 representatives have signed on as cosponsors to the Climate Stewardship Act, the most comprehensive piece of global warming legislation introduced to date, but this effort is being countered by an aggressive investigation of climate scientists led by Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. In an apparent attempt to cast doubt on climate science, Barton (who has received significant funding from fossil fuel interests) has demanded to review 15 years' worth of data and notes related to a single scientific study—despite the vast body of evidence proving the existence of global warming.
A Matter of Time
The posturing of White House officials and congressional leaders who hide behind the false arguments of scientific uncertainty and economic peril appears increasingly disingenuous and untenable with each new call for federal action. Governor Schwarzenegger drew a particularly sharp contrast to the lack of urgency displayed in Washington, DC, when he said, "The debate is over. We have the science. We see the threat. And we know the time for action is now."
If more and more news editors, business leaders, and legislators around the country come to the same conclusion, the next several years will offer an unparalleled opportunity to develop and pass mandatory federal global warming legislation. Scientists agree that emission reductions during the next decade are needed to avoid the most dangerous consequences of climate change, so UCS is working to make this crucial legislation a reality by raising awareness of the need to protect our environment, health, and way of life.
Kathleen Campbell is climate change outreach coordinator for UCS.
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What Will Climate Change Mean for You?
To help educate the public, the press, and policy makers and stimulate action on global warming at the state, regional, and federal levels, UCS has studied the impact of climate change on specific regions of the United States. The reports and fact sheets listed below describe how warming temperatures will affect tourism, agriculture, industry, and public health in individual states, and identify solutions for reducing the emissions that cause global warming.
Confronting Climate Change in the Gulf Coast Region: Prospects for Sustaining Our Ecological Heritage (2001) and Confronting Climate Change in the Great Lakes Region: Impacts on Our Communities and Ecosystems (2003) were produced in collaboration with the Ecological Society of America and written by leading university and government scientists in these regions.
Our most recent analysis, Climate Change in California: Choosing Our Future (2004), uses state-of-the-art global climate models to envision two contrasting scenarios for the Golden State (assuming different levels of heat-trapping emissions).
UCS has also created a series of state-specific fact sheets that summarize the consequences of global warming and the solutions available in Iowa, New Hampshire, and most of the states covered in the reports described above. To learn more, click here. |
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President's Policy Looks Puny Next to Schwarzenegger's
On June 1, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order committing his state to significant reductions in global warming pollution. The plan calls for heat-trapping emissions to be cut 11 percent (to 2000 levels) by 2010, to 1990 levels by 2020, and to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050—an 84 percent total reduction from today's levels.
The aggressiveness of these targets highlights the weakness of those established by the Bush administration. Compared with 1990 emission levels, for example, Governor Schwarzenegger's targets allow California's emissions to grow only seven percent by 2012, more than two-thirds lower than the 24 percent growth expected under business-as-usual conditions. President Bush's targets, on the other hand, would permit emissions nationally to grow 31 percent by 2012.
The Bar Has Been Set
Governor Schwarzenegger's executive order is just the latest example of California's long history of proactive environmental leadership. The state has already adopted automobile fuel economy and air pollution standards, a renewable electricity standard, and energy efficiency programs that not only reduce emissions and benefit the state's consumers, but also serve as valuable precedents for national progress. If the United States adopted these same policies, our country's total heat-trapping emissions would be 17 percent lower than business as usual by 2020, and we would be halfway toward reducing these emissions to 1990 levels.
Deeper reductions are needed to protect the climate and are achievable with additional measures, but California’s current policy is an excellent first step.
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