Warming News Both Global, Local

By John Richardson Staff Writer

The science and the politics of a shifting global climate just keep heating up.

On Monday, the Supreme Court weighed in with a big global warming ruling, and on Friday experts from 130 countries gave a sobering report in Brussels about how the changes will – and already do – affect the planet.

Here in Maine, meanwhile, state government is making some climate news of its own.

You didn’t think a snowstorm in April would make all this global warming talk go away, did you?

In case you missed it, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that carbon dioxide is a pollutant under federal law and can be regulated because it traps heat around the Earth. The ruling could open the door to a range of federal efforts to keep the global temperature down.

Maine and 11 other states were on the prevailing side in the case, arguing for national limits on carbon dioxide from car and truck tailpipes.

Maine, in fact, has already told automakers that they must sell more fuel-efficient cars here, starting next year, to reduce emissions. That’s the focus of its own legal battle, and lawyers say the Supreme Court just handed this state and others some timely legal firepower.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, meanwhile, says many of the harshest effects of a warming planet will happen far from here and hit the world’s poorest people.

It projects mass extinctions of species, expanding deserts and hunger in Africa, thawing in the Himalayas and a lack of drinking water in Asia, and sea level rise and coastal flooding, especially on low-lying coasts and islands in southern Asia.

Heat waves and droughts in southern Europe and the American Southwest also are projected.

Northern regions, the report says, will see more of the positive short-term changes. It projects more rainfall and longer growing seasons in high latitudes, opening Arctic seaways, and fewer deaths from cold.

At the same time, Maine is not immune to coastal flooding, and longer, warmer summers will be bad news for some, like, say, the ski industry.

The report also confirms a relatively new concern for this part of the world. The buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is making oceans more acidic, especially colder oceans, it says. That could disrupt the bottom of the ocean food chain, the part that provides us with fresh seafood.

Before the dust settles from this week’s global warming news, and maybe even before all the snow melts from this week’s storm, look for the Legislature and governor to get into the act.

Gov. John Baldacci’s plan to set limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants is expected to be formally presented to lawmakers next week. Final language was still being sorted out on Friday after more than a month of intensive haggling with industry and environmental representatives.

The Maine plan won’t spare Africa from famine or keep Bangladesh above sea level. But, if lawmakers agree to it, the state would join others in the Northeast to create the nation’s first Kyoto-style attempt to fight global warming.

John Richardson can be contacted at 791-6324. See his blog at:

www.pressherald.com

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