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Scientist: Time is Now to Curb Emissions

Posted on: Tuesday, 25 April 2006, 21:00 CDT

By Peter B. Lord, The Providence Journal, R.I.

Apr. 25--PROVIDENCE -- The destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina and the spike in oil prices may have created a "political window" for progress in reducing greenhouse emissions in the United States, a leading climate scientist said yesterday.

"This may be our last chance to get the job done," said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University. "But you can't always work from the top down. This must be a serious campaign."

Oppenheimer helped initiate United Nations studies into climate change in the 1980s. He has been a lead author on subsequent U.N. climate change reports. And he worked at an advocacy group, Environmental Defense, that saw most of the world adopt the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while the U.S. government refused to take any action.

Yet, Oppenheimer said in a speech at Brown University that he remains optimistic that the United States will start acting before climate change becomes so severe it triggers worldwide calamities.

He said that optimism is based on the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the approval of the Kyoto Protocol by much of the world, emission reductions enacted by the State of California, initiatives by "smart" businesses and agreement on limiting greenhouse gases by seven Northeastern states (except for Massachusetts and Rhode Island).

Oppenheimer said Katrina and gasoline prices have gotten the mass media to report on climate change and opened a window to change.

But he warned that window could close quickly.

Mass media share a herd mentality, Oppenheimer said. Stories on climate change prompt more stories. But the media interest, he said, will probably evaporate quickly.

What's more, he said, even though there has been a scientific consensus for about six or seven years on climate change, media continue telling "both sides" of the stories by quoting critics who represent a tiny minority of science.

Also, he said energy prices probably will come down. And there are concerns that we have crossed, or are approaching, a "tipping point" beyond which efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will be too late and catastrophic climate changes will be launched.

Oppenheimer said it is generally acknowledged that developed countries will be able to cope with climate change more readily than poor countries. A key example is that only a small rise in sea level will be devastating to Bangladesh.

But in 2003, a heat wave in Europe killed 35,000 people, Oppenheimer said. And he pointed to New Orleans as an example of "how completely incompetent we are to adapt to climate change."

And, he said, some in the U.S. government are engaging in what he calls "willful ignorance." His top example is Oklahoma Sen. James M. Inhofe, who holds the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works -- a post once held by the late Sen. John H. Chafee, a political leader who studied climate change and tried to do something about it.

Inhofe has said that climate change is a hoax by scientists. In so doing, Inhofe became Oppenheimer's favorite exhibit of ignorance.

Oppenheimer acknowledged that, in the past, he has given speeches so depressing that he once made a student cry.

Yesterday, he encouraged his audience of students, professors and environmental advocates to take action.

He displayed pictures of Rhode Island's congressional delegation, along with President Bush and U.S. Sen. Hilary Clinton, D-New York, under a headline: "Badger these people!"

He encouraged people to act as individuals by using compact fluorescent light bulbs, driving hybrid motor vehicles, and planting trees.

And he said the environmental community is trying to broaden its campaign by working with religious groups and hunters and fishermen.

The big question, he said, is can "our polarized and fragmented socio-political system respond fast enough?"

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Providence Journal, R.I.

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Source: Providence Journal

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