Eliot Spitzer for AG!
Global Warming
BusinessWeek Online
Friday August 6, 4:00 pm ET
biz.yahoo.com
The idea that the human species could alter something as huge and complex as the earth's climate was once the subject of an esoteric scientific debate. But now even attorneys general more used to battling corporate malfeasance are taking up the cause. On July 21, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and lawyers from seven other states sued the nation's largest utility companies, demanding that they reduce emissions of the gases thought to be warming the earth. Warns Spitzer: "Global warming threatens our health, our economy, our natural resources, and our children's future. It is clear we must act."
The maneuvers of eight mostly Democratic AGs could be seen as a political attack. But their suit is only one tiny trumpet note in a growing bipartisan call to arms. "The facts are there," says Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.). "We have to educate our fellow citizens about climate change and the danger it poses to the world." In January, the European Union will impose mandatory caps on carbon dioxide and other gases that act like a greenhouse over the earth, and will begin a market-based system for buying and selling the right to emit carbon. By the end of the year, Russia may ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which makes CO2 reductions mandatory among the 124 countries that have already accepted the accord. Some countries are leaping even further ahead. Britain has vowed to slash emissions by 60% by 2050. Climate change is a greater threat to the world than terrorism, argues Sir David King, chief science adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair: "Delaying action for a decade, or even just years, is not a serious option."
There are naysayers. The Bush Administration flatly rejects Kyoto and mandatory curbs, arguing that such steps will cripple the economy. Better to develop new low-carbon technologies to solve problems if and when they appear, says Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. And a small group of scientists still argues there is no danger. "We know how much the planet is going to warm," says the Cato Institute's Patrick J. Michaels. "It is a small amount, and we can't do anything about it."
But the growing consensus among scientists and governments is that we can -- and must -- do something. Researchers under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have pondered the evidence and concluded that the earth is warming, that humans are probably the cause, and that the threat is real enough to warrant an immediate response. "There is no dispute that the temperature will rise. It will," says Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science. "The disagreement is how much." Indeed, "there is a real potential for sudden and perhaps catastrophic change," says Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change: "The fact that we are uncertain may actually be a reason to act sooner rather than later."
<MORE> |
