Terrence, every year it is getting hotter on the earth! The small island nations are now meeting to try to figure out what they can do to avoid totally disappearing as glacial ice melts and they vanish under the earth's rising oceans. In this Boston Globe editorial are the statistics for 1998:
A BOSTON GLOBE EDITORIAL
Trying to ignore global warning
Last month the Clinton administration quietly asked for postponement of
final agreement on the Kyoto global warming treaty until after the
presidential election in 2000. The treaty, adopted at the world environmental
summit in 1997, left some important issues unresolved, including the role of
underdeveloped countries and the details of a system of vouchers that would
let nations buy and sell pollution credits.
The request for postponement may be understandable politically and
technically, but this is no time to fall short in addressing global warming.
1998 was the warmest year on record, according to the World
Meterological Organization - the 20th consecutive year with above-normal
temperatures. The record holds even after El Nino, a natural phenomenon, is
factored out of the statistics.
The United States is backtracking on several fronts. President Clinton's
budget for fiscal year 2000 requests $4 billion to help reduce global
warming, including $3.6 billion in tax incentives for those who buy
energy-efficient appliances and cars. That is a cool $1 billion less than
Clinton proposed for fiscal year 1999, just after the Kyoto summit. And the
United States is failing to meet the goals it agreed to in Kyoto: a reduction in
greenhouse gases to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Last year US
emissions increased sharply.
Meanwhile, mankind continues to cut down forests that absorb carbon
gases, burns fossil fuels as if they were an inexhaustible resource, and shrugs
off the droughts, fires, floods, warming ocean temperatures, and other
effects of climate change that will only become more drastic if temperatures
continue to rise.
Postponing final agreement on the Kyoto treaty until 2001 would mean that
a new president will be making crucial choices. This raises the stakes for
Vice President Al Gore, who has made global warming central to his
agenda, and for all the other presidential candidates whose views are less
well known. It is not too soon to ask probing questions of the men and
women who will help decide the fate of the earth.
This story ran on page A10 of the Boston Globe on 07/06/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
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