Warming to the inconvenient facts
by Michael Grunwald
Global warming is having its moment in the sun. The climate crisis is on ``60 Minutes'' and in Tom Brokaw's new documentary, on the cover of Time and Newsweek, and in Al Gore's new movie and bestselling book. But while polls show that most Americans now believe that global warming is real and significantly humanmade, they are much less concerned about the issue than non-Americans, and much less willing to support dramatic action to address it.
The problem is, most scientists now believe dramatic action is necessary to prevent a climate catastrophe. They warn that unless humans can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent, global warming could threaten the habitability of the earth. That's the inconvenient part of ``An Inconvenient Truth.'' And when Gore's critics complain that such drastic reductions would require an assault on our way of life, they're telling the truth, too.
But what if Americans decided that such changes truly were necessary?
If our get-serious rhetoric on climate change were to be more than a new form of low-carbon emissions, we would have to change not only the way we live and the way we drive, but also the way we think about political issues. And not only the politics of energy and the environment. If the scientists are right about an apocalyptic future of floods, droughts, dead coral reefs, rising sea levels and advancing deserts, global warming is an existential threat that should affect our approach to just about every issue. To take it seriously, we would have to change the way we think about transportation, agriculture, development, water resources, natural disasters, foreign relations and more.
It is possible to imagine a climate-conscious politics that would stretch far beyond the modest carbon reductions we rejected in the Kyoto Protocol, a politics where a policy's atmospheric costs would be evaluated along with its fiscal costs, a politics of inconvenient truths. In fact, the path to that politics is already starting to emerge, with talk inside the Beltway and action outside it.
President Bush recently decided to overturn decades of bipartisan U.S. policy by cooperating with Russia on nuclear energy issues. ``We need alternatives to hydrocarbons,'' his assistant energy secretary explained.
Bush is no climate convert; he's more concerned with enlisting Russia's support against Iran and promoting America's nuclear industry. But it's notable how his administration made its case. Nuclear power is problematic in many ways, but it doesn't contribute to the greenhouse effect, so its supporters now make greenhouse arguments. Similarly, the sugar industry now defends its controversial price supports from the government by noting that its cane can be converted into ethanol. And the Army Corps of Engineers defends questionable navigation projects that ravage rivers to ease the way for a few barges by bragging about how many gas-guzzling trucks each barge takes off the road.
Climate change may not always elevate the debate in Washington, but it is changing the debate, even on seemingly tangential issues. For if we take climate change seriously, there aren't many tangential issues. We emit greenhouse gases whenever we use fuel or electricity -- when we drive or fly, heat or cool our homes, grow or manufacture or transport our products. And government policies can encourage more or less of those activities in more or less greenhouse-friendly ways.
The obvious place to start is energy: The U.S. government provides about $25 billion in annual subsidies to fossil-fuel industries; environmentalists hope to eliminate them, or shift them into wind and solar power, energy-efficient appliances and other clean technologies. The United States also has lax fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks, which produce nearly one-third of our emissions; Japan's requirements are twice as stringent, and even China's are tougher. And the United States has yet to regulate carbon, or even make a commitment to cut emissions; by contrast, Germany, Britain and the Netherlands have pledged reductions of 50 percent, 60 percent and 80 percent, respectively.
But the debate is gradually starting to shift. Kyoto is still a bad word on Capitol Hill, but momentum is slowly building for modest carbon regulations pushed by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. Sen. James Jeffords, an independent from Vermont, introduced a bill Thursday that envisions 80 percent reductions by 2050. Few U.S. politicians are willing even to think about higher fuel taxes in a time of soaring gas prices, but there is talk of higher fuel-efficiency standards.
The question is whether Americans are capable of changing their way of life without a World War II-style emergency. So far, they don't seem to think global warming qualifies; a Pew Global Attitudes Project poll last month found that 19 percent of Americans care about it ``a great deal,'' compared with 66 percent of Japanese and 65 percent of Indians.
But we care about soaring energy prices. We may not buy energy-efficient bulbs just because Wal-Mart gives them nice shelf space, but we might if they'll reduce our rising electricity bills. We may not buy hybrid cars to save the planet, but we might buy them to save at the pump. Global warming hasn't forced us to get serious about conservation, but the energy crisis that our runaway consumption has helped to create just might.
Money, after all, talks even louder than Al Gore.
MICHAEL GRUNWALD wrote this article for the Washington Post.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's refreshing to see a Washington Post columnist paint the broad social implications of climate change -- it's more than just buying a Prius.
Grunwald mentioned the meme that nuclear energy "doesn't contribute to the greenhouse effect." This is not true, since carbon-based fuels are used in construction and mining. For more, see Nuclear power, Peak Oil and Climate Change.
UPDATE: Reader ES pointed out that the article was originally published a week ago on the Washington Post under a different title. Therefore we've updated the URL and title.
UPDATE_2: Reader MP writes: "Coal-fired powerplants are also used in the uranium-enrichment process (in addition to BA's previous editorial comments), so fossil fuels play a greater part than most people realize."
Published on 23 Jul 2006 by Washington Post. Archived on 30 Jul 2006.
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