Departments
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Week of 9 January 1998 |
Vol. I, No. 15 |
Feature
Article
But Senate expected to maintain hot air
BU climate change experts: Kyoto talks a good start
by Brian Fitzgerald
A month ago in Kyoto negotiators at the world conference on climate change laid down the gauntlet: the United States should reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. But it is a treaty that several Boston University global warming experts expect the Senate to reject.
"Before the summit began, the Senate voted 95-0 against an agreement that doesn't require developing countries to participate," points out Peter Levin, associate dean for research and graduate studies at the College of Engineering and an authority on the consumption of electric energy.
Still, Levin and other BU professors concur with Vice President Al Gore's assertion that the accord is nonetheless "a vital turning point" because it shows that world leaders intend to do something about global warming -- and it will help make America come to grips with its overreliance on fossil fuels.
"The talks were more successful than I thought they would be," says Levin, who participated in the October 6 White House Conference on Climate Change, an event designed to educate the American public and build support for an international pact to cut emissions.
Convincing the Senate, however, will be another matter. "We will kill this bill," vowed Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) in December. Is the Clinton administration ready to rumble with Congress? Gore has said he will handle political opposition by taking the fight straight to the people. "I think it would be a real knock-down drag-out debate," he stated. "But it would be good for the country."
"The vice president is correct," says Levin. "The public ought to have the opportunity to consider a balanced presentation of the facts. This debate involves moral imperatives that are derived from scientific data. We will be making decisions that will affect the environment and resource availability for future generations."
A recent New York Times poll suggests that Americans are concerned about heat-trapping air pollutants: 65 percent of the respondents think the United States should reduce greenhouse gases, regardless of what other countries do. Only 17 percent believe that cutting emissions will hurt the U.S. economy.
But polls aside, Levin believes that the majority of U.S. citizens have yet to fully grasp the severity of the greenhouse effect -- and will be reluctant to alter their lifestyles to help rectify the problem. "The interesting aspect of bringing this debate to the American public is that it will illuminate the country's rather worrisome lack of scientific acumen," he said. "We must recognize that the problem is serious -- that it is reckless to continue consuming the way we do consume -- and that we have both the economic and technical wherewithal to find alternatives and exploit them."
The next summit on climate change is scheduled for November in Buenos Aires, where talks on "trading" of emissions are expected to take place. In emissions trading, industries that exceed emissions limits would pay into an international pool to fund antipollution projects in developing countries.
However, Gore has acknowledged that the negotiations will mean little unless developing countries such as China and India join industrialized nations in adhering to the treaty. "We will not submit this agreement for ratification until key developing nations participate in this effort," he said. "This is a global problem that will require a global solution."
Levin says that it remains to be seen how the Kyoto Protocol will move beyond this catch-22 situation: neither the United States nor key developing nations are likely to adhere to the pact until the other shows a commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
"The problem is a very pragmatic one," says Levin. "People are not going to easily wean themselves from fossil fuels, which constitute 85 percent of the world's energy consumption. Their use is going up, not down, and we are not in a position economically or technically to move away from fossil fuels in a way that is politically or economically palatable to a billion Chinese and Indians." Indeed, leaders from those countries have pointed out that it is primarily the United States, Japan, and European nations that have caused the global warming problem. Chinese negotiators said that pollution controls in their country would have to wait until China becomes as developed as Western countries, which one official said could take 50 years.
"What I'm looking for are meaningful indications that the United States is willing to act first," says Levin, noting that this country is the world's number one producer of greenhouse gases.
But like Levin, CAS Associate Professor of Geography Robert Kaufmann questions Americans' readiness to help stabilize their country's carbon emissions, especially if they will be required to change their driving habits. "People are buying huge gas-guzzlers again," he said, referring to the surging popularity of sports utility vehicles and vans -- more than two decades after the oil price shocks of the early 1970s prompted drivers to buy fuel-efficient cars.
Kaufmann, who discovered new evidence this year suggesting that human activity is responsible for a 0.6 degree Celsius increase in global warming over the past century -- and published his findings in the July 3 edition of the international science journal Nature -- says that indifference toward the greenhouse effect in the United States can be blamed partly on inadequate media coverage. Kaufmann says that The High Stakes Battle Over Earth's Threatened Climate, a recent book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ross Gelbspan, explains the situation comprehensively. "Gelbspan argues that Americans, compared to the views of their European counterparts, don't think that climate change is much of a problem," says Kaufmann.
Kaufmann adds that a fight for ratification in the Senate, although probably doomed to failure, would still publicize the potentially catastrophic effect of global warming on weather systems, flooding, and the spread of disease. "The fact is that human activity is causing global warming and even very small temperature swings have large climatic impacts," he says. "When this is debated openly and on fair ground, the mediocre scientists who are skeptical of global warming will be humiliated."
Ranga Myneni, an associate professor of geography at CAS, says that Americans "for the most part, don't understand the immediacy of the situation. It is time for a meaningful dialogue in this country about global warming." Last April Nature published Myneni's research on the growing season for plants in the northern high latitudes -- a study that found that spring in recent years has been arriving a week earlier in Canada, Northern Europe, and other regions north of the 45th parallel.
Myneni and Assistant Geography Professor Matthias Ruth, a researcher at BU's Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, recently met with Kaufmann and this reporter to discuss the Kyoto Protocol. Myneni and Ruth scoff at the assumption by some economists that complying with the treaty will devastate the U.S. economy. "We have new technology that can drastically reduce emissions, but it is seen as being bad for industry," laments Myneni. "Nothing could be further from the truth." Ruth agrees. "It is irresponsible to say that this agreement would slash the country's economic growth in half," he says. "Being more energy-efficient means being more cost-efficient."
"The treaty in Kyoto has a way to go before it can be deemed a success," says Myneni, "but it provides a framework for reducing air pollution. The agreement will also force people to consider the disastrous consequences of global warming if it continues unchecked. In that way, this treaty is a good start."