Dangerous Global Warming Reality Makes Passing Comprehensive Pollution Control in Washington Ever a Critical Step
WASHINGTON—On a hot July day last summer, rangers in the White Mountain National Forest sounded an alarm. Air quality had dropped to a dangerous level, and for the first time ever rangers ordered strollers, hikers and mountaineers off the trails.
The White Mountains are a prime New Hampshire scenic attraction that receive more tourists each year than Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks combined. Although that July alert was the first to ever close the mountain trails due to air quality, the same thing happened several more times last summer.
This spring, maple syrup farmers suffered. A frustrated farmer told New England Cable News on April 15 that on a scale of one to ten, he rated his sap-producing season a “four.”
A long, extremely cold winter was interspersed with days of significantly warmer temperatures, and it was all the farmer could do to salvage his sap in a “late” and “disappointing” harvest.
“The sap just didn’t run,” he said. “Without a good vacuum, the sap didn’t run. It’s that plain and simple.”
The villain in both cases: global warming. Despite the argument by some that the effects of global warming are being exaggerated, scientists agree that the Earth is growing warmer. The questions today are just how serious the problem is, what causes it and what to do about it.
The answers-for New Hampshire and the nation-are both environmentally and politically contentious.
With as many different plans to solve the problem, it seems, as there are officials hatching them, lawmakers, environmentalists and concerned citizens have looked to the White House to lead the way.
President Bush has pulled back on many environmental initiatives backed by the Clinton administration and has replaced them with his own, more business-friendly proposals. The Bush White House, for example, rejected the Kyoto treaty, a 1997 United Nations agreement negotiated by the Clinton administration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, Bush has offered the Clear Skies Act of 2003, which the administration says would reduce air pollution from power plants.
But many environmental groups in New England and the rest of the nation have called the Clear Skies legislation a “half-baked” approach to the growing danger from global warming and have demanded a stronger plan of attack. Moreover, New Hampshire’s two Republican senators have announced their opposition to the bill.
In January the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., released the latest findings from its round-the-clock climate tracking software: 2002 was the second-hottest year on record in the United States, and the rising temperatures are not occurring only when the sun is out.
Jan Pendlebury, the New Hampshire director of the National Environmental Trust, said in an interview that nighttime temperatures are rising three times faster than daytime ones. What’s more, she said, the diurnal balance-colder nights than days-is being skewed, to the detriment of the state’s fall foliage display.
“Foliage relies on very cold nights and very warm days,” Pendlebury said. “If you don’t have that balance, then the chemical reactions needed to change colors in the leaves will not occur.”
Over the last century, according to the National Environmental Trust, the average surface temperature of the Earth has risen by a full degree Fahrenheit. And the federal government’s National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, an annual report on climate change, flatly states that temperatures in the United States are rising, and that the average increase will be “much greater than one degree” over the next century. “These changes will, at a minimum, increase discomfort,” the report adds.
Melting ice caps always have been one of the most visual symbols associated with global warming. But what of coastal flooding? What of some inland areas that become so hot that they turn into breeding grounds for tropical diseases? What if heightened temperatures mean no more skiing or hiking in New Hampshire-no fresh snow and air too deadly to breathe?
Entire ecosystems may be at risk. A recent article in the environmental science journal Nature suggested that radical temperature changes are enough to dramatically alter wildlife landscapes. If global warming is allowed to progress at its current rate, New England would gradually lose its classic fall foliage over the next few decades. Only plants tolerant of such high temperatures would flourish.
Global warming also dynamically increases air pollution, because warmer air traps pollutants closer to the Earth’s surface and creates the kind of unhealthy breathing conditions experienced last summer in New Hampshire-while increasing ozone, the main ingredient in smog.
A recent New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services bulletin warned that the ozone season came earlier than usual to New Hampshire this year, with unusually warm weather and higher levels of air pollution than ever before.
“We have been tracking ozone levels in New Hampshire for over 20 years,” DES acting commissioner Robert Monaco said in a statement. “April 15 is the earliest date that we have ever seen levels approaching unhealthy levels.”
Global warming also is becoming as much an economic burden as an environmental one. A report from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Climate Change contends that though the United States could “probably bear” the cost of fighting the effects of global warming, poorer nations could not. The report concludes that measures need to be taken to stave off a long-term environmental disaster and an international crisis.
If global warming intensifies, New Hampshire could watch jobs and industry disintegrate as fast as its shoreline. Who would be hired to operate ski lifts at Loon Mountain if there are patches of grass where there should be snow? How safe is tourism-New Hampshire’s second-largest industry-if it is unsafe to breathe the air in the White Mountains?
The fishing industry also would suffer. Brook trout and other coldwater fish can reproduce only in certain temperatures. If the air and the water are too warm, they won’t survive.
Global warming also melts glaciers, and raises the level of water in the ocean. That threatens drinking water.
“If the oceans rise,” Pendlebury said, “the entire drinking-water supply of the seacoast region is threatened.”
Insurance companies, which offer coverage for homes and businesses on the coast, acknowledge the global warming problem as a “very real threat.” The international firm Munich Reinsurance published a report on its Web site in January estimating that by 2050, the countries of the world will collectively have to spend $300 billion a year to stave off damages to seacoasts and shorelines caused by global warming.
The Bush administration’s Clear Skies proposal targets three of the most dangerous pollutants: emissions from electric power plants of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury. But it includes no provisions for curbing a fourth pollution, carbon dioxide.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports on its Web site that by 2018, Clear Skies would reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 73 percent, nitrogen oxide emissions by 67 percent and mercury emissions by 69 percent from 2000 levels.
The proposal, the EPA said, also would “reduce nitrogen loads to the Chesapeake Bay and other waters along the East and Gulf coasts, help lakes, streams and forests recover from acid rain damage and reduce mercury in the environment.”
Clear Skies, according to the administration, would provide the smoothest possible transition for power plants to meet emissions regulations without breaking the bank. The program employs a “cap and trade” system that would set specific limits on allowable levels of emissions while permitting polluters to purchase credits from other power plants that have met emissions-reduction requirements.
“This country should be very proud of the progress we have made in cleaning up our air,” EPA administrator Christie Whitman testified to a Senate subcommittee April 8. “Clear Skies is the most important next step we can take to address all challenges and achieve a clean environment for all Americans.”
But several lawmakers, environmentalists and advocacy groups have lambasted the Clear Skies legislation, saying the plan is fundamentally flawed because it ignores carbon dioxide, which many consider the most significant contributor to global warming. They also say that the bill’s “loose” regulations – permitting power plants to trade credits — would allow the nation’s oldest and dirtiest power plants to remain dirty.
Both of New Hampshire’s senators, Judd Gregg and John Sununu, have uncharacteristically broken with the GOP over Clear Skies. Gregg has pushed counter-legislation that would maintain the cap-and-trade approach while adding carbon dioxide to the regulatory plan.
Gregg’s Clean Air Planning Act of 2003 builds upon a program already active in New Hampshire that requires reductions on pollutants. It also calls on the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to provide specific and accurate local air-quality forecasts.
“Legislation that sets unrealistic limits on energy production or that fails to bring about noticeable change in air pollution is both ineffective and serves to only amplify the problem,” Gregg said in a statement.
Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) have proposed another bill, the Clean Power Act, which has more stringent regulations. Collins said Clear Skies does “too little” and “leaves too much to chance.”
“Maine is tired of being at the end of the exhaust pipe,” Collins said in a February press conference. She reiterated her opposition to Clear Skies in a recent interview, saying that ignoring carbon dioxide would be a “fatal error” and that any environmental plan that becomes law needs to be detailed and comprehensive.
“This [legislation] sends a powerful message to those who would pollute our air: your days are numbered,” Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said in a statement. Snowe backs the Collins-Jeffords plan, and she has said that while Clear Skies is a step in the right direction, it would not go far enough, especially in New England.
Environmentalists have lauded the alternatives to Bush’s Clear Skies proposal.
“Holding our breath is not the solution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, much to the chagrin of the Bush administration,” Pendlebury said. “Study after government-funded study confirm the fact that climate change is occurring more swiftly than previously thought, with some of the worst impacts expected to affect the Northeast.”
The Clear Skies initiative,” she said, “promises to deliver anything but clear skies to New Hampshire. The name alone diminishes the intelligence of the American public.”
Other environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club and the National Environmental Trust, have taken the EPA and administrator Whitman to task for supporting the Clear Skies plan.
In defense of the proposal, Robert Varney, a regional administrator for the EPA’s New England office, wrote in an opinion piece in April 10 Foster’s Daily Democrat that Clear Skies offered the best way to reduce the power plant emissions that contribute to global warming.
“No legislative proposal on the environment will please everyone,” he wrote. “Some believe Clear Skies goes too far; others believe it does not go far enough. Honest debate, negotiation and compromise are part of the legislative process. At the same time, we must be careful to avoid gridlock in Congress.”
Environmental issues remain hotly contested in Congress, and many lawmakers and experts on the topic say one hurdle is reminding the American public that global warming is real and growing worse every year.
“But there are actually a lot of good things happening,” according to Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Washington. In a recent press conference in Wisconsin, she lauded bipartisan efforts in Congress and the initiatives taken by some states, including New Hampshire, to combat the negative effects of global warming.
Claussen said a “second industrial revolution” is needed, with 21st century technology used to create a climate-friendly energy and environmental future for the United States.
“The idea is to think ahead to where we need to be 50 years from now if we’re going to meet the challenge of climate change, and then figure out decade by decade how to do it,” she said. “The overwhelming consensus is that to be most effective, action against climate change has to begin right now.”
The immediate action needed, environmentalists say, is for the administration to attack the problems of global warming and environmental pollution head on and for Congress to agree on a plan that is thorough, far-reaching and realistic.
“People come to [New Hampshire] because it’s clean, they come because it’s healthy, they come to enjoy the outdoors and because New Hampshire has such a diverse geography,” Pendlebury said. “You can hike, you can fish, you can go to the beach, you can find yourself at a cultural, commercial epicenter like Portsmouth or Manchester. [Global warming] is a serious environmental threat that’s coming from all sides. The time to act is now so we don’t pay dearly later.”
Published in Foster’s Daily Democrat, in New Hampshire.
