Global Warming Debate Heats Up
By Tara Fehr
WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 – As the power of hurricanes has strengthened this year, so has the global warming debate.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, speaking at a Yale globalization conference last month, linked this year’s hurricane season to the century-long debate over global warming, saying it’s not just a “theoretical” threat anymore.
“Now while you can’t single out any single event, like Hurricane Katrina, and say it’s due to global warming, the statistical evidence for the theory keeps piling up,” Lieberman said, according to a text of his speech.
Carbon dioxide emission levels rose from 4.7 billion tons in 1990 to 5.5 billion tons in 2003, Environmental Protection Agency spokesman John Millett said.
Concerned by the potential consequences of carbon dioxide emissions left unchecked, Lieberman said the solution lies within transportation and infrastructure – “from the refinery to the tail pipe.”
Lieberman has fought a bipartisan, uphill battle with climate control legislation. He and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., first introduced a climate change bill in October 2003 but it did not pass. In the beginning of this year they reintroduced legislation, but it died in committee.
Lieberman and McCain offered an amendment to the June energy bill that would have provided a financial incentive to climate friendly companies that reduced emissions.
Although the Senate defeated the amendment by a 36-60 vote, members did vote for a bipartisan resolution to enact principles of the McCain-Lieberman act in future legislation.
The resolution is not binding, but Lieberman said he considers this step a success because the Senate made a commitment on record to consider the reduction of green house gas emissions, allowing Lieberman and McCain to continue discussions with individual senators so they can offer legislation that could pass.
.But other members of Congress, like Sen. James Inhofe R-Okla., who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, are not convinced of the science behind global warming concerns.
“Sen. Inhofe defends sound science,” Inhofe spokesman Bill Holbrook said. “The science today tells us that there are still significant uncertainties remaining.”
In his speech, Lieberman commended the nations that ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which caps greenhouses gasses internationally, and challenged the United States to act on it. Meanwhile, Inhofe called climate change the “world’s greatest hoax,” as he called it in his statement at a committee hearing on the Kyoto Protocol in early October.
Ben Lieberman, senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Institute, said the answer is something in between.
“I don’t think it’s a hoax,” Ben Lieberman said. “The truth is exaggerated, but there is some underlying scientific validity to global warming.”
He said he would only describe global warming as a “hoax” in regards to certain claims like linking it increased power of hurricanes.
“There are risks to global warming, but I also think there are risks with global warming policy,” Ben Lieberman said. “I would take issue with Sen. Lieberman. I think he’s taking advantage of the hurricanes to put global warming proposals on the table.”
But Sen. Lieberman said that a bipartisan majority share concerns about global warming and that the United States cannot afford to ignore it.
But Holbrook argued that capping carbon dioxide emissions could have several economic consequences.
“Any reduction in temperature would be negligible,” Holbrook said. “The McCain-Lieberman legislation for example. would only result in a 0.029 degree Celsius [change] in temperature, but would increase already high gasoline prices by 55 cents a gallon, increase electricity prices by 20 percent and increase the cost of natural gas by 46 percent.”
Cost is also affecting Europe’s effort to comply with the protocol, Ben Lieberman said.
“There’s an interesting lesson there emerging from the European nations that have ratified Kyoto,” he said. “They’re having tremendous difficulties complying. It’s turning out that the costs of doing so looks to be prohibitive.”
The debate rages, like this year’s hurricanes. In his speech, Sen. Lieberman said the United States must take “a leading role.”
“We cannot stand aside from the rest of the world and say: ‘Okay, you first,’” he said. “The timidity is bad for America and bad for the world.”
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