April 4, 2001
John Q. Environment

When you begin to read about global warming, and delve deeper than the extremist positions that global warming is either, "good for American farmers", or will, "cause ocean levels to rise up to twenty feet in the next century, causing irreparable coastal flooding", you will inevitably find a middle ground where there is much agreement. Most scientists and literate Americans agree that Global warming is happening; the major disagreement seems to be about how bad it is, what the long term affects will be, what is causing it, and how to solve the problem.

The nature of theoretical science is that nobody gets to be correct at the very beginning of a posited theory; and what that means in the case of global warming is that the data gathered can, and will, be interpreted in many different ways. The macro-scale of the Earth's environment and the effects of global warming are not as causally tied as smoking and lung cancer [a connection which is still disputed by an ever-shrinking minority of irresponsible corporate dullards] or the connection between AIDS and HIV [which has been disputed among a small group of scientists in South Africa]. The factors which affect the Earth's climate are myriad, and greenhouse gas emissions are only one factor which comes into play. However, aside from a few extremist factions, [most of which are economically tied to businesses which produce large quantities of these greenhouse gases, and all of which have plenty of third-party studies to cite in their defense] there is widespread agreement that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions can [theoretically] lead to global warming.

On March 14, 2001 a study published by British researchers using satellite data collected from observations between 1970 and 1997, "has provided the first 'direct observational evidence' that the greenhouse effect is producing long-term changes in the Earth's atmosphere" [www.cnn.com]. With the help of President Bush's recent rejection of the Kyoto Agreement this new evidence has turned the focus of recent debate from whether or not global warming exists, to discussions on the potential solutions to this problem [and their economic impact]. CNN.com published an article, in which Drew Shindell, an atmospheric physicist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, made the following statement, summarizing the British researcher's recent findings:

[Drew Shindell] said the research should end the debate over the greenhouse effect, but not over how to address the problem. "One of the main things that cause people to be skeptical of global warming is the lack of that real, definite connection between greenhouse gases and the planet getting warmer," Shindell said. "This really gives concrete evidence for the first time that greenhouse gases are changing the energy balance of the planet." [www.cnn.com]

In all fairness, it must be noted that the same group of scientists has not directly linked these "changes in the atmosphere" to changes in the surface temperature of the Earth:

...the study did not tackle the question of whether Earth's surface temperature is actually increasing. In fact, whether this greenhouse effect will lead to global warming or global cooling is unclear, the study scientists said. The greenhouse effect could start a cycle in which more clouds are formed, stopping the sun's energy from reaching Earth's surface in the first place, Harries said. "The effect of clouds on the planet is very complex, and frankly we don't understand it," Harries said.

This will certainly be the statement that political and economic conservatives cling to when assessing the value of these recent findings. But consider this: at no point in the Earth's 4.5 billion year history, has anything other than a natural catastrophic event [of which, scientists generally agree, there have been several which produced extinctions... in theory] caused so much change in the planets environmental system than the increase in greenhouse gas emissions has in the Earth's atmosphere in the last one-hundred years. This statement imposes no judgment on the impact or nature of these changes; it only seeks to illustrate the enormous impact that humans have had on the environment in the very, very recent evolutionary history of this planet. If there is any belief that the massive impact of humans on the environment is completely unrelated to any of the environment's ills, the examples below [all human-caused events which occurred within the last year, and all of which received major news coverage] should be profoundly convincing:

1. An Australian gold-mining company leaked cyanide into the Tisza River, killing thousands of fish in three countries. Hundreds of dead fish were found floating in the Danube, which the Tisza flows into. Scientists estimate that the initial concentration of the cyanide in Romania must have been enormous if the effects were still so deadly in Yugoslavia, about 300-400 miles downstream.
2. In Curitiba, Brazil, more than 1 million gallons of crude oil spewed into a tributary of the Iguacu River, endangering drinking water, farmland and animal life along a 140-mile (224-km) stretch.
3. In Puerto Baquerizo, near the Galapagos Islands, the tanker, "Jessica," ran aground leaked oil just off San Cristobal Island. Pounding surf ended up causing additional breaks in the hull of the tanker, causing it to leak the rest of the ship's cargo of diesel oil into the water. A total of approximately 190,000 gallons of oil leaked into the water off the coast of the easternmost Galapagos Islands.
4. In Lousia, Kentucky, a massive spill of liquid coal waste from a mining company reservoir, polluting about 75 miles of rivers and streams. A collapsed impoundment released an estimated 250 million gallons of slurry [a watery mixture of coal dust, clay and other waste with the consistency of lava] into the river. Drinking water was running dry in some communities that had to shut down their water intakes, and state fish and wildlife officials are assumed a "total kill" of fish along the Big Sandy River and some of its tributaries.
5. In Macae, Brazil the world's biggest offshore oil rig, owned by Brazil's oil giant Petrobras sank after listing for several days after an explosion that killed 10 people. As it sank, it dumped an estimated 250,000 gallons of diesel and 62,500 gallons of crude which had been stored on the rig, into the open sea. The company Petrobras, has had two major oil spills and a series of accidents in which 81 oil workers died over the last three years.

The magnitude of these events is certainly smaller than those associated with global warming, but the inability to conceive of these impacts on a larger scale is apprehensible. Something needs to be done to make sure that large-scale catastrophic events don't become a byproduct of irresponsible human behavior. It is precisely because the "smaller" events listed above can be cleaned up [or dissipate into the environment] so easily and with only local impact, that the larger scale of global warming must be addressed and corrected as soon as possible; when such a change occurs at the global scale [as scientists have determined it has], it will be much more difficult to reverse and it will take much more time to do so.

As mentioned earlier, our president has illuminated the nature of the political debate surrounding this issue: The costs associated with correcting human behavior that is detrimental to the environment. George Bush made the following statement which reveals the shortsighted and often environmentally unsound decisions to which his capitalist dogma proscribes:

"We'll be working with Germany, we'll be working with our allies to reduce greenhouse gases but I will not accept anything that will harm our economy and hurt our American workers.''

The environment is expendable, our economy apparently is beyond reproach. Thank you Mr. Bush for letting us all know that it would be too expensive to save our planet from the reckless endangerment imposed upon it by a few greedy morally bankrupt individuals [to which Mr. Bush owes many, many favors]; and thanks also for showing us that it's better to be contemptuous and dissolute than responsible and respectable, and that it costs more to do good than be reckless and immature.

In a response to Mr. Bush's environmentally and morally irresponsible position, I think it's appropriate to quote the individual who received the country's mandate to lead last November. In the words of the politician and environmentalist Albert Gore, there exists an appropriate response to Mr. Bush's hackneyed proclamation, as quoted from a White House press release soon after the Kyoto Agreement in December 1997:

This is a global problem that will require a global solution. But I am confident that with the framework achieved in Kyoto and the continued negotiations with the developing world begun there, we will be able to meet this test.

So many times in our nation's history we have banded together and successfully met what seemed to be an insurmountable environmental challenge. And each time the skeptics have said it couldn't be done at all or it could only be done at the cost of ruining our economy. We've heard that often. And each time they were wrong. From cleaning up our rivers and lakes, to combating acid rain, to tackling ozone depletion and others, our technology and our innovation have allowed Americans to enjoy a cleaner environment and a stronger economy at the same time.

Never in history have we had the kind of forceful, persistent environmental protection efforts we've had here in the United States over the last five years, and we've had the strongest sustained economic recovery at the same time that we've had in more than a generation -- 13.5 million new jobs, record low unemployment, the deficit almost eliminated, higher wages and more new businesses while inflation declined. So cleaning up the environment and strengthening our economy go hand in hand.

At this juncture, it is important not to be alarmed by the political nay-sayers who argue that its too expensive to do the right thing, and its also important not to be alarmed by environmental reactionaries who claim that its already too late. Now is the time, and here is the opportunity for the United States of America to lead by example and show the world that its more important to do the right thing for the good of the many, than it is to sacrifice the environment for the economic good of the few.

When you get a chance, send Mr. Bush an email and tell him that the environment is too important to ignore, and tell him Al Gore told the country this over four years ago, and if the Governor of Texas wasn't listening then, as president he should start listening now.