Global Warming US Leads the Way

Unfortunately, the US leads the way in the wrong direction.

The United States projects a steep rise in CO2 emissions by the year 2020. That bleak projection comes from a leak of the contents of an internal draft report from the Bush administration that is more than a year overdue at the United Nations.

The US is estimated to produce about twenty five percent of the world’s carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse” gases that scientists blame for global warming. President Bush has finally admitted that global warming is a “concern” but his idea in combating it is to rely on new technologies, such as hydrogen-powered vehicles, electricity from renewable energy sources and clean coal technology.

Bush has consistently rejected the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a U.N. treaty that requires industrial nations to cut global warming gases by 2012 by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels. Bush’s contention is that abiding by the conditions that would be imposed by the Kyoto Protocol would cost the US over 5,000,000 jobs. As the effects of global warming continue to kick in survival on this planet with life as we know it today in exchange for jobs may seem like quite a bargain.

While Al Gore deserves to be praised for raising the issue of global warming to a new level among the peoples of the world it is likely that his efforts will not be sufficient to save the world from some disastrous climate changes. From where I sit the global warming monster seems to already be out of his cage and nothing we do now will be able to get him back in again without going through decades, perhaps centuries, of ill effects.

For years scientists have debated the issue of global warming. Until recently most of them argued that the world was entering into a warmer natural cycle, one that occurs every few thousand years. Their contention was that global warming would not be a serious issue.

Recent evidence suggests otherwise. The more rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet, the higher than expected temperatures in the arctic and anarctic regions, the freakish weather across the globe with far too much rain in some regions and severe drought in others, record high temperatures in Europe, The Americas, across Africa, and elsewhere, all strongly suggest that something unpleasant is going on.

There is one important aspect of the global warming issue that to my knowledge has not been discussed, at least not publicly. Scientists have been debating whether global warming is caused by a natural recurring long term cycle or whether it is caused by human activities. My view is that both are responsible. That is we have the worst of all worlds where the long term cycle is kicking in and human activities that place copious amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere are accelerating and reinforcing the cycle.

With the issuance of an authoritative U.N. report last month which said global warming is “very likely” caused by mankind and that climate change will continue for centuries even if heat-trapping gases are reduced there is little doubt that global warming is enhanced by human activities. As there is nothing to prevent the natural warming cycle and warming caused by human activities to occur at the same time, they are not mutually exclusive, the peoples of this earth may indeed be facing an impending disaster of terrible dimensions.

More urgent honest study needs to be conduced on this mutual reinforcement theory. If in fact the natural cycle is coinciding with the human factor then the rise in sea levels, drought, excessive rains, and unpleasantly warmer temperatures with their ability to cause greater risks from diseases like malaria and dangue fever, mass migrations of people seeking a new home, may all descend upon the human race much faster than we now expect.

The issue is so serious that not only should governments around the world be seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but contingency planning should also be underway to cope with the possibility of major cites and population centers worldwide becoming uninhabitable. This will require great leadership and management skills, visionary planning, and close cooperation among governments worldwide.

As preparing for the worst will require vast sums of money, it would be more than prudent for the world’s greatest polluter, the United States, to divert financing from it’s endless foreign wars and bring its considerable resources fully to bear on the global warming survival issue.

After all, it is a rare opportunity to create a tremendous growth industry while at the same time saving the planet. There must be some badly needed good PR in that as well as boat loads of new opportunities and profits.

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