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Curbing Climate ChangeIS THE WORLD DOING ENOUGH?

The scientific consensus on global warming is sobering: It’s real, it’s happening now and carbon-dioxide

emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels are almost certainly responsible. Predicting what the

exact effects will be on humanity and the planet’s living resources is trickier, but a growing body of

evidence suggests they will be profound. The international community generally — and the European

Union in particular — take the threat very seriously, and most wealthy industrial nations have adopted mandatory

limits on carbon emissions under the 2005 Kyoto Protocol. The United States — the world’s largest carbon emitter

— has refused to sign the protocol or

adopt mandatory limits, and is seen by

other nations as obstructing progress on

the issue. Kyoto expires in 2012, and

world governments are working on a

successor agreement. Many experts say the

effort will fail without active U.S. leader-

ship and the participation of major de-

veloping-world polluters such as China and

India, with potentially dire consequences.

In southern Iceland, the recent and fast-moving meltdownof Breidamerkurjokull Glacier has formed a deep lake thatalready threatens to inundate the coastal highway. Rubber

boats take tourists out to view the broken ice and seeevidence of what could be climate change.

FEBRUARY 2007 VOLUME 1, NUMBER 2 PAGES 27-50 WWW.GLOBALRESEARCHER.COM

PUBLISHED BY CQ PRESS, A DIVISION OF CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY INC. WWW.CQPRESS.COM

28 CQ Global Researcher

THE ISSUES

29 • Are all countries doingtheir share to reduce globalwarming?• Should richer nationsassist poor ones in fightingglobal warming?• Would reducing green-house gas emissions harmthe global economy?

BACKGROUND

39 Complex ProblemCarbon dioxide has alwayskept the planet habitable,but now it threatens ourway of life.

40 A Bitter DebateWhile nations around theworld move to reduceemissions, the U.S. balks.

42 MeltdownPolar glaciers are crumbling,and rising sea levels arepredicted.

CURRENT SITUATION

42 Frustration in EuropeThe European Union ismaking economic sacrificesto fight global warmingwhile the U.S. refuses tocooperate.

44 China’s Efficiency DriveSome energy-saving mea-sures already have beenbuilt into the country’simmense growth.

45 Son of KyotoThe Bush administrationprefers using private enter-prise to tackle the warm-ing challenge.

OUTLOOK

45 Will the U. S. Act?Recent Washington proposalssuggest a change in attitude.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

31 Carbon Emissions RisingGlobal increases are reported.

34 Pacific Islanders’ SinkingFeelingTiny nations face inundation.

37 ChronologyKey events since 1886.

38 Inuit Confront Hard RealityMelting Arctic ice is changingancient ways.

41 Top 25 Greenhouse GasEmittersAustralia is the biggest per-capita polluter.

43 At IssueShould a “border tax” be im-posed on the U.S. and othercountries that don’t sign theKyoto Protocol?

44 China to Take LeadChina will be the biggestpolluter among majoreconomies.

50 Voices From AbroadHeadlines and editorials fromaround the world.

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

47 For More InformationOrganizations to contact.

48 BibliographySelected sources used.

49 The Next StepAdditional articles.

49 Citing CQ Global ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

CURBING CLIMATE CHANGE

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February 2007Volume 1, Number 2

February 2007 29Available online: www.globalresearcher.com

Curbing Climate Change

THE ISSUESFrom the shores of Jokul-

sarlon Lagoon, the viewof Iceland’s ice cap is

breathtaking: A vast dome ofsnow and ice, 3,000 feet tall,smothers the jagged moun-tains; a glacier spills the 12miles down to the water’s edge.

More stunning is how fastit’s all vanishing.

A century ago there was nolagoon, and this spot was under100 feet of glacial ice. The glac-ier, the Breidamerkurjokull,extended to within 250 yardsof the ocean. Now the Atlanticis more than two miles awayfrom the glacier’s massive, miles-wide snout, which stands inan expanding lake of its ownmelt water. Jokulsarlon —“glacier lake” in Icelandic — isnow more than 350 feet deepand has more than doubledits size in the past 15 years,threatening to wash out Ice-land’s principal highway.

In the 250 miles betweenthe lake and Reykjavik, Ice-land’s capital, the highwaypasses by another dozen glaciers, allof them steadily retreating back up thevalleys they once filled. Stand on theirsnouts and you hear cracking, moansand the gurgle of the many streamsof water pouring from their insides,feeding unruly brown rivers that rushtoward the sea. As they retreat, a newlandscape scrolls out from underneath,places that haven’t seen the light ofday since medieval times.

Iceland is losing its ice, and it’s notalone. Greenland’s 10,000-year-old icesheet is retreating at a rate that hasastonished scientists who study it. Arc-tic Ocean sea ice has shrunk by 6 per-cent since 1978, while the averagethickness has declined by 40 percent

in recent decades, threatening polarbears, seals and the Inuit people whohunt them. (See sidebar, p. 38.)

In Antarctica enormous floating iceshelves have disintegrated, and manyof the glaciers that empty the WestAntarctic ice sheet have picked upspeed, raising the possibility that alarge portion of the southern ice capmay break up, which would quicklyraise world sea levels by 20 feet.

Mid-latitude glaciers are vanishingas well. All appear to be the result ofsignificant increases in average tem-peratures: 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.1 de-grees Fahrenheit) globally and 1.6 de-grees Celsius in the Arctic during the20th century. 1

Iceland’s president, OlafurRagnar Grimsson, has invit-ed fellow world leaders tocome to Iceland and bearwitness. “Nowhere in theworld can you see traces ofclimate change as clearly asin the North,” he said. “It’san important mission.” 2

The vast majority of theworld’s scientists are nowconvinced that the warmingof the past 50 years has large-ly come from greenhouse gasemissions, mostly created bythe burning of fossil fuels. The“greenhouse effect” is howthe Earth retains much of itswarmth from the sun, as cer-tain gases in the atmospheretrap some of the radiation re-flected off the planet’s surfaceand warm the planet.

Greenhouse gases (GHG)occur naturally in the atmos-phere and include watervapor, carbon dioxide,methane, nitrous oxide andozone. But human activity hasbeen boosting the concen-trations of some of them, mostnotoriously the carbon diox-ide (CO2), which is released

by burning fossil fuels. The overpro-duction of man-made gases has beenblamed for much of the excess re-tention of heat in the atmosphere thathas contributed to global warming.

“Everything we’re seeing in the Arc-tic is 100 percent consistent with that,”says Robert Corell, a senior fellow atthe American Meteorological Societyin Washington, D.C., who oversaw theArctic Climate Impact Assessment, afour-year study involving 300 scientistsfrom around the world.

A climate study conducted by theU.N. Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange (IPCC), released on Feb. 2, 2007,flatly states that the climate-change de-bate is over. 3 “Feb. 2 will be re-

BY COLIN WOODARD

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In front of the U.S. Embassy in London, the “Statue of TakingLiberties” holds the torch of protest against the U.S. withdrawal

from the Kyoto Protocol, which places limits on greenhouse gases created by burning fossil fuels.


membered as the date when uncer-tainty was removed as to whether hu-mans had anything to do with climatechange on this planet,” said IPCC Ex-ecutive Director Achim Steiner. “Theevidence is on the table.”

Made up of more than 1,000 scien-tists from 113 countries, the IPCC saidnew research over the last six yearsshows with 90 percent certainty thathuman-generated greenhouse gaseshave caused most of the rise in globaltemperatures over the past half-century.“Warming of the climate system is un-equivocal,” said the IPCC’s “Summary forPolicymakers” — one of four reportsscheduled for release this year. 4 TheIPCC generally is considered a cautiousbody because all participating govern-ments must sign off on its conclusions.

“We know the climate is changingand that we have a 10- or 20-yearwindow to address it,” says HermannOtt, a climate expert at Germany’sWuppertal Institute. “It’s very urgentthat we act at both the national andinternational level pretty soon.”

The industrial powers, which pro-duce most of the world’s pollutants, arein the best position to act. And it has

been the 27 nations of the EuropeanUnion (EU) that have spearheaded ef-forts to reduce greenhouse gas emis-sions. They have acted in large part be-cause of widespread public concern —sparked by recent climactic extremeswitnessed in their home countries.

Europe was hit with a devastatingsummer heat wave in 2003 that killed25,000 people; roads buckled in Ger-many and water levels on the Danubeplunged to record lows, forcing a sus-pension of the Budapest-Vienna hov-ercraft service and allowing illegal mi-grants to wade between Romania andBulgaria. The year before, torrentialrains triggered devastating floods acrossCentral Europe, causing $15 billion indamages. Last winter many Austrianski resorts were unable to open inDecember because it was not coldenough to make snow. 5

European leaders are so convincedof the seriousness of global warmingthat — in a dramatic announcementon March 9 — they unilaterally com-mitted themselves to more than dou-ble the amount of greenhouse gasesthey had promised earlier to scourfrom their emissions. 6

Yet skeptics remain, even in Europe.Henrik Svensmark, a weather scientistat the Danish National Space Center,for instance, believes that changes inthe sun’s magnetic field — and the cor-responding impact on cosmic rays —not greenhouse gas emissions, may bethe key to global warming. 7

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of theresearch laboratory at Pulkovo Astro-nomical Observatory in St. Petersburg,Russia, takes a similar non-mainstreamposition. 8

That global warming exists is notnew to the Inuit. The Inuit Circumpo-lar Conference, which represents 150,000people living in the High Arctic, recentlyfiled a protest with the Inter-AmericanCommission on Human Rights, charg-ing that U.S. greenhouse gases are de-stroying their homes and livelihoods.(See sidebar, p. 38.)

And residents of low-lying Pacific is-land nations fear their entire countriesmay be eliminated as melting ice caus-es oceans to rise. 9 (See sidebar, p. 34.)

“We are frightened and worried. Andwe cannot think of another Tuvalu tomove to . . . if nothing is done ur-gently and we are forced out of ourislands,” Tuvalu Ambassador EneleSosene Sopoaga told the U.N. Gener-al Assembly last fall. 10

Climate experts in the United Statesand abroad say they expect the UnitedStates to become more aggressive aboutclimate change after the 2008 presidentialelection, regardless of which party wins.They cite many factors, including theRepublican defeats in the 2006 midtermelections, muscular action by state andcity governments to reduce emissionsand increasing pressure for substantiveaction from corporate and religiousleaders such as Boeing, General Elec-tric, BP, the U.S. Conference of CatholicBishops and the Baptist General Con-vention of Texas. 11

“The rest of us are waiting to seewhen and how the U.S. will re-engagein climate issues, says Harald Winkler,principal scientific officer at the Uni-


Japanese activists and advocates for now-endangered polar bears cheer the signing of theKyoto Protocol in 2005, requiring cuts in carbon emissions.The treaty has the support of 169

nations; only Australia and the United States, among industrialized nations, refused to join.

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versity of Cape Town Energy ResearchCenter in South Africa. “The large, car-bon-emitting developing countriesaren’t going to make a move until theU.S. federal government moves.”

Uncertainty over U.S. action hascomplicated international efforts to de-velop a successor to the Kyoto Pro-tocol, the international agreement thatexpires in 2012, under which 41 ofthe world’s industrialized countries —but not the United States — agreedto reduce their greenhouse gas emis-sions. Experts say that significantly re-ducing global GHG emissions hingesnot only on U.S. participation but alsoparticipation by large developing coun-tries like China, India and Brazil. 12

China, where the economy has beengrowing at more than 9 percent ayear for more than two decades, isexpected to surpass the United Statesas the world’s largest carbon emitterin 2009. 13

Critics of Kyoto — led by the Unit-ed States — say the protocol has littlehope of significantly reducing emissionsas long as China and India are exempt.But these countries say they are liftingtens of millions out of poverty and thatthey should not be penalized for pur-suing the same heavily polluting de-velopment path the rich industrial na-tions followed.

To address the challenge of glob-al warming, many argue, the interna-tional community must find a mech-anism by which rich nations helppoorer ones adopt clean energy andtransportation technologies and adaptto the effects of a changing climate.

As the world’s leaders grapple withclimate change, here are some of thequestions being debated:

Are all countries doing their partto control global warming?

The short answer is no, although mostare doing far more than the United States.

To date, 169 countries have signedthe Kyoto Protocol, including every in-dustrial nation except Australia and the

United States. Kyoto, which went intoeffect in 2005, has been a polarizingagreement. Its supporters call it only ababy step toward confronting climatechange; its detractors — most of whomnow agree that global warming is real— say it already has slowed economicgrowth without making a meaningful re-duction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Under the agreement, the 41wealthy countries agreed to collec-tively reduce their emissions 5.2 per-cent below 1990 levels by 2012. TheEU committed to an overall 8 per-cent reduction, Japan and Canada to6 percent. But few countries appearon target to meet their commitments.As of 2004, Canada’s emissions hadincreased 26.6 percent over 1990levels, and Japan’s by 6.5 percent;European Union (EU) emissions haddecreased by just 0.6 percent.

Within the EU, Great Britain reducedits emissions by 14.3 percent and Ger-many by 17.3 percent, but those gainswere offset by substantial increases inGreece (26.6 percent), Portugal (41 per-cent) and Spain (49 percent). 14

In their March 9 announcement ofnew emission-reduction goals, howev-

er, EU leaders agreed to unilaterally re-duce their overall emissions to 20 per-cent of 1990 levels within 13 years anduse renewable sources for one-fifth oftheir electric power. They also vowedto use biofuels in 10 percent of roadvehicles by 2020. 15

French President Jacques Chiraccalled the decision to make unilateralreductions one of the “great momentsin European history.” And in a clearchallenge to the United States, Chinaand India, German Chancellor AngelaMerkel said the EU’s 27 members wouldcommit to a 30 percent reduction ifother countries followed suit. The planwill be presented to President Bushand other world leaders in June. 16

Why has the United States been socool to Kyoto? Some American criticssee the treaty as a misguided pieceof “one-worldism” that will wreck theU.S. economy. Others argue that itdoesn’t really matter, that followingKyoto guidelines is unlikely to havea significant effect on global warm-ing, primarily because new mega-economies such as China, India andBrazil have not signed on to controltheir emissions.

Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions: 1850-2030

For most of human history, carbon-dioxide emissions were irrelevant to climate. But only decades after the dawn of the Industrial Age, the accumulation of carbon dioxide generated by the burning of fossil fuels began to noticeably change the lower atmosphere. Now carbon emissions threaten to spiral past our ability to control their effects on global warming.

Source: “Climate Change 101: International Action,” Pew Center on Global Climate Change

Worldwide CO2 Emissionsin Millions of Tons

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Projected


Thomas H. Wigley, a senior scientistat the National Center for AtmosphericResearch in Boulder, Colo., estimatedthat even if the United States had joinedKyoto and all countries met and stuckto their targets, warming in 2100 wouldbe reduced by a mere 8 percent. Wigleyis against Kyoto, but only because headvocates a far stronger commitment toreducing gases.

Many around the world saw the hes-itation of the United States as self-serving. “Of course, the consensus isthat the president is paying his dues to

Big Oil and Big Metal for supporting hiselection,” wrote Scottish columnist CharlesFletcher, “and of course that is, to us,outrageous. But money is unsentimen-tal. The fight against global warming andpollution should be equally clear-eyedin its assessment of what just happened.”

In Fletcher’s eyes, “What happenedwas that the American president washonest and spoke plainly, and weshould start dealing with it. He said:‘I will not accept anything that willharm our economy and hurt ourAmerican workers.’ ” 17

Kyoto’s proponents argue that it hasbeen an essential first step and hasyielded benefits simply by focusing at-tention on the need to reduce emis-

sions. “It is only the first battle in thewar against climate change,” says TonyJuniper, vice chair of the Amsterdam-based Friends of the Earth Interna-tional, since “the commitments madeby governments under Kyoto do notgo anywhere near far enough.” 18

Unfortunately, nobody knows exactlywhat “far enough” is. Scientists doknow that since the Industrial Revolu-tion, greenhouse gas concentrations inEarth’s atmosphere have increased from280 parts per million (ppm) of carbondioxide to 379 in 2005, while the world

has warmed by more than 0.6 degreesCelsius. A British government studysuggests that if current emissions trendshold, the concentration will reach 550ppm by 2035 and likely increase aver-age temperatures by another 2 degreesC. While 2 degrees may not sound likemuch, average temperatures during thelast Ice Age were only 5 degrees Celsiuslower than they are today. 19

“At Kyoto, the countries of the worldsat down and talked about what re-ductions they could manage,” says AlexEvans, a senior policy associate at theCenter on International Cooperation (CIC)at New York University. “Now we needto ask ourselves what level of risk weare actually prepared to tolerate.”

One of the most important accom-plishments of the European Union isthe creation of the Emission TradingScheme (ETS), which is based on thepremise that the free market is the mostcost-effective way to reduce carbonemissions. First, member governmentsassigned binding carbon-emission quo-tas to large polluters, effectively creat-ing an artificial “shortage” in pollutingrights. Then an emissions commoditymarket was set up. Companies need-ing to emit more carbon dioxide couldbuy credits from those producing less,or from developing nations, who coulduse the money on U.N.-certified pro-jects that cut or absorb emissions.

The system has its downsides, suchas sharp increases in electricity pricesas utilities pass the cost of buying cred-its on to consumers. In Germany, forinstance, off-peak prices for electricitydoubled in just two years, largely be-cause much of the power there comesfrom burning coal, which produces moregreenhouse gases than other fossil fuels.

“ETS has had its share of problems,but it has been a really very valuablelearning experience,” says EileenClaussen, president of the Pew Centeron Global Climate Change. “They’vefigured out how to make it work welland have gotten a lot of private-sectorplayers invested in the new carbon-trading market. It’s definitely part of theway forward for the rest of us.” 20

Denmark has become a global leaderin developing technologies and poli-cies to reduce greenhouse gas emis-sions. Its government supports thewind-energy industry, which now pro-vides a quarter of Denmark’s electric-ity and supplies the majority of windturbines in use elsewhere in the world.Wind turbines dot the countryside likegiant pinwheels, while huge offshorewind farms capture the stiff winds inthe Baltic and North seas.

Authorities in the Danish capital,Copenhagen, have deployed 2,000 bi-cycles in public locations around thecity, which can be borrowed for free;


A rush-hour cloud of pollution drapes Bangkok,Thailand, on Feb. 2, 2007, the day that areport by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) asserted that climate changes

very likely have been caused by human burning of fossil fuels, and that global temperatures are expected to rise by three degrees Celsius by 2100.

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a heavy sales tax on automobiles dis-courages their purchase. The countryis home to the world’s largest solar-powered district heating station — a12-megawatt facility on the island ofAero — and hundreds of specialplants that process kitchen and farmwastes into fertilizers and clean-burn-ing methane fuels.

“Planning for the environment hasalways been popular in Denmark,” ex-plains Christian Matthiessen, a geog-rapher at the University of Copen-hagen. “We’re an agricultural nationwhere nobody lives more than 30 milesfrom the sea. The environment has al-ways played a role for everybody.” 21

Tiny Iceland, population 280,000, in-tends to go even further by withdraw-ing from the carbon economy altogeth-er. In 1998 the government committeditself to using the island’s enormous ge-othermal resources to charge hydrogenfuel cells, whose only waste product iswater vapor. Cells would then be usedto power cars, boats and other energyneeds that can’t be directly met by ge-othermal and hydro resources.

“Our vision is that when we havetransformed Iceland into a hydrogeneconomy, then we are completely in-dependent of imported fossil fuel,” saysthe father of the plan, Bragi Arnasonof the University of Reykjavik. “Therewill be no greenhouse gas emissionsfrom our fuel.” 22

But Iceland and Denmark are tinynations, and it is clear that meaning-ful reductions of global emissions wouldhave to include not only the UnitedStates but also China, India and otherrapidly industrializing nations.

Between 1990 and 2004, U.S. an-nual greenhouse gas emissions in-creased by 16 percent, the equivalentof the total combined annual emis-sions of Great Britain, the Netherlandsand Finland. India’s emissions increasedby about 60 percent and China’s byroughly 70 percent. 23

“China’s environmental issues areno longer just China’s issues,” says

Bangladesh Faces Catastrophic Flooding

Thirty million residents of Bangladesh would lose their homes if the sea level rises three feet at the end of the century, which some experts predict (red line on map). Pedicabs slosh through flooded streets in Dhaka. The low-lying, densely populated region of the Indian subcontinent lies mostly in the Ganges River delta and is vulnerable to sea-level rises that may be caused by melting polar glaciers.

Sources: ESRI and UNEP

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Jianguo Liu, who holds the Rachel Car-son Chair in Sustainability at MichiganState University and is a guest pro-fessor of the Chinese Academy of Sci-ences. “They’ve become global issues.

Should rich nations assist poorones in fighting global warming?

As the world decides what to do afterKyoto expires, perhaps the paramountquestion has become how to fairly andeffectively engage the developing world.Most critical will be working out a com-promise under which rich countries agreeto help poor ones reduce their emis-sions and adapt to the disasters and dis-locations expected to follow the ongo-ing change in climate.

Rich countries are likely to helppoorer ones with emissions reduc-

tions because it is in their own in-terest to do so, at least with regardto the largest polluters. “Basicallythere is no way that we can forceChina and India to contribute to mit-igating climate change,” says Ott ofthe Wuppertal Institute. “They’re say-ing, ‘we are developing the way welearned it from you, and when wereach your level of wealth, we’ll startcaring about the climate, just as youdid.’ ” For this reason, many expertssay rich countries will need to helpdeveloping ones help themselves.

Various developing countries requiredifferent sets of expectations, argues Ott,who convened a series of meetings withexperts from developing countries to tryto find equitable solutions. In short, hesays, newly industrialized countries,

such as South Korea and Taiwan,should be reducing emissions withoutoutside support, while rich countriesshould help rapidly industrializing na-tions such as China, India and Brazilwith investments that will put them ona cleaner path. Other nations with lit-tle culpability for the problem and evenfewer resources to confront it, such asLiberia and Bangladesh, shouldn’t beexpected to do much on their own.

“Most of the additional greenhousegases in the atmosphere today are dueto the past industrialization of the de-veloped countries, so they must takethe lead in combating climate change,”says Winkler of the University of CapeTown. “We all need to be doing some-thing, but each of us will be doingdifferent things based on what we are


People in the Republic of the Marshall Islands have a lotto lose if global warming causes the seas to rise as muchas scientists think they could. Their entire nation would

cease to exist.The Marshallese live on 1,100 islands spread across three-

quarters of a million square miles of the central Pacific Ocean.Most of the islands are small, so small that if you added themall together, you would have a parcel of land no bigger thanthe District of Columbia.

A few are no more than a couple hundred yards wide, andtheir average elevation is just seven feet above sea level. They’rearranged in 29 sandy, ring-shaped chains called atolls. Standmost anywhere on Majuro Atoll, the capital and home to one-third of the country’s 58,000 people, and you can hear the surfcrashing on either side of you. 1

Small island states are among the most vulnerable to cli-mate change. Many of them will not be able to adapt by re-treating from the coastal zone. There isn’t anywhere else togo. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) notesthat land lost to sea-level rise and associated effects “is like-ly to be of a magnitude that would disrupt virtually all eco-nomic and social sectors in these countries.” 2

Understandably, the governments of places like the Bahamas,Fiji and the Federated States of Micronesia have been amongthe most vocal critics of the U.S. and other governments thathave opposed aggressive action on climate change.

Atoll nations like Kiribati, the Maldives, Tuvalu and the Marshall

Islands are doubly vulnerable because they are literally built onthe backs of reef-building corals that formed the islands andtoday protect them from storms. According to a study by theTyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the United King-dom, the predicted increase in sea-surface temperatures can beexpected to damage and kill the relevant corals through bleach-ing, preventing them from keeping pace with rising seas. 3

Signs of erosion are everywhere on Majuro. Beaches have van-ished, seawalls have been battered down and chunks of the mainroad have been swept away by the sea. At a cemetery in themiddle of town, islanders have to keep reburying their relativesbecause the sea keeps uncovering their coffins during storms.There are no rivers in the Marshall Islands; people rely on a thin“lens” of fresh groundwater for drinking and irrigation, but moreand more of those lenses are becoming contaminated with brine.

On Majuro, some of those changes may be the result ofpoorly conceived developments and the mining of lagoon sandfor use in construction, acknowledges Holly Barker, a senioradviser to the Marshallese ambassador to the United States “It’strue that on Majuro there are some human impacts, but wesee exactly the same effects on the outer islands, where peo-ple are still living sustainably off the land and there is no in-dustry whatsoever,” says Barker, who previously lived on re-mote Mille Atoll as a Peace Corps volunteer. “On Mille thereare these huge gun turrets that the Japanese built 100 yardsinshore during World War II so that U.S. vessels coming inwouldn’t see them. Now they’re standing out in the water.”

Pacific Islanders’ Sinking FeelingTiny nations face inundation


responsible for and what we are ca-pable of, given our situation.”

Assistance could yield considerablebenefits. China alone expects to buildmore than 500 new power plants inthe next five years. Left to its own de-vices, China would build convention-al plants that would be used for decades.If the outside world were to help trans-fer the latest pollution-control technol-ogy, the growth in China’s emissionswould be considerably slower.

“Give them a chance to develop,but by leapfrogging over that phasewith bad windows, bad air condi-tioners, dirty coal plants and the in-ternal combustion engine,” says StephenSchneider, co-director of Stanford Uni-versity’s Center for Environmental Sci-ence and Policy. Such technology trans-

fers would also provide a cost-effec-tive means for Western companies toearn credits under an ETS.

Building a high-tech, low-emissionsplant in India, for example, wherelabor and material costs are low,would be far cheaper than replacingan existing high-emissions plant in, say,Indiana. “For the planet, a ton of car-bon in Beijing is the same as a tonof carbon in Boston or Brussels,”Schneider notes. “So everyone wins.”

Western companies are reluctant todeploy new technologies to many de-veloping countries, largely because ofthe poor state of intellectual-propertyprotection in the Third World. “Youdon’t want to give up a more efficienttechnology if it is just going to becopied, because then, what do you

have left?” says C. S. Kiang, dean ofthe College of Environmental Sciencesat Peking University in Beijing. Part ofthe solution, he says, would be to giverecipient countries ownership of somesubset of the deployed technology.“China’s never had intellectual prop-erty of its own before, but once theyown some they will respect it,” hesays, creating a “win-win situation” forboth parties and the environment.

While the ETS gives Western coun-tries incentives to help rapidly devel-oping parts of the world, they havefewer incentives to help poor countriesadapt. Building Dutch-style defenses toprotect densely populated, low-lyingareas of Bangladesh from rising seasand stronger storms, for example, wouldcost billions of dollars, with little or no

A 1992 study of Majuro Atoll by the National Oceanic andAtmospheric Administration (NOAA) determined that if sea lev-els rise by three feet, the atoll will cease to exist. Defendingthe atoll from a 50-year storm event would be impossible insuch a case, and NOAA has issued a sober policy recommen-dation: “Full retreat of the entire population of Majuro Atolland the Marshall Islands must be considered in planning forworst-case [sea-rise] and climate-change scenarios.” 4

“For the Marshall Islands, climate change is an issue of sov-ereignty,” Barker says. “The Marshallese have extremely lowcarbon emissions. Other countries’ lifestyle habits don’t givethem the right to take away a nation. Where will the Mar-shallese go? Will they still have a voice at the United Nations?Will they cease to be a nation?”

In 2001, Tuvalu, another Pacific atoll nation, convinced NewZealand to take an annual quota of refugees, so as to allowan orderly evacuation of the nation. “While New Zealand re-sponded positively in the true Pacific way of helping one’sneighbors, Australia on the other hand has slammed the doorin our face,” Paani Laupepa of the Tuvalu Ministry of NaturalResources, said at the time.

He also had sharp words for the United States, saying thatits refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol had “effectively deniedfuture generations of Tuvaluan their fundamental freedom tolive where our ancestors have lived for thousands of years.” 5

Should it come to that, the most likely refuge for the Mar-shallese would be the United States, which governed the is-lands for more than 40 years after World War II under a man-date from the United Nations. The U.S. Postal Service still

delivers the mail within the country, and Marshallese serve inthe U.S. military in relatively large numbers.

1 The author has reported on climate change from the Marshall Islands inboth 1997 and 1999. For a full report see Colin Woodard, Ocean’s End(2000), pp. 163-189.2 International Panel on Climate Change, “Climate Change 2001,” Section17.2.2.1.3 Jon Barnett and Neil Adger, Climate Dangers and Atoll Countries, TyndallCentre, October 2001, p. 4.4 P. Holthus, et al., “Vulnerability Assessment of Accelerated Sea-level Rise,Case Study: Majuro Atoll, Marshall Islands, Apia, Western Samoa,” SouthPacific Regional Environment Program, 1992.5 “Pacific islanders flee rising seas,” BBC, Oct. 9, 2001, 20:29 GMT.

Children of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific may lose theirworld if the oceans rise even a few feet.The islands are spreadacross low-lying atolls. Refugees from the Marshalls are alreadyimmigrating to New Zealand as the global temperature rises.

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financial return for rich countries. Theargument, therefore, is a moral one.

The expected impacts of globalwarming — more frequent and se-vere floods, droughts, heat waves andstorms — are expected to fall mostheavily on poor nations. An estimat-ed 97 percent of deaths related tonatural disasters occur in developingcountries, which generally have poor-er sanitation, flood control and health-care infrastructure. 24

Even when Hurricane Katrina hit NewOrleans, the poor suffered the most.“People with resources can move andrebuild and start new lives in the eventof hurricanes or other disasters,” saysthe Pew Center’s Claussen. “But poorpeople often have nowhere else to go,nowhere else to turn, no resources tomake the changes in their lives that willprotect them from this global problem.”In this respect, she suggests, the worldis like New Orleans writ large. 25

A draft IPCC report offers stark pre-dictions — based on new research —on the coming effects of global warm-ing, especially on poor people. Leakedto The Associated Press in March, thereport — the second of four IPCCstudies being issued this year — pre-dicts that hundreds of millions ofAfricans and tens of millions of LatinAmericans could face water shortageswithin 20 years, and more than 1 bil-lion people in Asia could face watershortages by 2050.

While some regions may producemore food thanks to a longer grow-ing season, that will be only tempo-rary, the report said. By 2080, between200 million and 600 million peoplecould face starvation, water shortagescould threaten 1.1 to 3.2 billion peo-ple and about 100 million peoplecould be flooded each year, accord-ing to the report. 26

Will reducing greenhouse gasesharm the global economy?

Despite some bravado, virtually every-one agrees that a lot of money willhave to be spent if the world is to seea substantial reduction in greenhousegas emissions. The biggest disagreementslie in whether the cost of mitigating cli-mate change is greater or lower thanthe cost of the damages expected to bewrought by global warming.

Myron Ebell, director of global warm-ing policy at the Competitive Enter-prise Institute, a Washington think tankthat received funding from Exxon Mobil,says global warming is too expensiveto be worth addressing. Until recent-ly, Ebell maintained global warmingwasn’t taking place. 27 Now he con-cedes it’s real but that achieving mean-ingful emissions reductions will costhundreds of trillions of dollars. That’sfar more than even rich countries canafford, he says, and, in any case, con-siderably less than the cost of simplyadapting to the new situation.

“By far the best strategy at present isto build resiliencies in societies so theyare better able to handle environmentalchallenges,” Ebell argues. “Rather thanpromoting policies that would impover-ish the world by putting it on an ener-gy-starvation diet, [one] should be advo-cating policies that lead to wealthier andmore creative societies . . . free markets,private property and the rule of law.” 28

Sir Nicolas Stern, former chief econ-omist of the World Bank and head ofBritain’s Government Economic Service,dismisses the concern about cost. Sterndirected a 700-page study on climatechange for the British government thatwas released in October 2006. It con-cluded that failure to act could windup costing the world as much as 20percent of its annual income — $7 tril-lion — while greenhouse gas emissionscould be brought under meaningful con-trol for an annual cost of just 1 per-cent of global gross domestic product,or about $350 billion.


Continued on p. 38

Wind turbines harness the stiff winds on the Baltic Sea, in the channel between Denmarkand Sweden. More than 20 percent of Denmark’s electricity is generated by wind,

an alternative to the burning of fossil fuels, blamed for global warming.

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Chronology1800s-1920sScientists sound early warningsabout climate change.

1886Swedish chemist Svante Arrheniustheorizes that carbon dioxide (CO2)buildup caused by industrializationwill warm the atmosphere.

1924American physicist Alfred Lotkapredicts that humans will doubleatmospheric CO2 in 500 years.

•

1950s Concern aboutgreenhouse gases (GHG) grows.

1954Embryo ecologist G. Evelyn Hutchin-son of Yale University predicts defor-estation will increase CO2 levels.

1957Climate-science pioneer DavidKeeling of the Scripps Institutionbegins monitoring CO2 levels andfinds them rising yearly.

•

1970s-1980sScientists predict sharp rises intemperatures and sea levels.

1979First World Climate Conference inGeneva, Switzerland, calls on gov-ernments to prevent human-causedclimate changes. . . . NationalAcademy of Sciences warns a“wait and see” attitude may mean“waiting until it is too late.”

1985Scientific conference in Villach,Austria, predicts sharp rise in

global temperatures and sea levelsand calls for treaty to limit CO2.

1988U.N. establishes IntergovernmentalPanel on Climate Change (IPCC).

•

1990s Kyoto Protocolsets global goals for reducinguse of fossil fuels.

1990Pope John Paul II declares thegreenhouse effect has reached“crisis proportions.”

1992At summit in Rio de Janeiro 154nations sign U.N. Framework Con-vention on Climate Change pledg-ing to reduce GHG emissions to1990 levels by 2000.

1994Fearing catastrophic flooding, theAlliance of Small Islands States asksfor a 20 percent cut in global GHGemissions by 2005. . . . Climate-change convention becomes effec-tive, with 184 signatories.

1997Climate convention signatories meetin Kyoto, Japan; adopt legally bind-ing goals to cut greenhouse emis-sions to 5.2 percent below 1990levels by 2012. . . . GOP-controlledU.S. Senate vows not to ratify re-sulting Kyoto Protocol.

1998Despite the Senate action, Clinton ad-ministration signs treaty on Nov. 12.

•

2000s-PresentU.S. backs away from Kyoto

treaty. Antarctic glaciers begin tocrumble; heat wave hits Europe.

2001President George W. Bush repudi-ates Kyoto Protocol, reneging oncampaign pledges. . . . NationalAcademy of Sciences and 18 foreign counterparts say it’s “evident” human activities contribute to climate change.

2002Antarctica’s gigantic Larsen-B iceshelf disintegrates. . . . Bush recom-mends tax incentives for companiesto voluntarily reduce GHG emissions.

2003Heat wave kills thousands in Europe.

2004Swiss reinsurance company saysglobal warming could cause $150billion in yearly damages. . . .Scientists report unexpectedlyrapid warming of the Arctic regionand predict half of its sea ice willdisappear by 2010.

2005Kyoto Protocol takes effect onFeb. 16 after ratification by Russia;U.S. and Australia are only indus-trialized non-participants.

2007On Feb. 2 the IPCC declares with90 percent certainty that human ac-tivity causes global warming. OnMarch 9 European leaders agreeunilaterally to cut overall green-house emissions to 20 percentbelow 1990 levels by 2020. LeakedIPCC draft says water shortages willaffect hundreds of millions ofAfricans and tens of millions ofLatin Americans within 20 years andmore than 1 billion Asians by 2050.By 2080, millions more could facestarvation, and up to 3 billion couldface water shortages.


“Costs of mitigation,” the Stern Re-view reads, “are small relative to thecosts and risks of the climate changethat will be avoided.” 29

Left to business as usual, the studysays, greenhouse gas concentrationsin the atmosphere could reach more

than triple their pre-industrial level bycentury’s end, potentially causing “aradical change in the physical geog-raphy of the world,” including sud-den shifts in the pattern of monsoonrains in Asia, drying out of the Ama-zon rain forest and the destruction ofice caps with an attendant rise in sea

levels that would threaten the homesof 1 in 20 humans.

Far-northern nations such as Sweden,Russia and Canada will see net eco-nomic benefits through higher crop yieldsand lowered heating requirements, butmuch of the rest of the world will seenet losses from floods, extreme weather


Continued from p. 36

Like the residents of tropical Pacific atolls, the Inuit peo-ple of the High Arctic have a lot to lose from climatechange. For them, however, profoundly disruptive changes

are already underway.Some parts of the Arctic — in Alaska, Western Canada and

Eastern Russia — have warmed by 4 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit inthe past 50 years, a single lifetime — causing the destruction ofInuit villages along with the sea ice that once protected them fromwinter storms. Ice and permafrost are no longer reliable, causinghunting deaths and damage to roads, infrastructure and forests. 1

“Climate change isn’t some abstract discussion or theory forus, it’s a harsh and stark reality we live with every day,” says Pa-tricia Cochran, the Anchorage-based chair of the Inuit Circumpo-lar Conference (ICC), which represents 150,000 Inuit living inGreenland, Canada, Russia and Alaska. “Members of our com-munity are dying because of extreme changes in sea and riverice conditions that are making it difficult for our people to hunt,trap, fish and snowmobile, which are critical activities for us.”

Inuit elders report that weather, and the location and char-acteristics of plant and animal species, are becoming increas-ingly unpredictable. Seals and other important game speciesthat forage near the sea ice edge are in trouble, with seriouseconomic consequences for Inuit hunting communities.

The village of Shishmaref, Alaska, was forced to move offan island because of erosion caused by powerful winter storms.Many others are not able to store meat the traditional way —burying it in the permafrost — because the Earth is no longerreliably cold enough. 2

Inuit leaders spent years trying to get developed countriesto act to curb their emissions, but their efforts in climate changesummits were complicated by the fact that they, unlike smallisland states, do not have a nation-state and, therefore, no seatat the table. Shelia Watt-Cloutier of Iqaluit, Canada, attendedthe 2003 climate change summit in Milan but couldn’t get any-one to pay attention.

“I couldn’t even get our Canadian negotiators to express ourviews on the plenary floor,” recalls Cloutier, the past chair ofthe ICC. “We ended up asking Samoa” — a small island state— “to say something about the Arctic and, thankfully, they did.”

The Inuits’ relationship with both Canada and small island

states has since developed, but Inuit leaders have been discour-aged by the world’s failure to act forcefully to reduce greenhousegas emissions. In December 2005 they took a radical step, filingan official legal petition with the Inter-American Commission onHuman Rights (IACHR), charging the United States with violatingtheir human rights by not cutting emissions.

“This was not an act of aggression or anger, it was a giftof generosity from our hunters who see what is happening,”Cloutier says. “It’s meant to educate and inform and, yes, addpressure to the United States and other countries around theworld to do the right thing.”

In November 2006, the Washington-based IACHR respondedto the 163-page petition with a short letter saying “it will notbe possible to process your petition at present.” The petitiondid not provide sufficient evidence to allow proper evaluation.

“I was shocked,” Cloutier says. “It wasn’t a ruling, it wassort of an ambiguous response.” The Inuit plan to continue todraw attention to the situation in the Arctic, at the IACHR andelsewhere, for as long as it takes.

1 Petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights: Violationsresulting from global warming caused by the United States, Dec. 7, 2005,pp. 33-37.2 Ibid.

Inuit Confront Hard RealityMelting Arctic ice is changing ancient ways

An Inuit woman from Igloolik hunts for seal in the melting ice ofthe Foxe Basin, near Canada's Baffin Island.

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events and changes in environmentalconditions. 30

“New Arctic shipping routes, a boomin trade with Russia, corn instead ofwheat on the Prairies, golf instead ofskiing in Ontario, Chardonnay insteadof ice wine in Niagara, lower heatingbills and fewer deaths due to pneu-monia,” writes Jacqueline Thorp inToronto’s Financial Post. 31

But much of the rest of the worldwill see net losses from floods, extremeweather events and changes in envi-ronmental conditions. Even for Cana-da, there could be a grim tradeoff: Ris-ing waters will inundate low-lyingfarmland in Canada’s Maritime Provincesas well as in the Fraser River delta onthe west coast, displacing millions ofacres and hundreds of communities.Warmer temperatures will force farmersto plant new kinds of crops and allowthe in-migration of warm-weather dis-eases such as Hantavirus, West Nilevirus, chytrid fungus, dengue fever andLyme disease. 32

The Stern Review suggests govern-ments should enact measures that:

• Set up and expand ETS schemesthat, in effect, put a price ongreenhouse gas emissions;

• Encourage the development andadoption of renewable-energy tech-nologies, and

• Establish energy-efficiency stan-dards for buildings and appliances.

The report cautions that funds willstill have to be spent to adapt to thechanging climate — an estimated $15billion to $50 billion a year among the24 relatively wealthy nations that com-prise the Organization for EconomicCooperation and Development (OECD)alone — but many of these invest-ments represent infrastructure that willprovide tangible benefits unrelated toclimate change. 33

If the world does decide to take sub-stantive action, is there money to bemade from the technological revolutionthat would follow? “In general, it’s hardto see an economic upside to responding

to global warming,” says Raymond J.Kopp, a senior fellow at Resources forthe Future in Washington. “But somecompanies will definitely be able to takeadvantage of this. It all depends on howyou are positioned.” Companies com-mitted to the status quo, he notes, standto lose ground to competitors that havea head start in adapting to a carbon-constrained world.

For example, Toyota has jumped tothe head of the pack in developing low-emission cars. Its Prius, a gas-electrichybrid, is the market leader. In the Unit-ed States, the dominant automobile mar-ket in the world, Toyota has had diffi-culty keeping up with demand for themid-size Prius, which gets 45-50 milesto the gallon with substantially less emis-sion than comparable conventional ve-hicles. Ironically, Toyota developed thePrius in an effort to catch up to Gen-eral Motors (GM), which had investedbillions in low-emission vehicles. ButGM soon turned to large sport utilityvehicles instead and is now losing salesto Toyota’s more fuel-efficient cars.

In 2004, Toyota had a sales goal of28,000 cars in the United States; insteadit has sold at a rate of 110,000 annual-ly, and the company expects to sell near-ly 300,000 this year, once a new NorthAmerican assembly line allows dealersto keep them in stock. It also sells wellin Europe and Japan. “Many thought thePrius would get things started and fadeaway,” says Toyota spokesman John Han-son. “Instead it has become an icon forwhat a hybrid is, and demand contin-ues to increase.”

Similarly, British energy giant BP,which supports efforts to curtail green-house gas emissions, is better positionedfor a low-carbon future than ExxonMobil, which opposes such action. BPis investing $8 billion over the nextdecade in solar, combined-cycle gas tur-bines, hydrogen and wind technologies.

“We think the political commitment torenewables around the world will grow,and we’ll have more of the answers thanour competitors will,” Chris Mottershead,BP’s adviser on energy and the environ-ment, told The Economist. “We’re happi-er with our position than we were threeyears ago, because the world seems moreinclined to change.” 34

Billionaire CNN founder Ted Turneris also bearish on the economic op-portunities offered by global warming.“The greatest fortunes in the history ofthe world will be made in this newenergy business,” Turner told the WorldAffairs Council in February in Houston,center of the U.S. oil business.

BACKGROUNDComplex Problem

Earth’s climate has alternated be-tween hot and cold, glacial and

inter-glacial, for millions of years, afact that gives comfort to those whodownplay the dramatic warming of the

Arctic Ice Is Shrinking

The ice cap that usually covers the seas surrounding the North Pole is quickly receding, at the rate of 9 percent each decade. Since 1979, when ice filled out the area inside the red outline, it has withdrawn from the north shore of Alaska and the coastline of Siberia.

Sources: NASA and Natural Resources Defense Council


last few decades. They note that cli-mate is affected by numerous factors,including latitude, elevation and prox-imity to the ocean, and is periodical-ly disrupted by such anomalies as ElNiño, the periodic rise in sea tem-peratures in the eastern Pacific.

As early as the 1890s, however, sci-entists speculated that the build-up ofcarbon dioxide in the atmosphere mightbe another cause of climate change. Theprocess has been called the “greenhouseeffect” although garden greenhouses workon different principles. The greenhouseeffect is an increase in the temperatureof the planet as radiant energy from sun-light is trapped in the atmosphere bycarbon dioxide and other gases, collec-tively called “greenhouse gases.” Thisdynamic keeps the surface of the plan-et warm, even when turned toward thecold void of space.

A global-warming problem existsbecause humans have been increas-ing the natural level of CO2 by burn-ing fossil fuels for power, heat andtransportation and have added othergreenhouse gases such as methane

(from refineries and animal feedlots)and chlorofluorocarbons (from refrig-eration and air conditioners). There isnow the equivalent of 60 percent moreCO2 in the atmosphere than beforethe Industrial Revolution. 35

Unfortunately, nobody knows ex-actly how the world’s climate will be-have as greenhouse gases increase.Although scientists feel confident ofthe general trend — more severeweather events, melting polar ice andchanging sea levels and currents —knowing exactly how, when and wherethe changes will occur remains a mat-ter of educated guesswork.

Meanwhile, scientists continue to studythe problem The United Nations Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Changehas updated its predictions on the caus-es and consequences of climate changein 1995, 2000 and in February 2007.The latest update predicts that green-house gas emissions will cause the Earthto warm by 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius bythe end of the century, causing furtherreduction of winter snowfall and polarsea ice, stronger hurricanes and typhoons

and an increase in the frequency of heatwaves and other extreme weather events.Sea levels could rise by one to two feet.

Bitter Debate

Countries have reacted in very differ-ent ways to such predictions. Euro-

peans, by and large, have taken the threatseriously and invested accordingly. TheUnited States has generally taken a wait-and-see approach, fearful of slowing eco-nomic growth. The current Republicanadministration, in particular, has been re-luctant to take action until science canreport with certainty that climate changeis an imminent danger. Yet scientistswarn that it is nearly impossible toprovide certainty before it’s too late forgovernments to take meaningful action.President George W. Bush also stronglybelieves that new technologies will solvethe problem if the free market is allowedto respond on its own.

But political and scientific pressuresconvinced the president to address theissue in his State of the Union messagein January 2007. Bush said that newenergy technology would “help us toconfront the serious challenge of glob-al climate change.” That was enoughto encourage a raft of optimism fromindustries ready to ramp up alternative-energy projects. And the White Houseitself claimed that the president’s newtechnology proposals will stop the pro-jected growth in carbon-dioxide emis-sions from cars, light trucks and SUVswithin 10 years. 36

The first international attempt to reg-ulate greenhouse gases — the 1992 U.N.Framework Convention on ClimateChange — sought to stabilize emissionsat 1990 levels through voluntary mea-sures. The United States ratified the agree-ment, and ultimately 189 nations signedon to it. Unfortunately, it became clearwithin a few years that voluntary pledgeswere not going to work. This led to the1997 Kyoto Protocol, which featuredlegally binding cuts in emissions.


Environmental activists stack sandbags for a symbolic dike in The Hague, Netherlands, one ofthe lowest countries in the world. Knowing their vulnerability, the Dutch plan to spend as much as$25 billion to upgrade their dike system in preparation for possible rises in sea-level elevations.

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While the United States was deeplyinvolved in creating the treaty — andsigned it during the Clinton adminis-tration — the Republican-controlledCongress did not ratify it, in large partbecause it did not require emissionscuts from China and India. In March2001, shortly after his inauguration,Bush repudiated the protocol on thegrounds that it would hurt the U.S.economy, reneging on campaignpledges to require cuts in greenhousegas emissions if elected.

Instead, he came out a year later witha plan offering tax incentives to get com-panies to voluntarily cut their emissionsby 18 percent over 10 years. The schemebackfired; emissions increased steeply,discrediting the notion that voluntary tar-gets could address the problem. 37

Other countries, notably theNetherlands, began preparing for theeffects of climate change. With a quar-ter of its territory below sea level andmuch of the rest vulnerable to flood-ing, the country had little choice. TheDutch plan to spend an extra $10 bil-lion to $25 billion to upgrade theirvast network of dikes, pumping sta-tions and sea defenses.

“It’s better to be safe than sorrywhen you live below sea level,” notesPeter C.G. Glas, director of inland watersystems at Delft Hydraulics, which de-signed and built much of the dike in-frastructure. 38

While the U.S. government ditheredover improving the flood defenses ofNew Orleans, which is also largelybelow sea level, the Dutch were busystrengthening sea walls and modifyinga large dam at the mouth of the ZuiderSea against a future sea-level rise.

The real threat to the Netherlandsfrom global warming, however, isn’t ris-ing seas but surging rivers, Dutch ex-perts say, because the country straddlesthe flood-prone Rhine River delta. Cli-mate models suggest that rainfall in north-ern Europe could increase by 5 to 10percent, while melting Alpine glacierscould increase the flow of rivers.

Over the centuries, ever-higher dikeshave been constructed to keep theriver contained, but they’ve been prov-ing less and less adequate with time.In 1995 the Rhine nearly breached thedefenses, and with some dikes 20 feethigh, failure would have caused cat-astrophic flooding.

The prospect of worsening floodshas prompted the Dutch to change

tactics. Instead of building higher levees,the government plans to allow therivers to flood certain areas when nec-essary. Some 220,000 acres of landwill be surrendered to the rivers by2050, creating a natural flood zone ofmarshlands and forest. An additional62,000 acres will be made into pas-tures, from which livestock will beevacuated during floods.

Top 25 Greenhouse-Gas Emitters

Australia emits 6.8 tons of carbon per year for every member of its 20 million population — the world’s highest per-capita emissions rate. The United States is a close second, at 6.6 tons of carbon per capita — or about 1.9 billion tons. China, India and other rapidly developing nations have far-lower emissions rates.

Source: Kevin Baumert, et al., "Climate Data: Insights and Observations," Pew Center on Global Climate Change, November 2004

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

IndiaPakistan

IndonesiaChinaBrazil

MexicoTurkey

IranArgentina

FranceItaly

SpainSouth Africa

PolandEuropean Union

JapanUkraine

South KoreaUnited Kingdom

GermanyRussia

Saudi ArabiaCanada

United StatesAustralia

Tons of carbon per capita

6.8

6.6

6.3

4.3

3.6

3.23.1

3.1

2.92.9

2.8

2.72.6

2.62.5

2.3

2.1

1.91.5

1.4

1.31.1

0.7

0.60.5

Developed Countries 3.9

Developing Countries 0.9

World Average 1.5



Because the Netherlands is so dense-ly populated, sacrificing all that landwon’t be easy, and engineers are try-ing to minimize the dislocations. DuraVermeer, a Dutch construction com-pany, has designed giant floating green-houses, commercial buildings and eventowns that can be deployed in thenew sacrifice zones. Such planning isexpected to be a growth industry.

“This could be the future for manycountries,” says Jeroen van der Som-men of the Delft-based NetherlandsWater Partnership, which promotes thecountry’s water know-how abroad.

Rapid Meltdown

Recent events — notably thawingin both polar regions — leads many

scientists to fear far greater climate dis-ruptions than even the IPCC has pre-dicted.

One of the most dramatic events wasthe 2002 collapse of Antarctica’s Larsen-B ice shelf, a 10,000-year-old, 650-foot-thick expanse of floating ice the sizeof Rhode Island. Pedro Skvarca, a glaciol-ogist with the Argentine Antarctic In-stitute, flew over the shelf’s seaward

edge as it decomposed.“The surface of the ice shelf was al-

most totally covered by melt ponds andlakes, and waterfalls were spilling overthe top,” he recalls. Bits and pieces ofthe shelf had broken off, filling theWeddell Sea with bergs and slush. Twoweeks later almost the entire shelf wasgone. “It was unbelievable to see howfast it had broken up,” Skvarca says.

“The coastline hadn’t changed for morethan 9,000 years and then it changedcompletely in just a few weeks.”

Scientists say the collapse will likelyhave worldwide effects. The collapse ofLarsen-B as well as the smaller Larsen-A and Wordie ice shelves was causedby a steep increase in summertime tem-peratures in the Antarctic Peninsula re-gion. With the ice shelves gone, the farlarger glaciers and ice sheets behind themhave begun sliding into the sea betweentwo and six times faster than before.

“The glaciers took off like race hors-es after the ice shelves were removed,”says Ted Scambos, lead scientist at theNational Snow and Ice Data Center inBoulder, Colo. “We’re seeing things thatwe didn’t think glaciers could do in termsof the speed of their response.” Similarchanges have been recorded in the

Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica, whereglaciers drain the West Antarctic Ice Sheet,a precariously balanced portion of thesouthern ice cap containing enough iceto raise world sea levels by 20 feet. 39

In the Arctic, warmer winter temper-atures have caused the rapid thinning ofthe Greenland Ice Sheet, a reduction ofArctic Sea ice and the thawing of per-mafrost. The thawing has damagedroads, buildings, pipelines and airportsin Russia and shrunk the Alaskan ice-road season to 100 days a year, downfrom 300 just 30 years ago. In addition,melting permafrost releases carbon diox-ide trapped underneath, adding to at-mospheric CO2 levels and speeding upglobal warming even faster than expected.

The loss of sea ice is leaving polarbears with fewer places to hunt, andin late 2006 the Bush administrationplaced them on the endangeredspecies list. 40

CURRENTSITUATION

Frustration in Europe

In Europe there is increasing impa-tience with the United States, not

only because Washington has failed toregulate greenhouse gas emissions butalso because that failure has put Eu-ropean industry at a competitive dis-advantage. “Right now, the EU is onits way, but the U.S. and the rest ofthe world are still in the station,” saysKopp of Resources for the Future. “Atthe end of the day, EU nations are ina global economy, so they can’t runtoo far ahead of the U.S. or they willdisadvantage their economy too muchand run into political problems. Theyneed U.S. involvement.”

Continued on p. 44

The famed snows of Kilimanjaro are nearly gone. Global warming is blamed for themeltdown on Africa’s highest peak, which lies near the Equator in Kenya.

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At Issue:Should a trade tax be imposed on the U.S. and other countriesthat don’t sign the Kyoto Protocol?Yes

yesJOHN HONTELEZSECRETARY-GENERAL, EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENTAL BUREAU,BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

WRITTEN FOR CQ GLOBAL RESEARCHER, JANUARY 2007

if we are serious about Europe taking the lead and fulfill-ing its Kyoto obligations, border tax adjustments based oncarbon emissions are one of the few easy ways to ensure

we do not simply become a hostage of those countries thatdon’t see that fighting climate change is necessary.

I am very much in favor of taking measures with the Unit-ed States and Australia, two countries that should have accept-ed Kyoto and are really acting irresponsibly toward the globalpopulation.

But you can’t use this tax in the same way for productsfrom China and India and so on because these countrieshaven’t made or violated Kyoto Protocol commitments, and in1997 it was quite right not to require them to make the samecommitments as developed nations.

The tax would increase the possibilities for the EuropeanUnion (EU) to achieve greater greenhouse gas reductionswithout damaging important parts of our industry. It wouldalso show the outside world that the EU is very serious aboutclimate policies, even understanding that it is very difficult, inpractice, to measure the CO2 inputs of the products that arebeing considered.

For example, if you use aluminum for cans or pipes thatare produced in Europe, the cost includes the CO2 emissionsright that this company has had to buy. So the price includestheir payment down on the mechanisms to reduce CO2 emis-sions, while the products outside the EU aren’t including thatcost. A border tax adjustment would prevent that. You ensurethat all the EU aluminum products are not wiped out simplyfor the reason that other countries are not reducing CO2.

The money generated from this tax would probably go toa kind of export support for products that are leaving the EU.It’s not what I would like to have happen, but for the sakeof compromise, I suppose the money has to go both ways.

The refusal of the U.S. administration to implement Kyotohas a devastating effect because now we see what the fast-developing countries like China, India and Brazil are doing,and of course we should not put the same restrictions onthem. Nevertheless, it is an issue, of course.

But as long as the U.S. is not joining in the effort, thesecountries will have all the reasons in the world to say: Whyshould we limit our economic development and start control-ling emissions when the world is refusing to take part? That’sthe message the U.S. sends to the rest of the world.No

PETER MENDELSONTRADE COMMISSIONER, EUROPEAN UNION

FROM SPEECH TO EU, BRUSSELS, DEC. 18, 2006

we in the developed world are responsible for 80percent of historical carbon emissions. We have anhistorical environmental debt, as well as a self-inter-

est in our own survival, which both mean we must lead infinding solutions.

Our leadership is necessary. But it is not enough. Chinawill become the biggest emitter of CO2 in or around 2010.A billion Indians will not be far behind. And assuming thatcountries like China, India and Brazil continue to move to-wards Western levels of economic growth, we are confrontedwith the urgent challenge of greening that growth.

I see three essential parts to the political challenge we face.The first is public education to build a constituency for difficultchange and break current patterns of behavior. The secondchallenge is greater efficiency in the way we use energy. Wealso need to help China, India and others dramatically to im-prove their energy efficiency. The third outstanding challengeis to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

But it is also essential to establish that economic growth— and the trade that drives it — are not inherently at oddswith sustainable climate policy. Economic growth is whatgives us the resources to manage the human impact on theenvironment at the local level. But growth’s impact on theenvironment will have to change. Efficiency gains can help.But we have to do more than stabilize our impact — weneed to reverse it. We will not achieve this without a globalshift to renewable-energy sources and green technologies.And here trade policy has an important role.

There is one trade-policy response to climate change aboutwhich I have serious doubts. That is the idea of a specific“climate” tariff [or “border” tax] on countries that have not rati-fied the Kyoto Protocol. This would be highly problematicunder current WTO [World Trade Organization] rules. I alsosuspect it would not be good politics.

Not participating in the Kyoto process is not illegal. Nor isit a subsidy under WTO rules.

How would we choose what goods to target? China has rati-fied Kyoto but has no Kyoto targets because of its developing-country status. The U.S. has not ratified, but states like Californiahave ambitious climate-change policies.

Above all, dealing with climate change is an internationalchallenge. It requires international cooperation. Coercive poli-cies will harm this. Collective responsibility will only be fos-tered by policies of dialogue, incentive and cooperation.



Some European countries are tiredof waiting. In November 2006 the EU’shigh-level group on competitiveness,energy and the environment proposedintroducing a “border” tax on productsimported from countries that have notsigned the Kyoto Protocol. The mea-sure, which has the backing of FrenchPrime Minister Dominique de Villepinand EU Vice President for Enterpriseand Industry Gunter Verheugen, of Ger-many, aims to even the playing fieldfor European industries, which have in-curred the costs of participating in theEuropean emissions trading scheme. 41

“It’s an idea that’s gaining momen-tum, but it’s also very controversial,” saysJohn Hontelez, secretary-general of theEuropean Environmental Bureau in Brus-sels. “If you are serious about Europetaking the lead and fulfilling its Kyotoobligations, a border-tax adjustment isone of the few easy ways to ensure you

do not simply become a hostage ofthose countries that don’t see that fight-ing climate change is necessary.”

Hontelez, who heads a federationof more than 140 European environ-mental organizations, favors enactinga tax against the United States andAustralia, the only other industrial na-tion to reject the Kyoto Protocol, butnot against developing countries likeChina. “The U.S. and Australia are re-ally acting irresponsibly toward theglobal population,” he says.

But EU Trade Commissioner Peter Man-delson, of Great Britain, opposes the pro-posal. “Not participating in the Kyotoprocess is not illegal,” he said in a De-cember 2006 speech. “Collective respon-sibility will only be fostered by policiesof dialogue, incentive and cooperation”rather than “coercive measures.”

It is also unclear if the measurewould be allowed under World TradeOrganization (WTO) rules, which pre-

vent foreign products from being treat-ed differently than domestic ones. 42

But Hontelez says the EU shouldconsider the measure regardless ofwhat the WTO allows. “I don’t thinktrade has a higher moral standing thanfighting for sustainable developmentand against climate change,” he ex-plains. “It’s irresponsible not to act be-cause we have some trade rules.”

China’s Efficiency Drive

While China’s government has re-sisted mandatory CO2 reductions,

it is extremely concerned about reduc-ing pollution and increasing energy ef-ficiency. The primary motivation is eco-nomic: If current trends continue, thecombined costs of acid rain, dirty airand rampant energy consumption couldslow the country’s phenomenal growth.

To meet energy demands, China buildsa new power plant every week, on av-erage. That’s enough additional capacityevery year to power a country the sizeof England. Since 70 percent of China’selectricity comes from burning coal, theeffect on the environment is baleful. Sul-fur-dioxide pollution — another by-prod-uct of burning coal — contributes to400,000 premature deaths a year andproduces the acid rain that now falls ona third of China, damaging lakes, forestsand crops. If coal-consumption trendscontinue, officials worry pollution effectswill become untenable. 43

“If China wants to continue togrow, they need more energy, andone way to deal with that is withgreater energy efficiency,” says Kiangof Peking University, noting that thecountry uses energy only a tenth asefficiently as Japan. “China wants todo something to improve its energyefficiency, and in the end that will im-prove the climate-change situation eventhough it was not the original target.”

Under its 11th five-year plan, issuedin 2006, the Chinese government has setsome of the world’s most aggressive ef-

Continued from p. 42

Carbon Dioxide Emissions of Major Economies

Despite Kyoto Treaty carbon-reduction goals established by 169 nations in 2005, major economic powers have largely failed to reduce carbon emissions. The United States, not a signatory to the treaty, shows a steady rise, while EU and Japanese emissions have flattened out. Emerging giant China presents the most precipitous climb in emissions as it industrializes.

Source: “Climate Change 101: International Action,” Pew Center on Global Climate Change

CO2 Emissions by Country(millions of tons)

USA European Union China Japan India

0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

20252020201520102004200320022001200019991998199719961995199419931992

Projected


ficiency targets, including a 20 percentcut in energy use per unit of gross do-mestic product (GDP) by 2010. New reg-ulations include automobile fuel-efficiencystandards that are higher than those inthe United States and construction codesthat encourage the use of insulated win-dows and efficient lighting.

In addition, China intends to gen-erate 16 percent of its energy from re-newable sources by 2020. State-ownedutilities are building wind farms. InDunhuang, the construction of a 100-megawatt solar-generating plant — oneof the world’s largest — should pre-vent 400,000 tons of greenhouse gasemissions each year. 44

“The government pays more atten-tion to climate change now becauseit is expected to have a huge impacton water resources,” says Liu of Michi-gan State and the Chinese Academyof Sciences. “Water shortages are al-ready a serious problem in northernChina, while southern China is afflict-ed by flooding. In the long term, thegovernment will be very interestedand willing to reduce emissions ofgreenhouse gases.”

“The government is fully aware ofthe possible impacts of climate changeon China,” says Kiang. “But the climate-change issue hasn’t reached the gener-al public” in large part because of thesmall number of non-governmental or-ganizations, the sector that focused at-tention on the issue in the West.

For now, at least, the governmentrejects international calls for manda-tory greenhouse gas cuts, citing fair-ness. “You cannot tell people who arestruggling to earn enough to eat thatthey need to reduce their emissions,”said Lu Xuedu, deputy director gen-eral of China’s Office of Global Envi-ronmental Affairs, in October 2006. 45

Son of Kyoto

Delegates to a climate change sum-mit in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2006

sought to construct a successor agree-ment to the Kyoto Protocol but werehandicapped by the non-participationof the United States, the world’s largestemitter of man-made greenhouse gases.

“We’re living in this two-track worldat the moment,” says Winkler of the Uni-versity of Cape Town. “We’re expectedto build on the architecture of the KyotoProtocol, but without U.S. participation,we can’t expect any engagement fromthe big developing countries.”

Delegates were unable to reach agree-ment on a timetable for future emissioncuts or other key elements, and manyexpressed frustration with the U.S. pol-icy articulated by Undersecretary of StatePaula J. Dobriansky, who maintainedthat the best way to address climatechange was through voluntary interna-tional partnerships “that are integratedwith economic growth.” 46

China indicated it was not ready toadopt mandatory cuts, while India’senvironment minister said it was “sur-real” to expect his country to slashemissions when its per capita emis-sions are so much lower than thoseof the developed world and so manyof its people live in poverty.

The Bush administration’s newest cli-mate policy is centered not on theKyoto process but on the new Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Develop-ment, which promotes the develop-ment of clean-energy technologies bythe private sector. Created in July 2006,the initiative involves the United States,Australia, China, India, South Koreaand Japan and features no mandatoryemissions limits. Administration officialssay it is a “growth-oriented strategy” that“enables investment in the technolo-gies and practices we need to addressthese important issues.” 47

“The fairness and effectiveness of thisproposal will be superior to the KyotoProtocol,” said Australian Prime Minis-ter John Howard. “It demonstrates thevery strong commitment of Australia toreducing greenhouse gas emissions, ac-cording to an understanding that it’s

fair in Australia and not something thatwill destroy Australian jobs and unfairlypenalize Australian industries.” 48

For Schneider of Stanford’s Center forEnvironmental Science and Policy, themost revealing element of the Bush ad-ministration plan was the amount itpledged to invest in the project: $50million — less than the cost of a sin-gle clean-energy power plant. “That num-ber is off by a factor of a hundred,” hesays. “They put up nothing. This is pure-ly cover. If they truly have a climatepolicy they had better make some realinvestments, many billions a year.”

OUTLOOKWill the U.S. Act?

The future direction of internation-al climate policy clearly is tied to

domestic U.S. politics. Advocates forrobust action say meaningful progresscan only occur if and when the Unit-ed States engages with the issue. Theyare encouraged, however, by growingsigns that opinion in Washington isshifting toward action.

Former Vice President Al Gore’s Acad-emy Award-winning documentary onglobal warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,”has focused public opinion on theissue, and the takeover of Congress bythe Democrats increases prospects forcongressional action on climate change.New House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ap-pointed a Select Committee on EnergyIndependence and Global Warming torecommend legislation.

“[House] debate on global warminghas been stifled for 12 years,” saidPelosi, a California Democrat. “We can’twait any longer.” 49

In the Senate, global-warming naysay-er James M. Inhofe, R-Okla., was re-placed as chairman of the Senate En-vironment and Public Works Committee


by Barbara Boxer, another CaliforniaDemocrat and a strong advocate of cli-mate action. At least four climate-changemeasures have been introduced in theSenate so far in 2007, mostly to estab-lish a carbon-emission trading system.

“Things are moving right now at anincredibly quick pace,” said AntoniaHerzog, a scientist with the Natural Re-sources Defense Council. But even ifboth chambers were to pass legislationthis year, it is unclear whether Bushwould sign such a measure. 50

Pushing for action in Congress is anunlikely alliance of environmentalists,evangelical Christians and large com-panies seeking to burnish their good-citizen images and get a consistent na-tional policy to replace the growingpatchwork of state carbon-emission lim-its. In January the United States ClimateAction Partnership (USCAP) — a coali-tion of nearly a dozen energy compa-nies and environmental activists — calledfor action to “slow, stop and reversethe growth of greenhouse gas emis-sions over the shortest period of timereasonably achievable.” 51

A wide range of religious leaders —from the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Chris-tian Orthodox churches, Bartholomew I,to the more than 60 Jewish, Catholic,evangelical and mainstream protestant or-ganizations in the National Religious Part-nership for the Environment — are alsopushing for action on global warming.

“Climate change was seen early onas the preeminent environmental chal-lenge for people of faith,” explains part-nership Executive Director Paul Gorman.

“It’s deep religious insight and convic-tion that’s moved this thing along.” 52

Meanwhile, many states have takenthe issue into their own hands, creat-ing regional emissions-trading schemesfor power plants in the Northeast andin West Coast states.

Five Western governors announced onFeb. 26 that they would set limits on theiremissions. Even in conservative Texas,the previously anti-global-warming powercompany TXU has agreed to be sold toa private investor group that plans to haltthe building of coal-fired power plantsand adopt green strategies.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Repub-lican governor of California, said in June2006 that the global-warming debate isover. “We know the science, we seethe threat, and the time for action isnow,” he said, adding that his statewould be “the leader in the fight againstglobal warming.” 53

International observers hope thatthere will be major progress at thefederal level in the United States afterthe 2008 presidential elections. “I seethe U.S. leading in not very long,” saysOtt at the Wuppertal Institute in Ger-many. “The EU is very timid and cau-tious as an actor on the world stage.The U.S. often takes a long time toact, but when it does, it does it infull-scale. That gung-ho, ‘we can doit’ mentality would be helpful.”

Notes1 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change, “Climate Change 2007: The Physi-cal Science Basis — Summary for Policy Mak-ers,” Feb. 2, 2007; www.ipcc-wg2.org (glob-al temperature increases); Arctic Climate ImpactAssessment, “Impacts of a Warming Arctic,”2004, p. 23 (Arctic temperature increases).2 “Iceland’s president says the world shouldlook to icebound North for global changehelp,” The Associated Press, Sept. 20, 2006.3 Elisabeth Rosenthal and Andrew C. Revkin,“Science Panel Calls Global Warming ‘Un-equivocal,’ ” The New York Times online, Feb.3, 2007; www.nytimes.com.4 Juliet Eilperin, “Humans Faulted For Glob-al Warming; International Panel Of ClimateScientists Sounds Dire Alarm,” The Washing-ton Post, Feb. 3, 2007, p. A1; also see IPCC,“Climate Change 2007,” op. cit.5 See Colin Woodard, “Europe’s scorchingsummer,” E Magazine, Jan. 1, 2004; DeanCalbreath, “Changes in climate pose greatestchallenge for insurers, say experts from aroundworld,” San Diego Union-Tribune, April 23,2004, and “Lack of snow in Europe has skiersdown,” Reuters, Dec. 12, 2006.6 Dan Bilefsky, “Europe Sets Ambitious Lim-its on Greenhouse Gases, and ChallengesOthers to Match It,” The New York Times,March 10, 2007, p. A5.7 Quoted by Lawrence Soloman, “The Deniers— Part VI,” National Post Online, Canada,Feb. 2, 2007.8 Ibid.9 Interview, John Hontelez, January 2007; In-terview, Shelia Watt-Cloutier, December 2006;Colin Woodard, Ocean’s End: Travels throughEndangered Seas (2000), pp. 163-189.10 Quoted in States News Service, Sept. 27,2006.11 Interviews with Philip Gorman, August 2005;Eileen Claussen, August 2005. For backgroundsee Tom Price, “The New Environmentalism,”CQ Researcher, Dec. 1, 2006, pp. 985-1008.12 For background see Marcia Clemmitt, “Cli-mate Change,” CQ Researcher, Jan. 27 2006,pp. 73-96.13 The Economist Pocket World in Figures(2007), pp. 32-33; Keith Bradsher, “China topass U.S. in 2009 in Emissions,” The NewYork Times, Nov. 7, 2006, p. C1.14 U.N. Framework Convention on ClimateChange, “Report on the Implementation onits 25th Session,” 2006, p. 12.15 Bilefsky, op. cit.16 Ibid.17 Charlie Fletcher, Scotland on Sunday, Edin-burgh, April 1, 2001.


About the AuthorColin Woodard is a journalist who writes for The Chris-tian Science Monitor and The Chronicle of Higher Educa-tion, and has reported from more than 40 foreign coun-tries and six continents, and lived for more than fouryears in Eastern Europe. He is the author of Ocean’s End:Travels Through Endangered Seas, a narrative non-fictionaccount of the deterioration of the world’s oceans.


18 Quoted in Tony Juniper, “A crucial firststep,” The Guardian Unlimited, Feb. 16, 2005.19 “Stern Review on the Economics of ClimateChange,” HM Treasury, Oct. 30, 2006, pp. iii-iv;www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/about/about_index.cfm.20 “Selling Hot Air,” The Economist, Sept. 9,2006, Survey on Climate Change, pp. 17-19.21 Colin Woodard, “Europe: Planning Ahead,”in Feeling the Heat: Dispatches from theFrontlines of Climate Change (2004), pp. 31-32; www.awea.org/faq/wwt_potential.22 Quoted in “Hydrogen Economy,” BBC News-night, Aug. 21, 2002; Asgeir Sigfusson, “Iceland:Pioneering the Hydrogen Economy,” ForeignService Journal, December 2003, pp. 62-65.23 U.N. Framework, op. cit., p. 12; SubodhSharma, et al., “Greenhouse Gas Emissionsfrom India: A Perspective,” Current Science,Vol. 90, No. 3, February 2006, p. 328.24 Ibid.25 Eileen Clausen, “Climate change: the state ofthe question and the search for the answer,”speech given at St. Johns University, Oct. 5, 2006.26 Seth Borenstein, “Draft of new internation-al climate report warns of droughts, starvation,disease,” The Associated Press, March 10, 2007.27 Marlo Lewis, “The Snowe-Rockefeller Roadto Kyoto,” American Spectator, Nov. 3, 2006;Clemmitt, op. cit., p. 80.28 Myron Ebell, Letter to the Editor, The Fi-nancial Times, Sept. 28, 2005, p. 14.29 Stern Review, op. cit., pp. viii-x; Gaby Hinsliff,“The price of failing to act on climate change,”The Observer (London), Oct. 29, 2006, p. 1.30 Stern Review, op. cit., pp. iv-x.31 Jacqueline Thorpe, Financial Post; Cana-da.com, Jan. 27, 2007.32 Canadian Institute for Climate Studies, Cana-da Impact, “Implications for Canada of recentIPCC Assessment Reports,” prepared by the Cana-dian Climate Program Board and CanadianGlobal Change Program Board, Aug. 28, 1998.33 Ibid, pp. xviii-xi.34 “A Coat of Green,” The Economist, Surveyon Climate Change, op. cit., p. 20.35 Stern Review, op. cit., p. iii.36 Alhouse, Peter, “Bush’s address tackles en-ergy and climate, Jan. 24, 2007, NewScien-tist.com news service, at http://environ-ment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11020-bushs-address-tackles-energy-and-climate.html.37 Eric Pianin, “Bush Unveils Global Warm-ing Plan; President’s Approach Focuses onNew Technology, Incentives for Industry,”The Washington Post, Feb. 15, 2002, p. A9.38 The author reported this section during a2001 assignment in the Netherlands, published

in Woodard (2004), op. cit., pp. 25-30.39 Stefan Lovegren, “Warming to Cause Cata-strophic Rise in Sea Level?” National GeographicNews, April 26, 2004.40 Juliet Eilperin, “US Wants Polar Bears List-ed as Threatened,” The Washington Post,Dec. 27, 2006, p. A1.41 Andrew Bounds, “EU Trade Chief to Reject‘Green’ Tax Plan,” The Financial Times, Dec.17, 2006.42 For a discussion, see Bill Curry, “French PMWants to Hit Canada with Carbon Tax,” Globe& Mail (Toronto), Nov. 15, 2006, p. A1.43 Keith Bradsher and David Barboza, “TheCost of Coal,” The New York Times, June 11,2006, p. 1; “Anti-hero,” The Economist, Sur-vey of Climate Change, op. cit., pp. 18-19.44 “China to build one of the world’s biggestsolar power stations,” Agence France-Presse,Nov. 21, 2006.45 Quoted in Bradsher, op. cit.46 Jeffrey Gettleman and Andrew C. Revkin, “BigConference on Warming Ends, Achieving Mod-

est Results,” The New York Times, Nov. 17, 2006.47 “US defends climate change policy aheadof Sydney conference,” US Fed News, Jan.7, 2006; testimony by James L Connaughton,Chairman, White House Council on Envi-ronmental Quality, CQ Congressional Testi-mony, Sept. 20, 2006.48 “U.S. agrees to climate deal with Asia,” BBCNews Online, July 28, 2005.49 Quoted in Manu Raju, “House Creates Glob-al Warming Panel, Despite Skepticism in BothParties,” CQ Today, March 8, 2007.50 Quoted in Karoun Demirjian, “Taking cli-mate legislation to the Hill; 4 major bills bat-tle for Congress’ support,” Chicago Tribune,March 8, 2007, p. C4.51 Marie Horrigan, “Prioritizing Global Warm-ing,” CQPolitics.com, Feb. 23, 2007.52 For background, see Colin Woodard, “Changesin the Air,” Trust, spring 2006, pp. 18-25.53 Quoted in Miguel Bustillo, “Gov. Vows At-tack on Global Warming,” Los Angeles Times,June 2, 2005, p. B1.

FOR MORE INFORMATIONAmerican Meteorological Society, 45 Beacon St., Boston, MA 02108; (617) 227-2425; www.ametsoc.org. Promotes the development and dissemination of informa-tion on atmospheric and related sciences.

Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, University of Alaska — Fairbanks, P.O. Box747740, Fairbanks, AK 99775; www.acia.uaf.edu. International project of the ArcticCouncil and International Arctic Science Committee for evaluating knowledge onclimate variability, climate change and increased ultraviolet radiation.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 7bis Avenue de la Paix, C.P. 2300,CH-1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland; (+41)-22-730-8208; www.ipcc.ch. U.N.-sponsoredorganization of scientists who assess findings on global warming.

Inuit Circumpolar Conference, 170 Laurier Ave. W., Suite 504, Ottawa, Ontario,Canada K1P 5V5; (613) 563-2642; inuitcircumpolar.com. International non-governmentalorganization representing 150,000 Inuit of Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Russia.

Pew Center on Global Climate Change, 2101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 550, Arlington,VA 22201; (703) 516-4146; www.pewclimate.org. Nonprofit organization that issuesinformation and promotes policy discussion of global warming.

Resources for the Future, 1616 P St., N.W., Washington, DC 20036; (202) 328-5000; www.rff.org. Non-partisan think tank conducting independent research onenvironmental, energy and natural resource issues.

U.N. Environment Programme, United Nations Ave., Gigiri, P.O. Box 30552, 00100,Nairobi, Kenya; (254-20) 7621234; www.unep.org. Voice for the environment in theU.N. system.

Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Döppersberg 19,42103 Wuppertal, Germany; +49 (0)202/2492-0; www.wupperinst.org. German re-search organization working towards sustainable development.

FOR MORE INFORMATION


Books

Flannery, Tim, The Weather Makers: How man ischanging the climate and what it means for life onEarth, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006.An Australian scientist describes the evidence for climate change,

the disturbances it is causing to coral reefs, polar bears andother creatures, and the efforts some coal and oil companieshave made to delay or prevent political action on the issue.

Kolbert, Elizabeth, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man,Nature, and Climate Change, Bloomsbury, 2006.A reporter for the New Yorker provides a readable account

of how climate change is affecting the planet, with firsthandaccounts from Iceland, Alaska and Greenland.

Michaels, Patrick J., Meltdown: The Predictable Distortionof Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media,Cato Institute, 2004.A prominent climate-change skeptic from the University

of Virginia argues that global warming has been hyped byscientists, activists and the media.

Motovalli, Jim (ed.), Feeling the Heat: Dispatches fromthe Frontlines of Climate Change, Routledge, 2004.The editor of E: The Environmental Magazine dispatched a

group of reporters to report on the effects of climate changeworldwide.

Woodard, Colin, Ocean’s End: Travels Through EndangeredSeas, Basic Books, 2000.Author Woodard describes the collapse of marine ecosystems

and the potential link to climate change, including accountsof his travels to the Antarctic Peninsula — where glaciers andice sheets are collapsing — to the Marshall Islands — whosepeople fear they will lose their country to rising seas — andto flood-ravaged New Orleans.

Articles

Calvin, William H., “The Great Climate Flip-flop,” AtlanticMonthly, January 1998.A professor of evolutionary biology at the University of

Washington examines concerns that global warming could slowor stop the Gulf Stream and other ocean currents, possiblytriggering the sudden onset of an Ice Age.

Easterbrook, Gregg, “Case Closed: The Debate aboutGlobal Warming is Over,” Issues in Governance Studies,June 2006.A Brookings Institution scholar summarizes scientific thinking

on climate change and argues that reducing emissions willbe easier and more affordable than commonly thought.

Oreskes, Naomi, “The Scientific Consensus on ClimateChange,” Science, Dec. 3, 2004, p. 1686.A professor of history and science studies at the Universi-

ty of California, San Diego, refutes the popular notion thatscientists disagree on whether or not global warming ishappening.

Sharma, Subdoh, et al., “Greenhouse gas emissions fromIndia: A perspective,” Current Science, Feb. 10, 2006, p. 326.A professor of optics at the S.N. Bose Centre for Basic Sci-

ences in Calcutta discusses current and projected trends inIndia’s greenhouse-gas emissions described by three Indianscientists.

Reports and Studies

“Climate Change 2007,” International Panel on ClimateChange, IPCC, Feb. 2, 2007, available online.The U.N. panel provides the latest official scientific as-

sessment of the causes and likely effects of climate change;additional reports will follow throughout the year, includingregion-by-region impact assessments.

Barnett, Jon, and Neal Adger, “Climate Dangers and AtollCountries,” Tyndall Centre Working Paper No. 9, October2001, available online.A British think tank summarizes the risks facing low-lying

atoll nations from rising sea levels and extreme weatherevents associated with climate change.

“Impacts of a Warming Arctic,” Arctic Climate ImpactAssessment, Nov. 24, 2004, available online.A 140-page report synthesizes the findings of an international

team of scientists charged with studying global warming in theArctic. It predicts dire consequences for the entire region, in-cluding the disappearance of Arctic sea ice and the continueddecay of the Greenland ice sheet.

“South-north dialogue on equity in the greenhouse: aproposal for an adequate and equitable global climateagreement,” Deutsche Gessellschaft fur TechnischeZusammenarbeit (GTZ), May 2004, available online.Leading climate-policy experts from both developed and

developing countries discuss creating an equitable frameworkfor future climate-change negotiations. In German.

Stern, Nicolas, et al., “Stern review on the Economics ofClimate Change,” H.M. Treasury Office, updated January2007, available online.An independent review commissioned by the British govern-

ment argues that addressing climate change would be far lesscostly than the economic damages expected from allowinggreenhouse-gas emissions to continue unabated.

Selected Sources

Bibliography


Alternative Energy

“Gas Guzzler,” The Economist, Nov. 18, 2006, p. 84.Hydrogen holds out hope as a low-cost alternative to petrol

because of its abundance in water.

“Iceland Wants to Become World’s First Hydrogen-Powered Economy,” Agence France-Presse, June 15,2003.In pursuit of its dream of giving up fossil fuels completely,

Iceland has opened the world’s first filling station for hydrogen-powered vehicles.

Rana, Arif, “World Bank Wants Pakistan to Follow BangladeshExample,” Business Recorder (Pakistan), April 4, 2006.The Pakistani government has been urged by the World

Bank to follow Bangladesh’s community-based alternative-energy plan in order to get its own funding.

Environmental Movements

Klump, Edward, “TXU to Curtail Pollution to Get Okayon Buyout,” The Globe and Mail (Canada), Feb. 26, 2007,p. B5.The biggest power producer in Texas, TXU, will curtail

plans for building coal-fired generators in order to win supportfrom environmentalists over a potential buyout.

Raju, Manu, “Climate Consensus,” CQ Weekly, Jan. 22, 2007,p. 212.Environmental activists seeking reductions in greenhouse

emissions are turning their hopes to the 2008 U.S. presidentialelection.

Stones, Lesley, “Global Warming Turns Up the Heat for‘Green IT,’ ” Business Day (South Africa), Nov. 16, 2006.Increasing awareness of the dangers of climate change is

putting pressure on computer manufacturers to make theirproducts more environmentally friendly.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

“Japan Sets Numerical Targets to Cut Greenhouse GasEmissions,” Mainichi Daily News, Feb. 23, 2005, p. 8.As part of its responsibilities under the Kyoto Protocol, the

Japanese government released numerical targets for reductionsin greenhouse gas emissions.

Daniel, Caroline, “Five State Governors Unite Over GlobalWarming Western Initiative,” Financial Times, Feb. 27,2007, p. 4.Five governors from Western states have agreed to work

together to set a regional target in reductions of greenhousegas emissions.

Hurrell, Bronwyn, “New Pact Urged on Emissions,” TheAdvertiser (Australia), July 28, 2005, p. 20.Australia has claimed that a greenhouse emissions pact

with the United States, China, India and South Korea wouldbe more effective than the Kyoto Protocol.

Walsh, Bryan, “Greenhouse Airlines,” Time, Feb. 12, 2007,p. 57.Although air travel is responsible for only 1.6 percent of

total greenhouse gas emissions, it is the fastest-growing sourceof emissions in many countries.

Scientific Studies

“Half of Europe’s Plant Species at Risk from GlobalWarming: Study,” Agence France-Presse, May 23, 2005.An international study claims that more than 50 percent of

the plant species in Europe will be endangered by 2080 asa consequence of global warming.

Eilperin, Juliet, “Humans Faulted for Global Warming,”The Washington Post, Feb. 3, 2007, p. A1.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that

there is an overwhelming probability that humans are warmingthe planet at a dangerous rate.

Swain, Mike, “Hottest for a Million Years; Global WarmingNear Crisis Point,” Daily Record (Scotland), Sept. 27, 2006,p. 21.Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

(NASA) say Earth is reaching its highest temperatures in the lastmillion years.

The Next Step:Additional Articles from Current Periodicals

CITING CQ GLOBAL RESEARCHER

Sample formats for citing these reports in a bibliography

include the ones listed below. Preferred styles and formats

vary, so please check with your instructor or professor.

MLA STYLEFlamini, Roland. “Nuclear Proliferation.” CQ Global Re-

searcher 1 Apr. 2007: 1-24.

APA STYLE

Flamini, R. (2007, April 1). Nuclear proliferation. CQ Global

Researcher, 1, 1-24.

CHICAGO STYLE

Flamini, Roland. “Nuclear Proliferation.” CQ Global Re-

searcher, April 1, 2007, 1-24.

Voices From Abroad:

IAN CAMPBELLENVIRONMENTAL

MINISTER, AUSTRALIAJULY 2006

Don’t lecture Australiaon Kyoto.

“We do get lectured fromt ime to t ime he re inQueensland, in Australia, byEuropeans and others thatwe should’ve signed Kyotoas some sort of magic silverbullet. . . . UnfortunatelyKyoto ignored almost totallyaround 70 percent of theworld’s emissions.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEVFORMER PRESIDENT,

SOVIET UNIONOCT. 2006

We have very little timeto act.

“When we speak of theenvironment, we say that thesituation is five minutes tomidnight. We are already ina global environmental cri-sis. The atmosphere has beenpolluted and it has had animpact on the global climate.We see the shrinking of arableland, deforestation . . . thepollution of the ocean.

WORLDPRESS.ORGJÓN KNÚTUR

ÁSMUNDSSON, ICELANDFEB. 15, 2002

Iceland the Kuwait ofthe North?

“By the year 2040, sci-entists and politicians envi-sion Iceland as the first coun-try that will be almost entirely

free from fossil fuel. It is aheady dream, but . . . [it is]the hope that the countrywill one day be known asthe “Kuwait of the North.”

JAMES LOVELOCKTHE INDEPENDENT,

GREAT BRITAINFEB. 2006

China builds too fast.“It is most unlikely that

anything we do as individu-als or even as a nation willsignificantly reduce climatechange. The United Kingdomproduces only 2 per cent ofglobal emissions. You haveto ask, will any gesture wemake stop the Chinese, forexample, building a giant coal-burning power station everyfive days?”

DR. LOUIS VERCHOTWORLD AGROFORESTRY

CENTER, KENYAFEB. 2007

Devastating for agriculture.“The impacts on agricul-

ture in developing countries,and particularly on countriesthat depend on rain-fed agri-culture, are likely to be dev-astating.”

SYDNEY MORNINGHERALDREUTERSJAN. 2007

Pitting people againsteach other?

“Global warming couldexacerbate the world’s rich-poor divide and help to rad-

icalise populations and fanterrorism in the countriesworst affected. . . .”

STAVROS DIMASEU ENVIRONMENTAL

COMMISSIONER, BERLINER ZEITUNG

MARCH 2007

Turn off the TV.“Every individual contributes

to greenhouse gas emissions.If we use energy-saving lightbulbs or turn off the stand-bymode for televisions, then wewill not only lower emissions,but also save money.”

JIANG YUFOREIGN MINISTRY OF

CHINA, REUTERSFEB. 2007

Don’t blame us.“Climate change has been

caused by . . . developedcountries and their high

per-capita emissions. Devel-oped countries bear an un-shirkable responsibility.”

HOUSE OF LORDSSELECT COMMITTEE ON

ECONOMIC AFFAIRSUNITED KINGDOM

JULY 2005

Doubts on IPCC approach.“We have some concerns

about the objectivity of the[International Panel on Cli-mate Change] process, withsome of its emissions sce-narios and summary docu-mentation apparently influ-enced by po l i t i c a lconsiderations. There are sig-nificant doubts about someaspects of the IPCC’s emis-sions scenario exercise. Thegovernment should press theIPCC to change their ap-proach. There are somepositive aspects to globalwarming and these appearto have been played downin the IPCC reports.”

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