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Cities, States and Others Step up Action on Climate, Despite

Article:

Last year, Pentagon defense adviser Andrew Marshall issued a

harsh warning of the consequences of climate change: mass chaos,

national security crises and food shortages. If climate change

occurs abruptly, the report declared, there could be a

catastrophic breakdown in international security. Wars over

access to food, water, and energy would likely break out between

states. Even if climate change is more gradual, recent studies

have argued that as many as one million plant and animal species

could be rendered extinct by 2050 due to the effects of global

warming. Climate change is the most serious challenge facing

the international community. In order to plan for a sustainable

future - one that meets needs today without compromising meeting

the needs of future generations - global warming must be

addressed. We have arrived at a stage in human evolution that

requires international cooperation - a stage which demands that

world leaders put world priorities ahead of national political

agendas in order to halt the peril threatening humanity. In

1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED)

asked all nations to renew their commitment to implement

policies based on the three pillars of sustainable development -

economic, environmental and social - in order to arrest

environmental deterioration and revive world economic growth. In

particular, the report stated, poverty has played a major role

in environmental degradation. Not only is it our moral

obligation to eliminate poverty, the report revealed it is

essential to protecting and improving the environment. Further

reports have concluded that environmentally unsound technology

has been exponentially far more detrimental to sustainable

development than even population growth. In order to achieve

sustainable development, the Commission reported, our cities

must be considered in the global concerted effort. Since

three-fourths of the global warming pollution could be solved if

we decreased burning fossil fuels, one of the most effective

ways to transform urban growth is by switching to alternative

energy sources. Fortunately, there are many means of harnessing

energy which have less damaging impacts on our environment than

fossil fuels, and we already have developed all the

technological resources needed. Now we must admit there is a

problem and start working in the direction to make this

transition. If our current leaders do not want to face this

pressing challenge with integrity, then as Leonardo Dicaprio

urges, we need to vote for leaders who care about the

environment and our health and the future generations who will

bear the burden long after the Administration is gone.

A Call to Action

On October 25, 2005, Senator Hillary Clinton (NY) called for a

national energy strategy enlisting the oil industry in a process

that would help consumers while making the transition to

alternative energy technologies. Her plan redirects the hidden

"tax" that Americans are already paying to OPEC and the oil

companies, but lasts only long enough to" kick-start the

alternative energy market that we all know is out there," she

explained. Speaking to Cleantech Venture Network, a group of

venture capitalists who recently were named by Wall Street

Journal reports for their success in developing clean energy as

a viable investment category, Clinton emphasized the immediate

concern which is how to help citizens pay their bills and keep

the economy moving in the face of dramatically higher energy

costs. There is no question, she said, that our failure to make

better energy choices is sapping our pocketbooks, limiting our

competitiveness, threatening our environment and even our

national security. "Hurricanes Katrina and Rita made that

brutally clear." The far reaching problem we face, Senator

Clinton stated, is coping with the impacts of massive economic

development and competition for oil in other parts of the world

such as India and China in the next twenty years. "Loosening

environmental standards or opening up a new oil field or two is

not going to offset this seismic shift in energy demand," she

explained. Her plan unburdens the American people of foreign oil

dependence, investing a portion of the profits into the U.S.

energy future, instead of regimes we would never choose to

subsidize. The oil industries can choose to either reinvest

their profits into America's energy future or contribute to a

new Strategic Energy Fund, she said. The Strategic Energy Fund

would help consumers cope with spiraling energy costs, promote

adoption of existing clean energy and conservation technologies,

while stimulating research and investment by the private sector.

She also recommends assessing an alternative energy development

fee for those companies deciding not to directly reinvest in our

energy future. That fee, she explained would help fund energy

transition. "The Fund could generate as much as $20 billion a

year to help with home heating oil costs and develop new energy

strategies." In this way, she explained, we would reduce our

reliance on fossil fuel, make existing alternative technologies

more affordable, jump start our technology, and regain U.S.

world leadership. It's got "Made in America" written on it, in

addition to providing a role model for developing nations. The

"energy revolution" can be as big and important as the

industrial revolution and the explosion of the information age.

However, we have to do what America has always done when faced

with a big challenge, she said, "roll up our sleeves and

dedicate this country to finding a solution." In effect, she

explained, "the country that put a man on the moon can be the

country to find new lower cost and cleaner forms of energy. Our

nation needs it. Our planet needs it."

Addressing Climate Change in the Environment of a Hostile U.S.

Administration One of the most important outcomes of the 2002

World Sustainable Summit Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg,

South Africa, was the decision to address climate change at the

global level, starting at the local level-- all mandates that

must be enacted locally as well as globally in order to begin to

impact the effects of climate change. A decade earlier, the Rio

de Janeiro Summit articulated the need to include humanity as

well as environmental protection in the sustainability equation.

Hence, it concluded, the critical problem of poverty must also

be addressed. When the United Nations authorized the World

Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, it had already

realized poverty had deepened and environmental degradation had

worsened since the 1992 Summit. The world needed a new summit of

actions with results, and not just intent. Managing urban

environmental conditions ultimately belongs with national

governments, businesses, scientific bodies, and communities

working together; but history shows us U.S. involvement has

always sped and strengthened global progress in improving urban

environmental conditions for sustainable development. Although

U.S. partnership is needed to meet the increasingly urgent

demands to make cities livable, the Bush Administration has not

been forthcoming. While the 2002 WSSD Johannesburg Summit was

the highest attended conference by world leaders, President Bush

was sorely missed. According to original plans, explained

participant Kaarin Taipale, "the 2002 WSSD summit would have

coincided with the first anniversary of 9/11." Conference dates

were changed at that the last minute in order to make it easier

for the President to attend. Instead, Secretary of State Colin

Powell traveled to Johannesburg to speak on the President's

behalf, where as Taipale recalls, "he was infamously booed."

Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky

soon retorted by telling Summit attendees to focus on actions,

"actions being better than words." U.S. action has been remiss.

Vice Chairman of Friends of the Earth Tony Juniper said the

United States has a lot to answer for what has gone wrong since

the Rio de Janeiro Summit in 1992. Many trends that were

categorized as urgent at that summit - such as poverty,

biodiversity loss, deforestation, and overexploitation of

renewable resources - had either stayed the same or become

worse. First, the U.S. refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol at

the 2002 Summit - the single most important environmental treaty

to stop Climate Change. In addition, Juniper reported, the Bush

Administration had been telling the world about the importance

of free trade while protecting its own steel industry and hiking

agricultural subsidies to the degree of harming other nations.

In fact, heavy pressure on the U.S. Administration for Bush not

to attend the Summit, said Juniper, seemed to originate with the

big business and corporate lobby. U. S. representatives to the

Summit proposed business friendly partnerships, but opposed the

very necessary targetive actions on sustainable development.

Although the United States makes up four percent of the world's

population and produces 22 percent of the world's greenhouse

gases, it's refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol's call for

reductions in the greenhouse gases merely underscores Federal

unwillingness to address climate change. Claiming that the

treaty would raise energy prices and kill five million U.S.

jobs, the Administration has even raised questions about the

scientific legitimacy of climate change. As British Petroleum

CEO John Browne put it, "The time to consider the policy

dimensions of climate change is not when the link is

conclusively proven, but when the possibility cannot be

discounted." The Union of Concerned Scientists, a group of 6,000

scientists, including 48 Nobel laureates, warns that the Bush

administration's overtly anti-science bias undercuts scientific

integrity. This bias was clear when the The New York Times

reported that a White House official who once led the oil

industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases had

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repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play

down links between such emission and global warming. The White

House response: the reports were "scientifically sound." As

Journalist and author Chris Mooney explained, the Administration

relied on those energy interests who have a documented history

of muddying the role that humanity plays in climate change while

consciously strategizing to "sow confusion on the issue and sway

journalists." According to a study published by Princeton

professors Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala, the U.S. could

reduce emissions to below the 1970 levels just with its current

technology. "We in fact already have everything we need to face

this challenge," Vice President Gore has said, "save perhaps

political will. But in our democracy political will is a

renewable resource." Because the Federal government has failed

to get involved internationally, state and local officials have

been left alone to address the gravity of excess greenhouse gas

emissions. Without Federal direction, Senator Clinton has

warned, the varying standards that result from the differences

in local policies could create havoc for the private sector. To

make matters worse, approximately 100 high-level Administration

officials who help regulate industries they once represented -

as lobbyists, lawyers, or company advocates - are all part of an

effort to avoid addressing global warming. (2004, Natural

Resources Defense Council (NRDC)). London's "Guardian" has

further reported that the environmental group Greenpeace

obtained documents indicating President Bush's global climate

policy was heavily influenced by Exxon, Mobil and other oil

companies. In briefing papers given to U.S. Under Secretary of

State Paula Dobriansky between 2001 and 2004, "the

administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the

company's 'active involvement' in helping to determine climate

change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate

change policies the company might find acceptable." Quietly, in

the background of policy change, by mid August 2004 the

Administration had already rolled back more than 400 major

environmental mandates, causing the protection of our nation's

air, water, public land and wildlife to be severely weakened.

This anti-environment spirit, reports Robert Kennedy, Jr.,

pervades virtually all of the Sub-secretariats today, including

the Department of Agriculture, Interior, and Energy. In contrast

to entering public service for the public interest, these

officials are motivated by the intent to specifically subvert

the very law they are now charged with enforcing. "The current

Administration," he says, "has put the most insidious polluters

in charge of all the agencies that are supposed to protect the

American people from pollution." One notable exception was

Christine Whitman, appointed by Bush to head the Environmental

Protection Agency (EPA). In 2002, she released a report stating

that Climate Change was an urgent problem created by human

activity that would quickly create other problems unless

immediately addressed. A public relations crisis ensued when

Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute declared

"someone should be fired" over this. Apparently, White House

Chief of Staff on Environmental Quality and former lobbyist for

the American Petroleum Institute Philip Cooney did not see

(edit) the report before it was released. President Bush

publicly discounted the report by calling it a report from "the

bureaucracy." Whitman resigned from the EPA soon after. At the

Clinton Global Initiative, a summit of actions and results held

by President Clinton in New York last September, Al Gore

reported that some of those who benefit from unrestrained

pollution from global warming also spend millions of dollars

each year creating pseudo-studies that cloud the issue. This is

not the first time this type of swaying from industry lobbyists

has occurred. After the Surgeon General warning of the dangers

of smoking, Gore noted, the tobacco industry hired 'scientific

prostitutes' to argue that smoking was good for people. While

such actions can be understood, he said, they are not

acceptable, "not when the fate of the earth - rather, the fate

of a habitable earth for human beings -- is at stake." He quoted

muckraker Upton Sinclair who wrote more than a century ago: "It

is difficult to get a man to understand something when his

salary depends upon him not understanding it."

Article Continues at: http://www.elizabethautumn.com/id97.html

About the author:

Elizabeth Autumn, MBA, is a freelance reporter. She covers

environment and corporate governance issues. Completing her

Masters in Environmental Management at Harvard University,

Elizabeth also writes for Crane's Magazine, Create Magazine, and

Publishers Weekly. Prior to this she was a freelance producer

for Fox News, in addition she worked for CBS News on the

Emmy-Award winning CBS Documentary "9-11", The Early Show, and

60 Minutes.