Six ways to combat global warming
By Traci Watson and Jonathan Weisman, USA TODAY
Glaciers are receding. Oceans are rising. Alaska is thawing. As officials from nearly 180 nations start to gather Monday, July 16, in Bonn, Germany, to confront the vexing problem of global warming, the issue is no longer whether it is real, but what should be done about it. "There is no question there is climate change," says Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., a foe of past efforts to combat global warming. "We're beyond that debate."
Indeed, there is near-unanimous scientific agreement that the world has warmed by about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century. Most attribute part of that change to the buildup of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse" gases that trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere. Where they disagree is how much and how fast the world might warm in the future.When President Bush declared this spring that he was withdrawing the United States from the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international treaty intended to curb rising temperatures, he drew angry attacks from European nations and domestic critics. They accused him of turning his back on the issue. On Friday, Bush announced NASA would spend more than $120 million on global-warming research.
But as tempers have cooled, politicians and environmental experts are giving fresh thought to alternatives to Kyoto, from a full-throttle assault on greenhouse gases to strategies on living with a hotter climate. Ways to reduce greenhouse emissions through trading of pollution credits are getting a new hearing. Technological solutions are drawing attention, too.
The negotiators gathered in Bonn for the next two weeks will focus only on finalizing the Kyoto Protocol. They're unlikely to resolve their differences, many experts say. A meeting in November collapsed in discord. And several nations are threatening to pull out of the treaty, effectively killing it, because of Bush's decision. The U.S. president is likely to create a new rift at a summit of industrial nations in Genoa, Italy, this week by opposing a drive to phase out subsidies for fuels that emit greenhouse gases and provide money to develop low-polluting energy sources.
With so little consensus, the options requiring the least effort and expense may win by default. A new research program would be cheaper than a global treaty on curbing greenhouse gases. Doing nothing would be easier still.
There are several approaches for tackling global warming, if only the world can stop arguing long enough to choose one.
1. Finish and ratify KyotoGood or bad, the Kyoto Protocol, named after the Japanese city where a final deal was struck, has become the starting point for discussions about solutions. The protocol sets a deadline of 2012 for industrial, or developed, nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases to 5% below their 1990 level. Targets for individual nations vary, however. The USA, which produces a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, would be required to reduce its emissions to 7% below 1990's level. Based on 1999 emissions, that amounts to cutting greenhouse gases by nearly 20%. Developing nations would meet reduction targets on a voluntary basis and would receive aid from industrial countries to adopt clean-air technologies. Bush contends that the treaty would be disastrous for the U.S. economy and is unfair because it doesn't make similar demands on developing nations. European nations remain committed to Kyoto. But other countries, such as Japan and Canada, are vacillating. Treaty supporters say U.S. compliance costs are modest. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that savings from sharply declining energy use would more than offset economic dislocations, leading to a net gain for the country's economic output of $48 billion in 2010. But an economic study sponsored by the oil industry and business groups that oppose the treaty says compliance would cost the average household $2,944 a year in reduced economic output and increased energy prices. For the treaty to take effect, it must be OK'd by 55 of the 180 or so nations that negotiated it. Also, those 55 must include enough industrialized nations to account for at least 55% of carbon dioxide emissions in 1990. If Japan decided to join the United States in dumping the treaty, the 55% threshold would be nearly out of reach. At best, the treaty would slow the addition of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. So it wouldn't make much of a dent in the problem, with or without the USA. Still, supporters see the protocol as a vital first step. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., says Bush's withdrawal from treaty negotiations was an abdication of U.S. leadership. "This is a global problem that people all over the planet have accepted, and the United States ... has been unwilling to deal with the problem." Critics of Kyoto say it sets unrealistic goals with potentially devastating economic costs. That is why the U.S. Senate would never approve the treaty even if Bush embraced it and submitted it for ratification, detractors say. "The Kyoto agreement was based on the notion, 'Here's a target, and we're going to hit it at any cost,' " says Peter Wilcoxen, an economist at the University of Texas. "A prudent, reasonable Senate could never agree to something like that, committing the country to do something that we don't know can be done, and agreeing to do it at any cost." 2. Include developing nations Bush likes the idea of making China, India and other developing nations do more. In a rare consensus, pro-Kyoto groups agree. Industry groups and Kyoto critics say fairness demands all polluters act now. U.S. involvement, Bush said in June, "must be based on global participation, including that of developing countries." But both sides clash on how soon the developing world should slash its emissions, which are a major part of the problem. Scientists say these nations already exceed the industrialized world in carbon-dioxide emissions. Kyoto backers say rich nations polluted on their way to prosperity and that poorer nations should have more time to raise living standards before meeting costly pollution targets. "It's just untenable to ask countries that are extremely poor to take action before countries that are responsible have done something to show they're serious," says Kevin Baumert of environmental think tank World Resources Institute. Eileen Claussen, a former climate negotiator for the Clinton administration, says a global-warming treaty would be more equitable if it took into account a country's ability to pay for emission cuts and how easily it could make such cuts. By those standards, a treaty could include nations such as China and Mexico. 3. Trade pollution like stock To reach Kyoto's targets, the Clinton administration envisioned a global cap on greenhouse gases. Governments would issue permits allotting each company an emission cap. Companies unable to stay within their limit could buy permits from companies that could reduce emissions below their caps. Permits would be traded like stock. Here's how it would work: Company X, which uses the latest technology to burn coal for electricity, receives a permit that lets it emit 1,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year. But the company, which now emits 1,500 tons of pollutants a year, believes it will cost too much to switch to cleaner-burning natural gas. Meanwhile, Company Y also gets a permit to emit 1,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year. But it has an antiquated coal-fired system that it can economically retrofit to be more efficient. As a result, it expects its plants to reduce emissions to 500 tons. So it sells its unused 500 tons to Company X. Averaged together, both companies' emissions fall within the emissions cap. Supporters expect that most sellers of permits would be outdated Russian, Chinese and Indian power plants that would get financial assistance under Kyoto to modernize. The buyers would largely be Western companies. The problems:
To prevent speculation in the permit market, University of Texas economist Wilcoxen and Australian economist Warwick McKibbin propose that governments also sell permits good for only one year and at costs the governments believe to be reasonable. Enforcement would become a national issue instead of a matter for a new, international policing body. The McKibbin-Wilcoxen proposal has advocates in the White House. Wilcoxen has briefed members of the president's Council of Economic Advisers. 4. Wait and study Business groups and cautious politicians, including Bush, say there is no rush to implement solutions. They say holes in our knowledge should be patched first. "We don't really know enough to make significant policy decisions" about global warming, says Hagel, who has led opposition to Kyoto. This side says points of contention include:
Those urging action say the world can't afford to wait. "If for some reason the science is overstated, all we will have done is to decrease air pollution, improve people's health and increase the nation's energy independence," Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., says. "That's not bad." 5. Adapt and accept There is another school of thought: It is simply too expensive and difficult to beat global warming, so let's live with it. Scientists never will understand how the Earth will respond to all of the atmospheric changes wrought by humanity, says Jesse Ausubel, director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University in New York. After 20 years of research, he says, "the spray of views is undiminished, and a new mystery arises for every one apparently solved." He suggests that people learn to live with global warming. That idea may have a receptive audience at the White House. Lawrence Lindsey, Bush's chief economic adviser, has suggested that the cheapest way to deal with climate change might be to combat the phenomena that might result from warming, such as flooding and more powerful hurricanes. In 1991, the National Academy of Sciences laid out a strategy for adapting:
Turning those recommendations into policy would be a bold and brave stroke, says Robert Mendelsohn, a Yale University economist who believes combating global warming would produce scant results at a very steep cost. But Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on the issue, says a policy of adaptation could supplant efforts to tackle the problem. That could be disastrous. "A third of the world's population lives within 50 miles of a coastline," Mathews says. "You could protect Manhattan, where there is great wealth, but that's not possible in the Ganges or Nile river deltas, or even Louisiana." Even Mendelsohn concedes that large parts of the world could not survive a warmer world. Low-lying poor countries could not afford the engineering needed to keep out a rising ocean. Hot tropical nations would only get hotter. Some countries in the North Atlantic Ocean could turn frigid as warm ocean currents shift away from their shores. 6. Futuristic fixes Cutting energy usage sharply to reduce greenhouse gases could disrupt the economy and lifestyles of Americans. Some scientists suggest tinkering with Earth's climate, a solution known as geoengineering. The U.S. government takes them seriously. Earlier this month, the Energy Department announced it would spend $25 million to study techniques for socking away carbon dioxide in places where it can't escape into the atmosphere. Among the projects the agency is funding: research on pumping carbon dioxide from power plants into coal seams, and studies on ways to soak up carbon dioxide with trees, which incorporate the gas into roots and branches. One idea is to harness the power of plankton, tiny ocean plants that absorb carbon dioxide. In some places, low iron rates limit its growth, so why not dump in iron and let plankton bloom? The government has funded small tests and plans a larger trial. Other ideas stretch the imagination. Scientists have proposed fleets of Mylar balloons and giant orbiting mirrors. Other ideas make use of an air pollutant called sulfate that reflects sunlight. One scientist has suggested giant guns that shoot sulfate particles into the atmosphere; another would send up a fleet of extra-dirty jets to spew sulfate into the sky, forming a planetary sunscreen. |
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