Finally,
Fired Up Over Global Warming
By Bill McKibben
25 August, 2006
The Boston Globe
You've
seen or heard of Al Gore's movie. The pictures of Hurricane Katrina
remain in the back of your mind. You've sweated through this record
summer. You sense -- with just a bit of panic -- that there's really
no problem more important in the long run than global warming. So what
do you do?
Change your light bulbs --
check.
Think about a new hybrid
Prius -- check.
Go organize a demonstration
-- well, maybe.
The movement to tackle climate
change is finally growing large in this country, and at least part of
it is beginning to get a little more outspoken. In late spring, three
activists locked themselves in Senator Max Baucus's Montana office when
he refused to answer questions they had submitted about his stand on
climate legislation. Later this month, protesters are expected to descend
upon the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Maryland
to demand the resignations of the nation's chief hurricane forecasters,
arguing that they have downplayed the threat from climate change. And
over Labor Day weekend, thousands of Vermonters are expected to walk
part or all of a five-day, cross-state trek from Robert Frost's old
cabin in Ripton to the Federal Building in Burlington to demand that
the state's candidates for national office pledge to support the strongest
possible legislation to slow US carbon emissions.
These are among the first
even slightly militant responses to global warming by average Americans,
but I doubt they'll be the last. A small group of us began organizing
the Vermont march because we found that we, and others like us, needed
some way to make more noise. Most had done the obvious things: made
our houses and our cars more energy-efficient, and worked with our businesses
or campuses to find better ways of heating and cooling. We've lobbied
hard in state houses and city halls to get local action for change.
But it's not adding up to anywhere near enough -- and the reason is
clear. Washington, unlike every other capital in the developed world,
simply won't do anything.
Congress, in its wisdom,
has decided that all climate legislation should be sent to a committee
chaired by Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, who has declared that global
warming is ``a hoax" and added that those who demand action remind
him of the Third Reich. The Environmental Protection Agency has declared
that it doesn't consider carbon dioxide a pollutant -- it's as if the
Food and Drug Administration announced it didn't consider wheat a food
and the Coast Guard declared that the Atlantic Seaboard was really not
a coast after all.
Even as new science shows
we may be in for much faster sea level rise and ice melt than earlier
computer models predicted, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
has decided it no longer wants the phrase ``protect the home planet"
in its mission statement. With that kind of blockage, there's no way
to make more than token progress, even with innovative attempts like
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent deal with British
Prime Minister Tony Blair to investigate a carbon trading scheme. Without
the federal government committing the United States to the same goals
as the rest of the developed world, progress everywhere will be halting
-- and there's zero chance of the kind of international consensus that
will be required to persuade China and India to follow a more benign
energy path.
It's not as if changing the
party in power will automatically change the outcome, either. The Clinton
administration did little to tackle climate change; most Democrats would
probably be all too willing to sign onto some limp compromise like the
bill introduced in 2003 by Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona,
and Joseph Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, even though the march
of science in the years since it was introduced makes clear the inadequacy
of its minuscule cuts in carbon. If we lock into some weak regimen now,
it may be years before Congress will take up the issue again.
And so more environmentalists
are starting to decide that 10 years of only behaving reasonably may
be enough -- that the time has come to let leaders know that a sizable
portion of the population is truly upset, and that it won't rest until
the nation's on track to tackle the problem. Progress is by no means
impossible: Vermont independent James Jeffords has introduced a credible
bill in the Senate calling for an 80 percent reduction in carbon by
2050. But if the bill is to have any chance in a capital dominated by
the energy lobby, it needs strong backing from think tanks and scientists
-- and from people in the street. The lesson of every movement in US
history is that being right is only half the battle; being loud helps,
too.
We'll be walking the highways
of our small state on Labor Day weekend, collecting signatures along
the way, holding town meetings, demanding that candidates commit to
actually, you know, legislating. We hope our example will spread elsewhere,
as more of the quietly freaked-out turn into the noisily committed.
Bill McKibben is a scholar
in residence in environmental studies at Middlebury College and the
author of ``The End of Nature."
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