Download 05 Aug 2012

Art Hobson, [email protected]
NWA Times, 5 August 2012
Fossil fuels and the battle for the environment
Bill McKibben is an honored scholar at Middlebury College, author of many
books including The End of Nature, and a leader in the movement to stop global
warming. If you google on "global warming's terrifying new math," you'll find his
article from the 2 August 2012 issue of Rolling Stone. The article is well founded
scientifically, and McKibben's gameplan for winning the climate battle is the most
plausible I've heard.
The scientific foundation comes down to three important numbers. The first
is two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). This is the maximum safe limit
for the planet's temperature increase due to global warming, a limit that was agreed
to by the 167 nations that signed the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Accord. Climate
scientists are nervous about setting the limit this high, arguing that two degrees
could be a prescription for long-term disaster. Global warming has already
increased temperatures by 0.8 degrees Celsius, with another 0.8 degrees
automatically in the pipeline just from the effects during the next few decades of
the CO2 we've already emitted.
The second number is 565 gigatons (billions of tons) of carbon dioxide
(CO2). This is the amount of CO2 humans can emit into the atmosphere during
2012 to 2050 without exceeding the two degree limit. Unfortunately, last year's
emissions were 32 gigatons, and emissions have increased by over three percent
every year. At this rate, we will reach the 565 gigaton limit by 2027.
The third number is 2,800 gigatons. This is the amount of carbon dioxide
that will be emitted if we burn the world's known, proven, fossil fuel
reserves. These reserves are five times larger than we can actually burn without
raising temperatures above the two degree limit. The fossil fuel industry intends to
draw its profits during the next few decades from extraction of these reserves.
The implication is that the business model of the fossil fuel industry includes
the destruction of our planet as we know it. The battle lines, with fossil fuel
industry profits on one side and preserving some semblance of our present planet
on the other, could not be more clear. The only action that will keep these fossil
resources in the ground is a rise in the price of carbon, a rise that can only come
from such government action as a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system.
The fossil fuel industry has battled hard and successfully against any
semblance of this kind of legislation since at least 1989 when Exxon, Shell Oil,
Ford, General Motors, and other corporate interests formed the Global Climate
Coalition to oppose the United Nations' international studies of climate change,
and to oppose Senate ratification of the Kyoto Protocol that would reduce CO2
emissions. It's widely documented, for example in
Naomi Oreskes book Merchants of Doubt, that the fossil fuel industry hired a
handful of industry-connected scientists, sponsored massive advertising
campaigns, and saturated Congress with lobbyists, in order to persuade America
that there is no global warming, that global warming is not caused by humans, and
that industry is responsibly pro-environment.
Industry's global warming propaganda is similar to, and even more immoral
than, the tobacco industry's campaign to persuade us that cigarettes don't cause
cancer. The pro-tobacco campaign began around 1960, when industry knew or
should have known that smoking causes cancer. Oreskes' book reports on this and
other industrial campaigns against environmental health. It's interesting that most
of the handful of scientists who worked on the tobacco industry's behalf also
worked on industry's behalf concerning global warming and several other issues.
Conservatives have bought industry's hype hook, line, and sinker, with such
scientific illiterates as Senator James Inhoff crying "Hoax!" at any mention of
global warming. Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron and others have managed to create the
impression that there is a scientific debate about global warming, and that they are
responsible custodians of the environment. But in fact, at least eight polls of
climate scientists (also, google on Oreskes' article "The scientific consensus on
climate change") during the past few years reveal an overwhelming consensus that
global warming is real and caused by humans. And any industry whose business
model includes dumping 2,800 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere can hardly be
regarded as environmentally or socially responsible.
My column has hammered global warming pretty heavily during the past few
months. It's the foremost scientific issue of our era, and one that conservative
interest groups have managed to make politically incorrect in American society. I
plan to continue hammering it.