U.S. ENVIRONMENTALISTS KNOCK ONE OUT OF THE PARK

Supreme Court rules global warming exists, and EPA should protect states from it

In what may be a landmark environmental decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that the EPA has the legal mandate to regulate the gases that contribute to global warming.

Author: Dorothy Kosich
Posted: Tuesday , 03 Apr 2007

RENO, NV -

Although the U.S. Congress can't pass the legislation to regulate it, and the Bush Administration refuses to admit it exists, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Monday that global warming is real, and that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts lost valuable shoreline because of its effects.

The issue was, pardon the pun, so hot, that it required one majority and two dissenting opinions to explain it. Remember this particular case citation: Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (549 U.S. 2007). Americans will be reading, interpreting and citing this one for years.

It began as a simple question. Did the federal court of appeals have jurisdiction to weigh in on the fight between Massachusetts and the Environmental Protection Agency as to if EPA is legally mandated to regulate global warming? You betcha, answered Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote in the majority opinion of the Supreme Court.

"A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," Stevens declared to a nation that refused to ratify the Kyoto Treaty. "Calling global warming ‘the most pressing environmental challenge of our time, a group of States, local governments and private organizations, alleged in a petition for certiorari that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has abdicated its responsibility under the Clean Air Act to regulate the emissions of four greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide."

"Specifically, the petitions asked us to answer two questions concerning the meaning of §202(a)(1) of the Act: whether EPA has the statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles; and if so, whether its stated reasons for refusing to do so are consistent with the statutes," Stevens said.

"In response, EPA supported by 10 intervening States and six trade associations, correctly argued that we may not address those two questions unless at least one petitioner has standing to invoke our jurisdiction under Article II of the Constitution." The high court ruled it definitely did have jurisdiction, reversed the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remanded the case for further proceedings.

In its arguments, the EPA claimed that, contrary to the opinion of its former general counsels, "the Clean Air Act does not authorize EPA to address global climate change...and that even if the agency had the authority to set up greenhouse gas emission standards, it would be unwise to do so at this time."

Massachusetts argued that Congress ordered the EPA to protect Massachusetts when Congress enacted regulations applicable to controlling emissions of air pollutant from new motor vehicle engines.

The state asserted that the rise in sea levels associated with global warming has already harmed and will continue to harm Massachusetts. The state contended that even more environmental damage in yet to come because the EPA refuses to regulate emissions contributing to global warming. As the Supreme Court concluded, "At a minimum, therefore, EPA's refusal to regulate such emissions contributes to Massachusetts' injuries."

MINORITY OPINIONS

Chief Justice John Roberts conceded in his dissension that global warming may "ultimately affect nearly everyone on the planet in some potentially adverse way, and it may be that governments have done too little to address it. It is not a problem, however, that has escaped the attention of policymakers in the Executive and Legislature Branches of our government, who continue to consider regulatory, legislative, and treated-based means of addressing global climate change."

Roberts noted that the petitioners apparently came to the courts claiming broad injury because they really are dissatisfied with the progress of the issue in the elected branches. Nevertheless, he specified, "aside from a single conclusory statement, there is nothing in the petitioners' 43 standing declarations and accompanying an inference of actual loss of Massachusetts coastal land from 20^th century global sea level increases. It is pure conjecture."

He scolded his fellow justices, accusing them of ignoring "the complexities of global warming, and does so by now...using the dire nature of global warming itself as a bootstrap for finding causation and redressability."

"In other words, do not worry that other countries will contribute far more to global warming than will U.S. automobile emissions; someone is bound to invent something, and places like the People's Republic of China or India will surely require use of the new technology, regardless of cost," Roberts declared with more than a hit of sarcasm.

In his dissenting opinion, Justice Anton Scalia adamantly declared that he holds "that this Court has no jurisdiction to decide this case because petitioners lack standing."

"The Court's alarm over global warming may or may not be justified, but it ought not distort the outcome of this litigation," Scalia asserted, adding "This is a straight-forward administrative-law case."

"No matter how important the underlying policy issues at stake, this Court has no business substituting its own desired outcome for the reasoned judgment of the responsible agency," he concluded.

REACTION

Environmentalists called the decision a big victory for the plant and a "stunning rebuke to the Bush Administration."

EPA Press Secretary Jennifer Woods told the Christian Science Monitor that the agency is reviewing the decision to determine its next course of action.

The trade newspaper Argus Air Daily suggested that the decision "has far wider implications for the broader energy economy and upcoming regulation could incorporate the universe of U.S. carbon sources. With this 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court may have kicked down the door to greenhouse gas regulation in the United States and has added to the likelihood of broader legislative action on global warming in the near term."

Chicago-based The Heartland Institute declared that "the U.S. Supreme Court today substituted its scientific judgment for that of USEPA scientists. ...Once past the rhetoric, however, all the Court did was order USEPA to issue a more ‘reasoned explanation' for its refusal to regulate greenhouse gases."

When the EPA does explain its reluctance to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, "the Supreme Court should refrain from imposing its lay views regarding global warming on EPA, Heartland Senior Fellow for Environmental Policy James M. Taylor concluded.

http://www.mineweb.net/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page60?oid=18999&sn=Detail

Climate Change Threat to 100s of Millions - IPCC

Scientists Gather For Climate Conference AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Apr. 2, 2007

---

(AP) Climate change could threaten the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the decades to come, according to a draft of a major report being released this week. Changing weather patterns have already reshaped the world, but they will accelerate in the decades to come, says the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of 2,000 scientists.

Severe drought and devastating floods are among some of the threats to mankind unless action is taken to curb global warming. "We are going into a realm the Earth has not seen for a very long time ... over the past 800,000 years," said Camille Parmesan, a University of Texas biologist who reviewed the upcoming report. About 285 delegates from 124 countries are meeting in Brussels with more than 50 of the scientists who compiled the report. As governments will use the report to set policy, the final wording must be adopted by consensus among the diplomats, with the approval of the scientists. The report will be the second volume of a four-volume authoritative assessment of Earth's climate released this year.

The first in February updated the science of climate change, concluding with near certainty that global warming is caused by human behavior.

This week's closed-door talks in Belgium are likely to focus on predictions of how many people will be at high risk and whether such specific weather events like Hurricane Katrina should be attributed to global warming.

"Do you use examples? And do you use ones that are relatively positive or highly negative?" said Rik Leemans, a co-author from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. "You can tone it down or strengthen it by including examples, and that's always an issue in these discussions." Even the most optimistic forecasts say the climate will continue to change and the planet will be irrevocably damaged.

The question is, how much? In the absence of action to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, the future looks bleak. The scientists predict that within 25 years, hunger from crop failure and death from diarrhea caused by drinking foul water will threaten countries where water has become scarce. Later in the century, warmer seas will likely destroy coral reefs and the fish that feed off them, and may lead to the poisoning of shellfish. Small islands will probably be submerged, and tens of millions of people in coastal cities and river basins will likely be affected by flooding from sea surges, the draft report says. Many more species will vanish. Beetles and other pests are expected to infest forests even more, with forest and wild fires more frequent and widespread. But parts of North America and northern Europe will see some benefits, at least in the short term, from longer growing seasons and milder winters. The IPCC's work will be presented at a summit in June of leaders from the world's richest countries. Global warming is caused in part by industrialized countries whose vehicles and factories contribute heavily to production of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. The last such assessment of climate change was in 2001. Since then, studies have tracked specific shifts on the ground to changing temperatures and weather patterns. "Many natural systems on all continents and in some oceans are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases," the draft reads.

Parmesan said storms and floods have become more severe in some places, coastlines have eroded and deserts have expanded. Diseases common in the tropics have spread. In the northern hemisphere, spring is coming an average two weeks earlier, disrupting bird migrations and causing flowers and trees to bloom too early. At least 70 species have become extinct so far because of global warming, Parmesan said in a telephone conference with reporters. But scintists say people can avoid the worst-case scenarios. A third report due out in May will outline strategies for slowing global warming. "These are projections that many of us believe don't have to be the future; many of these can be avoided," said James J. McCarthy, a Harvard University oceanographer who was a main author of the 2001 assessment. He said he is optimistic the worst won't happen "because we can't be that stupid."

___ Associated Press Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this report from Washington.

Climates may Disappear

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21468036-30417,00.html

Global warming will make climates 'disappear'

• Leigh Dayton, Science writer
• March 29, 2007

IF trends in global warming continue, South Australia's climate would vanish by 2010, taking with it vulnerable plants and animals.

The dire prediction comes from US researchers who claim global warming may cause climatic conditions prevailing on almost half the world's landmass to change beyond recognition, effectively “disappearing”.

By 2010 rising temperatures could also lead to previously unrecorded “novel” climates across almost 40 per cent of the global land surface, according to a team led by John Williams of the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

“They did a really good job of pointing out where the (warming) projections are suggesting that society and ecosystems could be most at risk,” commented climate scientist Neville Nicholls of Melbourne's Monash University.

“It's a really valuable study.”

While Dr Nicholls agreed the climate along the southern fringe of Australia was more at risk from global warming than other parts of the continent, he doubted it would be unlike the climate anywhere else in Australia, as Professor Williams's group suggested.

“Why would the climate disappear?” Dr Nicholls asked.

“I suspect places like Adelaide would have climate like places a bit further north that are now warmer and drier.”

Professor Williams and his colleagues analysed the upper and lower greenhouse gas emission scenarios produced for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released in February.

Their results showed that under both scenarios the increase in global temperature would cause dramatic changes to many rainforest, grassland and desert ecosystems.

Novel climates would occur primarily in the tropics and subtropics, and disappearing climates in in tropical mountain regions and poleward portions of continents like South Australia.

“Our findings are a logical outcome of global warming scenarios,” Professor Williams said.

“The warmest areas get warmer and move outside our current range of experience and the colder areas also get warmer and so those climates disappear,” he said of the research, reported in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to the team, their findings have clear implications for biodiversity, the plants and animals living in ecosystems subject to dramatic climate changes.

That's so because the regions likely to experience dramatic climate change were identified three years ago as critical “hot spots”.

“In these areas, elevated risks of extinction are likely,” Professor Williams said.

In their report his team warned that “standard conservation solutions” may fail to protect vulnerable plants and animals, while others more suited the new climate take over.

The Sixth Extinction

The Sixth Extinction

"In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it is perched."
--Paul Ehrlich

Embedded in the Hall's floor, this timeline is a poignant reminder of the species lost to Earth's five prior mass extinctions, events that were triggered by global climate change or other natural phenomena.

Central to the story of these "past lives," is the belief that we are currently in the midst of the sixth mass extinction in the history of complex animal life. This time, however, it is mainly the result of human activity.

As the human population grows and our demand for natural resources increases, more and more habitats are devastated. Today, we may be losing 30,000 species a year -- a rate much faster than at any time since the last great extinction 65 million years ago that wiped out most of the dinosaurs. If we continue on this course, we will destroy even ourselves.

Democrats move to protect species act

Dicks warns Interior Department against 'end run' changes

By CHARLES POPE
P-I WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Norm Dicks and senior Democrats warned the Interior Department on Wednesday against making major changes in the Endangered Species Act without involving Congress.

The quick and unambiguous response came one day after reports that the Interior Department has been working for months to reinterpret the 1973 law in a way that environmentalists said would gut the primary tool for protecting plants and animals on the verge of extinction.

The Bush administration and some Republicans have been working for years to change the act, which they say is onerous and overly expensive for landowners. At each step, however, Congress has blocked the changes.

The new approach would change the law unilaterally by changing the way it is interpreted. Those changes surfaced in a 117-page document and in departmental memos that discuss ways to restrict the law without needing congressional approval.

Dicks, who spoke Wednesday with Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, said he was especially concerned by a proposal that would require extra protection only in areas where endangered species are found.

That would significantly narrow protections because current practice includes habitat that historically supported a species, even if that species no longer lives there.

"If you're only going to protect it in its current range, it's an incentive to unscrupulous people to minimize the range," Dicks said he told Kempthorne.

Any change to the law would have significant consequences in the Pacific Northwest, especially for efforts to restore dwindling salmon populations.

Officials with the Interior Department and the Fish and Wildlife Service echoed Kempthorne, saying the documents were drafts and not decisions that have been made.

Even so, environmental groups criticized the proposals, saying they would allow the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Power Administration, among others, to sidestep a 2005 federal court ruling that limited the amount of water that could pour through Columbia River dams.

"This latest attack by the administration makes recovery all but impossible for salmon and steelhead in the Pacific Northwest," said Zeke Grader, Executive Director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, the largest fishermen's organization on the West Coast.

Another proposed change would narrow when species can be considered in danger of extinction. Currently, that is interpreted as the statute directs some time "in the foreseeable future." The draft papers suggest a more specific timetable of 20 years for some species and a specific number of generations for others, said Jan Hasselman, a Seattle attorney for Earthjustice.

Other changes would allow logging, development and other projects even if those activities threaten a species but stop short of "hastening" its extinctions. The proposal also calls for states to have greater authority over protecting species.

Dicks said he told Kempthorne that the changes being considered are major and shouldn't be enacted without Congress' imprint.

"I told him we don't want to see a lot of things changed by rule," he said, adding that he told Kempthorne, "If you're going to change the law send up a bill."

Hasselman noted that many of the proposals were included in past legislation that was defeated.

"Congress refused to endorse these concepts repeatedly over the last 12 years," he said.

What Interior is trying, he said, "is an end run around the will of Congress and the views and values of America."

Dicks said Kempthorne told him that the proposals were in their early form and that final decisions about how to change the law have not been made.

Dicks also said that Kempthorne promised to keep Congress fully informed as the process evolves.

At the same time, "I wanted to lay down a marker today," Dicks said.

P-I Washington correspondent Charles Pope can be reached at 202-263-6461 or charliepope@seattlepi.com.

Hot race for riches in Arctic emerges

Hot race for riches in Arctic emerges Nations scramble as ice cap melts

By Doug Mellgren, Associated Press | March 25, 2007 HAMMERFEST, Norway -- Barren and uninhabited, Hans Island is very hard to find on a map. Yet these days the Frisbee-shaped rock in the Arctic is much in demand -- so much so that Canada and Denmark have both staked their claim to it with flags and warships. The reason: an international race for oil, fish, diamonds, and shipping routes accelerated by the impact of global warming on earth's frozen north. The latest report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the ice cap is warming faster than the rest of the planet and ice is receding, partly due to greenhouse gases. It's a catastrophic scenario for the Arctic ecosystem, for polar bears and other wildlife, and for Inuit populations whose ancient cultures depend on frozen waters. But some see a lucrative silver lining of riches waiting to be snatched from the deep, and the prospect of timesaving sea lanes that could transform the shipping industry the way the Suez Canal did in the 19th century. The US Geological Survey estimates the Arctic has as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas. Moscow reportedly sees the potential of minerals in its slice of the Arctic sector approaching $2 trillion. All this has pushed governments and businesses into a scramble for sovereignty over these suddenly priceless seas. Regardless of climate change, oil and gas exploration in the Arctic is moving full speed ahead. The State-controlled Norwegian oil company Statoil ASA plans to start tapping gas from its offshore Snoehvit field in December, the first in the Barents Sea. It uses advanced equipment on the ocean floor, remote-controlled from the Norwegian oil boom town of Hammerfest through a 90-mile undersea cable. Alan Murray, an analyst with the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, said most petroleum companies are now focusing research and exploration on the far north. Russia is developing the vast Shkotman natural gas field off its Arctic coast, and Norwegians hope their advanced technology will find a place there. The climate changes could open the North Pole region to easy navigation for five months a year, according to the latest Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, an intergovernmental group. That could cut sailing time from Germany to Alaska by 60 percent, going through Russia's Arctic instead of the Panama Canal. Or the Northwest Passage could open through the channels of Canada's Arctic islands and shorten the voyage from Europe to the Far East. And that's where Hans Island, at the entrance to the Northwest Passage, starts to matter. The half-square-mile rock, just one-seventh the size of New York's Central Park, is wedged between Canada's Ellesmere Island and Danish-ruled Greenland and for more than 20 years has been a subject of unusually bitter exchanges between the NATO allies. Canada, Russia, and Denmark are seeking to claim waters all the way up to the North Pole, saying the seabed is part of their continental shelf under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Canada says the Northwest Passage is its territory, a claim the United States disputes, insisting the waters are neutral.

U.S Warplanes Simulate Iran Attack

Crude oil prices rose to a six-month high on Tuesday, triggered by false reports of an Iranian missile attack on a U.S. ship as well as increasing tensions over Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, seen in London on Tuesday, says Iran must release the British navy crew it seized four days ago.
(Ian Nicholson/Associated Press)

The U.S. military was quick to deny rumours of the attack on one of its ships in the Persian Gulf. Military officials said they checked all their ships and no evidence of any attack was found.

Still, oil prices rose by eight per cent.

Meanwhile, Britain and Iran were battling over the British navy crew seized by Iran on Friday.

Britain and the United States say the sailors and marines were intercepted after they completed a search of a civilian vessel in Iraqi waters near Iran. Iran claims the British crew was in Iranian waters.

Demand crew's release

British Prime Minister Tony Blair demanded the crew's release on Tuesday.

"I hope we manage to get them to realize they have to release them," he said. "If not, this will move into a different phase.

"But at the moment, what we are trying to do is make sure that diplomatic initiative works."

He did not specify what he meant by "a different phase," but officials in his government were quick to clarify he wasn't talking about military action, rather that he is ready to release evidence proving that the crew was seized by the Iranians in Iraqi waters.

Such evidence would show the Iranian ships strayed into Iraqi waters, which could spark a row between the two Middle Eastern countries, a British official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett echoed Blair's demands Tuesday, telephoning Iran's foreign minister to demand the crew's swift release.

Iran would not address Britain's demands publicly. Instead, Mohammed Ali Hosseini, spokesman for Iran's foreign minister, would only say that the captured sailors and marines are being treated well.

He said the only woman in the crew — 28-year-old Faye Turney — is being held separately to ensure her privacy.

U.S. forces flex muscles in Gulf

Iran has said it's questioning the British sailors and marines to determine if their alleged entry into Iranian waters was intentional or unintentional. Once Iran gets answers, it will decide what to do with the crew.

Meanwhile, the U.S. navy instructed its warplanes to run through simulated attacks and manoeuvres off the coast of Iran on Tuesday. It was the United States's largest demonstration of force in the Persian Gulf since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

U.S. commanders said the exercises were not a direct response to the capture of the British navy crew. They said the demonstration was planned weeks ago.

Media Alert - Pure Propaganda - the Great Global Warming Swindle - The
Scientists Are The Bad Guys by Dave Edwards Wed.Mar.,14, 2007 On March 8, Channel 4 screened The Great Global Warming Swindle, a documentary that branded as a lie the scientific consensus that man-made greenhouse gasses are primarily responsible for climate change. View the film in it's entirety here.(go to orignal story link, which follows:
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1174&Itemid=81

The film was advertised extensively on Channel 4 and repeatedly previewed and reviewed in newspapers. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Christopher Booker declared: “Only very rarely can a TV documentary be seen as a pivotal moment in a major political debate, but such was Channel 4's The Great Global Warming Swindle last Thursday.

Never before has there been such a devastatingly authoritative account of how the hysteria over global warming has parted company with reality.” (Booker, ‘A turning point in climate change,’ Sunday Telegraph, March 11, 2007) Peter Hitchens commented in the Daily Mail: “If you were worried about those snaps of polar bears clinging to melting ice-floes, sentenced to a slow death by global warming, you may now relax. They'll be fine. Channel 4 has paid in full for its recent misdemeanours by screening, last Thursday, the brilliant, devastating film The Great Global Warming Swindle.” (Hitchens, ‘Drugs?’, Daily Mail, March 11, 2007) Doubtless like many who saw the film, the Financial Times’ reviewer was left bewildered: “Not so long ago, the venerable David Attenborough on the Beeb was telling us that human-driven global warming was real and was coming for us. So that was settled. Now Channel 4, like a dissident schoolboy, is scoffing at the old boy's hobbyhorse and I don't know what to believe.” (’Slaughterhouse three,’ Financial Times, March 10, 2007)

The film opened with scenes of wild weather and environmental disaster accompanied by dramatic captions: "THE ICE IS MELTING. THE SEA IS RISING. HURRICANES ARE BLOWING. AND IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT. “SCARED? DON'T BE. IT'S NOT TRUE." This was immediately followed by a series of equally forthright talking heads: "We can't say that CO2 will drive climate; it certainly never did in the past." “We imagine that we live in an age of reason. And the global warming alarm is dressed up as science. But it’s not science; it’s propaganda.” And: “We’re just being told lies; that’s what it comes down to.” The commentary added to the sense of outrage: “You are being told lies.” This was indeed superficially impressive - when several experts make bold statements on the same theme we naturally assume they must be onto something - but alarm bells should already have been ringing. This, after all, was ostensibly a film about science - about evidence, arguments, research and debate. Why, then, the language of polemic and smear? The remarkable answer is provided by the film’s writer and director, Martin Durkin: "I think it [the film] will go down in history as the first chapter in a new era of the relationship between scientists and society.

Legitimate scientists - people with qualifications - are the bad guys. It is a big story that is going to cause controversy." “It's very rare that a film changes history, but I think this is a turning point and in five years the idea that the greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global warming will be seen as total bollocks.” ('“Global Warming Is Lies” Claims Documentary,’ Life Style Extra, March 4, 2007) Compare and contrast this with the aim as described in a letter sent by the makers of the film, Wag TV, to Professor Carl Wunsch, a leading expert on ocean circulation and climate who subsequently appeared in the film: “The aim of the film is to examine critically the notion that recent global warming is primarily caused by industrial emissions of CO2. It explores the scientific evidence which jars with this hypothesis and explores alternative theories such as solar induced climate change. Given the seemingly inconclusive nature of the evidence, it examines the background to the apparent consensus on this issue, and highlights the dangers involved, especially to developing nations, of policies aimed at limiting industrial growth.”

Wunsch comments: "I am angry because they completely misrepresented me. My views were distorted by the context in which they placed them. I was misled as to what it was going to be about. I was told about six months ago that this was to be a programme about how complicated it is to understand what is going on. If they had told me even the title of the programme, I would have absolutely refused to be on it. I am the one who has been swindled." (Geoffrey Lean, ‘Climate change: An inconvenient truth... for C4,’ The Independent, March 11, 2007; ) We will hear more from Wunsch in what follows.

Deeply Deceptive The film presented viewers with an apparently devastating refutation of the "theory of global warming". And these were not picky, esoteric criticisms. Durkin insisted that the world’s climate scientists are guilty of the most fundamental error imaginable: increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is not the cause of higher temperature, as the experts claim. Quite the reverse: increasing atmospheric CO2 is itself the +result+ of rising temperature. As evidence for this contention, Durkin argued that global surface temperature dropped dramatically between 1945-1975, at a time when CO2 emissions were rapidly rising as a result of the postwar economic boom. According to Durkin, if CO2 emissions were responsible for increasing temperature, then temperature should not have fallen between 1945-1975. Clearly, then, some factor other than CO2 emissions must have caused the subsequent global temperature rise. But Real Climate, an internet site run by climate scientists, such as NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt and Dr William Connelley of the British Antarctic Survey, describes Durkin’s discussion of the 1945-75 period as “deeply deceptive”. (Real Climate, March 9, 2007) In this section of the film, Durkin focused heavily on a graph depicting temperature changes. The graph, Real Climate comments, “looks rather odd and may have been carefully selected”. It appears to show a dramatic cooling between the 1940s and 1970s. But try flipping between the film’s version of the global temperature record:

http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t63/izzy_bizzy_photo/capture.jpg

and the temperature plot that normally appears in the scientific literature:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

The supposed cooling looks rather less evident in this second graph. Without knowing more details of how Durkin may have manipulated the data plotted in his graph, it is difficult to comment on the presentation. What we can say is that Durkin’s "four decades of cooling", implying a relentless temperature drop over 40 years, is not an accurate description of the trend over this period.

There was some cooling for +part+ of this time but also some plateauing, with fluctuations up and down. But why did the temperature not simply rise in line with the post-war increase in greenhouse gas emissions? In fact, as is well-known, the absence of a global rise in temperature between 1945-75 is explained by the release of large amounts of industrial pollutants, called sulphate aerosols, into the atmosphere. These particles have a braking effect on global warming, known as “global dimming”. By shielding some of the incoming solar energy, sulphate aerosols mask the underlying warming effect generated by rising levels of CO2. By the 1980s, however, stronger warming had exceeded this masking effect and global temperature has since continued to rise. As Real Climate notes, by failing to explain the science behind this phenomenon the programme makers were guilty of “lying to us by omission.” The Ice Cores The film repeatedly gave the impression that mainstream science argues that CO2 is the +sole+ driver of rising temperatures in the Earth's climate system. But this is not the case. Climate scientists are well aware that solar activity plays a role, though a minor one at present, as do long-term periodic changes in the Earth's orbit, known as Milankovitch cycles. The point is that there is a vast body of evidence that very strongly supports the hypothesis that greenhouse gas emissions, of which CO2 is the most important, are +primarily+ responsible for +recent+ global warming. The 4th and most recent scientific assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes:

"Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely [.i.e. probability greater than 90%] due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations." ('Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis,' Summary for Policymakers, IPCC, February 2007, page 10) We then come to one of the film's most misleading arguments. Antarctic ice cores show that rises in levels of CO2 have lagged 800 years behind temperature rises at specific times in the geological past. This, argued Durkin, +proves+ that CO2 cannot be responsible for global warming - instead global warming is responsible for increasing levels of CO2. But this was a huge howler. What Durkin's film failed to explain was that the 800-year lag happened at the end of ice ages which occur about every 100,000 years.


Scientists believe that the end of an ice age is likely triggered when the amount of heat reaching the Earth rises as a result of a periodic change in the Earth's orbit around the sun. Jeff Severinghaus, Professor of Geosciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, explains why the rise in CO2 initially lags behind the temperature rise: "The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend." (Real Climate, 'What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming?’, December 3, 2005;) The best current explanation for the lag of 800 years is that this is how long it takes for CO2, absorbed by the ocean in an earlier warm period, to be "flushed out" at the end of an ice age. Once that CO2 has been released into the atmosphere its heat-trapping properties as a greenhouse gas lead to even stronger warming: an example of positive feedback. (See Caillon et al., 'Timing of Atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic Temperature Changes Across Termination III,' Science, 14 March 2003: Vol. 299. no. 5613, pp. 1728 - 1731) Professor Severinghaus summarises: "In other words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway." Durkin’s analysis, then, was way off the mark. The film’s claim that solar activity might account for recent warming is also without credibility.

In September 2006, the Times reported the latest findings from researchers writing in the top journal, Nature: “Scientists have examined various proxies of solar energy output over the past 1,000 years and have found no evidence that they are correlated with today's rising temperatures. Satellite observations over the past 30 years have also turned up nothing. ‘The solar contribution to warming... is negligible,’ the researchers wrote in the journal Nature.” (Anjana Ahuja, ‘It's hot, but don't blame the Sun,’ The Times, September 25, 2006) The film's other scientific claims can be similarly dismissed. Carl Wunsch - who, as discussed, appeared in the film - comments: “What we now have is an out-and-out propaganda piece, in which there is not even a gesture toward balance or explanation of why many of the extended inferences drawn in the film are not widely accepted by the scientific community. There are so many examples, it's hard to know where to begin, so I will cite only one: a speaker asserts, as is true, that carbon dioxide is only a small fraction of the atmospheric mass. The viewer is left to infer that means it couldn't really matter. But even a beginning meteorology student could tell you that the relative masses of gases are irrelevant to their effects on radiative balance.

A director not intending to produce pure propaganda would have tried to eliminate that piece of disinformation.” For further help in understanding the weakness of the film’s claims, see the following resources: Real Climate, 'Swindled', Campaign Against Climate Change, including a rebuttal to the film by Sir John Houghton, who chairs the Scientific Assessment Working Group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Royal Society: Facts and fictions about climate change: “I Was Duped” - Déjà Vu?

Many readers will be aware that Durkin has previous ‘form’. In 1997, Channel 4 broadcast his three-part series, Against Nature, which suggested present-day environmentalists were the true heirs of the Nazis. (See George Monbiot, ‘The Revolution Has Been Televised,’ The Guardian, December 18, 1997; ) Several interviewees who appeared in the film felt they had been misled about the programme-maker’s agenda. Responding to complaints, the Independent Television Commission (ITC) found that the editing of interviews with four contributors had "distorted or misrepresented their known views". (Geoffrey Lean, ‘Climate change: An inconvenient truth... for C4,’ The Independent, March 11, 2007) In addition, the ITC found: "The interviewees had also been misled as to the content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part." (Paul McCann, ‘Channel 4 told to apologise to Greens,’ The Independent, April 2, 1998) Ten years on, it appears that history may have repeated itself. In his letter of complaint to the film-makers cited above, Carl Wunsch writes: “I have some experience in dealing with TV and print reporters and do understand something of the ways in which one can be misquoted, quoted out of context, or otherwise misinterpreted. Some of that is inevitable in the press of time or space or in discussions of complicated issues. Never before, however, have I had an experience like this one. My appearance in the ‘Global Warming Swindle’ is deeply embarrassing, and my professional reputation has been damaged. I was duped---an uncomfortable position in which to be. “At a minimum, I ask that the film should never be seen again publicly with my participation included. Channel 4 surely owes an apology to its viewers, and perhaps WAGTV owes something to Channel 4. I will be taking advice as to whether I should proceed to make some more formal protest.”

Eight of the scientists in the film - John Christy, Paul Reiter, Richard Lindzen, Paul Driessen, Roy Spencer, Patrick Michaels, Fred Singer and Tim Ball - are linked to American neo-conservative and right-wing think-tanks, many of which have received tens of millions of dollars from Exxon. Greenpeace provides a fascinating online ’map’ detailing how Exxon funds these climate sceptics. Go to: http://www.exxonsecrets.org/index.php?mapid=831 (click ‘Launch’ then click ‘skip intro’) In his book, Green Backlash, environmental journalist Andrew Rowell noted that Fred Singer has also attacked scientific and environmental stances on other green issues such as ozone, acid rain, automobile emissions and even whaling. Singer has worked for companies such as Exxon, Shell, Arco, Unocal and Sun. According to the Environmental Research Foundation, a non-governmental organisation: “For years, Singer was a professor at the University of Virginia where he was funded by energy companies to pump out glossy pamphlets pooh-poohing climate change.” (Quoted, Sharon Beder, Global Spin, Green Books, 1997, p.94) Rowell wrote that a quarter of Patrick Michaels’ research funding was reportedly received from companies such as Edison Electric Institute, the largest utility trade association in America. Michaels’ magazine, World Climate Review, was funded by the Western Fuel Association and a video produced by him was funded by coal companies and distributed by the Denver Coal Club. (Rowell, Green Backlash, Routledge, 1996, p.143) Both Singer and Michaels represented the fossil fuel lobby’s Global Climate Coalition and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a leader in global warming scepticism. Journalist Ross Gelbspan noted that in May 1995, Richard Lindzen and Patrick Michaels were hired as expert witnesses to testify on behalf of Western Fuels Association, a $400 million consortium of coal suppliers and coal-fired utilities. Gelbspan said of Lindzen: “I don't know very many supporters of Mr Lindzen who are not in the pay of the fossil fuel lobby. Dr Lindzen himself, his research is publicly funded, but Dr Lindzen makes, as he told me, $2,500 a day consulting with fossil fuel interests, and that includes his consulting with OPEC, his consulting with the Australian coal industry, his consulting with the US coal industry and so forth. That's not to say Dr Lindzen doesn't believe what he says, but it is to say that he stands in very sharp distinction to really just about virtually all of the climate scientists around the world.” (Tony Jones, ‘Journalist puts global warming sceptics under the spotlight,’ Australian Broadcasting Corporation, March 7, 2005;) Journalist George Monbiot wrote of Philip Stott: “Professor Stott is a retired biogeographer. Like almost all the prominent sceptics he has never published a peer-reviewed paper on climate change. But he has made himself available to dismiss climatologists' peer-reviewed work as the ‘lies’ of ecofundamentalists.” (Monbiot, ‘Beware the fossil fools,’ The Guardian, April 27, 2004;) Paul Driessen is a fellow at two right-wing think tanks in the US, which are part of the Wise Use movement. One of the think tanks is headed by Ron Arnold, who has spent the last twenty years attacking the environmental movement. His fellow director is a fundraiser for America's gun lobby. The list goes on... By contrast, Greenpeace spokeswoman Mhairi Dunlop said her organisation had been interviewed by Durkin but none of the material had been included in the film: "They interviewed us but I guess what we said didn't fit in with the [story] they were peddling." (McCandless, op. cit) Following the film’s broadcast, Professor Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society - the government-sponsored academy of sciences for the United Kingdom - has said that many factors contribute to global warming but it is clear that emissions of "greenhouse gases," particularly CO2, are to blame for most of the current temperature rise. Rees added: "Those who promote fringe scientific views but ignore the weight of evidence are playing a dangerous game. They run the risk of diverting attention from what we can do to ensure the world's population has the best possible future." (Ibid) On March 11 the Observer published a letter from a group of climate scientists responding to Durkin’s film: “This programme misrepresented the state of scientific knowledge on global warming, claiming climate scientists are presenting lies. This is an outrageous statement... “We defend the right of people to be sceptical, but for C4 to imply that the thousands of scientists and published peer-reviewed papers, summarised in the recent international science assessment, are misguided or lying lacks scientific credibility and simply beggars belief.” (Alan Thorpe, Natural Environment Research Council, Brian Hoskins, University of Reading, Jo Haigh, Imperial College London, Myles Allen, University of Oxford, Peter Cox, University of Exeter, Colin Prentice, QUEST Programme, letter to the Observer, Sunday March 11, 2007;) Viewed from one perspective, Channel 4 has done a huge public disservice in spreading absurd and mendacious arguments guaranteed to generate confusion. This at a time when a fragile momentum is building on the need to take urgent action on the very real threat of catastrophic climate change. But from another perspective it may well be that this film does for climate scepticism what Tony Blair’s “dodgy dossiers” did for the pro-war movement ahead of the invasion of Iraq. Wildly distorted propaganda often does have a powerful initial impact. But stretched beyond a certain point of unreality, it also has a tendency to turn on, and bite, the propagandists. Durkin’s grandiose prediction that his film “will go down in history” will surely prove correct, although perhaps not for the reasons he imagined.

SUGGESTED ACTION The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you decide to write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone. Send a complaint to Channel 4: See material on 'Complaining to C4', including a model letter, at http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1820 Send a complaint to Ofcom: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/progs/specific/ Please send a copy of your emails to: editor@medialens.org Please do NOT reply to the email address from which this media alert originated. Please instead email us at: editor@medialens.org This media alert will be archived shortly here: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/0313pure_propaganda_the.php The Media Lens book 'Guardians of Power: The Myth Of The Liberal Media' by David Edwards and David Cromwell (Pluto Books, London) was published in 2006. For further details, including reviews, interviews and extracts, please click here:

Brazil's ethanol slaves: 200,000 migrant sugar cutters who prop up renewable energy boom

Brazil's ethanol slaves: 200,000 migrant sugar cutters who prop up renewable energy boom

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2029908,00.html

Tom Phillips in Palmares Paulista

Friday March 9, 2007

Guardian

Behind rusty gates, the heart of Brazil's energy revolution can be found in the stale air of a squalid red-brick tenement building. Inside, dozens of road-weary migrant workers are crammed into minuscule cubicles, filled with rickety bunk-beds and unpacked bags, preparing for their first day at work in the sugar plantations of Sao Paulo.

This is Palmares Paulista, a rural town 230 miles from Sao Paulo and the centre of a South American renewable energy boom that is transforming Brazil into a global reference point on how to cut carbon emissions and oil imports at the same time.

Inside the prison-like construction are the cortadores de cana - sugar cane cutters - part of a destitute migrant workforce of about 200,000 men who help prop up Brazil's ethanol industry.

Biofuels are mega-business in Brazil. Such has been the success of the country's ethanol programme - launched during the 1970s military dictatorship - that it is now attracting attention from around the world. Yesterday President George Bush arrived in Sao Paulo to announce an "ethanol alliance" with his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva. The bilateral agreement has been touted by the Brazilian media as the first step towards the creation of an "ethanol Opec".

Last year sugar and alcohol were Brazil's second biggest agricultural export products, worth an estimated $8bn (£4bn). Producers, meanwhile, expect the country's sugar cane production to jump by 55% in the coming six years, largely because of growing demand from the US and Europe. They hope that closer trade ties with the US in particular will help accelerate the ethanol industry's growth, providing jobs and funding the construction of dozens of new processing plants in the region.

But drive to the outskirts of Palmares Paulista and a much bleaker picture emerges of what President Lula has dubbed Brazil's "energy revolution". On one side, thick green plantations of sugar cane stretch out as far as the eye can see; on the other lopsided red-brick shacks crowd together, home to hundreds of impoverished workers who risk life and limb to provide the local factories with sugar cane.

Economic refugees fleeing the country's arid and impoverished north-east, these men earn as little as 400 reais (£100) a month to provide the raw material that is fuelling this energy revolution.

Palmares Paulista is both a burgeoning agricultural town and a social catastrophe. "They arrive here with nothing," said Valeria Gardiano, who heads the social service department in Palmares, a town of 9,000 whose population swells each year with the influx of between 4,000 and 5,000 migrant workers.

"They have the clothes on their bodies and nothing else. They bring their children with malnutrition, their ill mothers-in-law. We try to reduce the problem. But there is no way we can fix it 100%. It is total exploitation," she said.

Activists go even further. They say the "cortadores" are effectively slaves and complain that Brazil's ethanol industry is, in fact, a shadowy world of middle men and human rights abuses.

"They come here because they are forced from their homes by the lack of work," said Francisco Alves, a professor from nearby Sao Carlos University who has spent more than 20 years studying Sao Paulo's migrant workforce. "They will do anything to get by."

That includes working 12-hour shifts in scorching heat and earning just over 50p per tonne of sugar cane cut, before returning to squalid, overcrowded "guest houses" rented to them at extortionate prices by unscrupulous landlords, often ex-sugar cutters themselves.

Faced with exhausting work in temperatures of over 30C (86F), some will die. According to Sister Ines Facioli, from the Pastoral do Migrante, a Catholic support network based in nearby Guariba, 17 workers died between 2004 and 2006 as a result of overwork or exhaustion.

But the annual exodus from the northeast continues, and as foreign investment in the ethanol industry increases the numbers are expected to grow further.

Among the newest arrivals in Palmares are the Santos family, four brothers aged 19, 22, 24 and 26 who last week stepped off an illegally chartered bus after a 24-hour journey from the arid backlands of Bahia state. "We need the work," said Sidney Alves dos Santos, 24, sitting in the stuffy shack that will be his home until the harvest ends in December. "There's no other way."

In another tatty hovel Pedro Castro, a 26-year-old from Bahia, remembered last year's harvest. "It's like you are inside a bread oven," he said of the thick protective clothes needed in the plantations to protect workers from their sharp machetes. "But there's no work back home. What else are we supposed to do?"

At just after 5pm the square outside Palmares' church fills with the growl of bus engines. A fleet of a dozen battered Mercedes coaches rattle through the town centre, filled with exhausted workers returning from a day in the fields.

"It breaks your heart," said Cristina Vieira, a member of the local Catholic mission that offers support to the workers. "They think it rains money in Sao Paulo but they are chasing an illusion. When you talk to them a lot of them say: 'If I'd have known it would be like this I would never have come.' They have no rights and they can't complain to anyone - in a certain way they don't exist."

In numbers

£4bn

Annual value of Brazil's sugar and alcohol exports

55%

Anticipated increase in sugar cane production over the next six years

£100

Equivalent value of the average sugar cane cutter's monthly wage

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

Posted on Fri, Mar. 09, 2007

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/16864347.htm

LATIN AMERICAN TOUR | Brazil is first stop for president
Bush seeks biofuels accord

Hopes are high that the two countries will agree on a plan to boost ethanol.

By JACK CHANG
McClatchy Newspapers

SAO PAULO, Brazil | President Bush arrived Thursday in Sao Paulo, where he and Brazilian President Luiz Inancio Lula da Silva are to issue a statement today on biofuel technology.

Sao Paulo is the first stop of a seven-day Latin American tour that will also take Bush to Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico.

A cooperation agreement between the United States and Brazil would be a historic opportunity for the world’s two largest producers of ethanol to spur global use of the fuel.

Any agreement may hinge on whether the United States drops a 54-cent-per-gallon tariff and a 2.5 percent ad valorem charge imposed on imports of Brazilian ethanol.

The Bush administration has ruled out eliminating the tariff, which has discouraged Brazilian ethanol from entering the U.S. market.

Still, optimism is high that Bush and Lula will make strides toward setting standards that would make ethanol an international commodity and developing aid programs that would encourage Central American and Caribbean countries to turn more of their sugar cane into ethanol.

U.S. ethanol boosters say an agreement with Brazil would help wean Americans off oil imported from hostile nations such as Iran and Venezuela. Bush has called for Americans to increase their use of ethanol sevenfold within a decade.

More important, however, would be establishing a global marketplace for ethanol, which would benefit both the United States and Brazil. They produce more than 70 percent of the world’s ethanol.

About 10,000 demonstrators chanting anti-Bush slogans blocked traffic in Sao Paulo before Bush’s arrival and vandalized cars and business. Seventeen people were injured, 16 of them police officers.

In Rio de Janeiro, protesters attacked the U.S. consulate, breaking windows and splattering it with paint. None of the demonstrations was near the Sao Paulo hotel where Bush spent the night.

Are Big Enviro Groups 'Holding Back' Anti-Warming Movement?

By Megan Tady, The NewStandard
Posted on March 19, 2007, Printed on March 19, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/49407/

The heat is on environmental groups and politicians to churn out proposals for stabilizing the planet's rising temperatures, but some environmentalists say existing plans to cool climate change are timid. Their criticism reveals a rift between two approaches: preserving the American way of life at the expense of quicker solutions, or changing the structure of US society to counter an unprecedented threat.

The dominant approach to human-induced global warming revolves around slow but dramatic reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions by mid-century. The mainstream environmental community, along with a handful of politicians and corporations, is calling for various regulations and market-based actions to reduce greenhouse-gas output by 60 to 80 percent over the next 43 years.

This goal is based on what some scientists have estimated the United States needs to do to help the world limit the rise in global temperatures to less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The goal presupposes that some climate change is inevitable. In 2006, a government-commissioned report in the United Kingdom called the "Stern Review" said that the "worst impacts of climate change can be substantially reduced" by cutting greenhouse emissions to meet the two-degree goal.

Even if climate warming is kept to two-degrees or lower, the report said there will still be "serious impacts" on "human life and on the environment." For instance, the report predicted the disappearance of drinking water in the South American Andes and parts of Southern Africa and the Mediterranean, up to 10 million people affected by yearly coastal flooding, and 10 to 40 percent of species on Earth going extinct. "They're really holding the whole movement back by setting their sights so low."

Noting that "2050 is a long time away," David Morris, vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, said he wants to see action right away. "So what I want to know is, what are [environmental groups and politicians] going to do tomorrow?"

Morris and others who want to see more-immediate and deeper action fear such incremental changes are downplaying the urgency of the situation. "They're really holding the whole movement back by setting their sights so low," said Brian Tokar, Biotechnology Project director at the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont.

Market-based solutions

The basic premise behind long-term plans for emissions reduction is that moving away from a fossil-fuel-based energy system will take time because market forces will take a while to make renewable technology prices competitive.

"It's still possible that we can avoid dangerous climate change and cut emissions in half by mid-century through a process that doesn't require an immediate shutdown of all of our coal-powered plants," said John Coequyt, Greenpeace energy policy analyst. "We can still do this in a phased -- and as a result -- economically beneficial manner."

"There's no reason we can't get there within the next five to ten years with significant funding."

In January, Greenpeace published what it called a "blueprint for solving global warming." The plan calls for 80 percent of electricity to be produced from renewable energy, 72 percent less carbon dioxide emissions, and for the US's oil use to be cut in half -- all by 2050.

The timeline is based on removing the market barriers to green energy, while making dirty energy more expensive. It does not call for significant public funding of renewable energy or government investments in new energy infrastructure or public transportation.

Tokar dismissed the 2050 timeline, saying the US could cut greenhouse-gas emissions more quickly if pressure groups took a different stance and instead called for immediate government intervention.

"The only thing that can change it is a significant investment in public funds to really jumpstart the industry," Tokar said. "There's no reason we can't get there within the next five to ten years with significant funding."

Coequyt of Greenpeace agreed with Tokar that the United States could reach emissions-reduction goals sooner if not for the perceived need to depend primarily on the market to make renewable energy the best choice for consumers.

"That's definitely the case; we could see faster action," Coequyt said. "It's hard for us to be a lot faster than what we put in our scenario, but if the government made it a true national priority, I don't think there's any doubt that we could go faster."

Despite this admission, Greenpeace is not pushing for the government to get heavily involved in funding and distributing renewable energy, but instead promotes weaker reforms like removing subsidies for fossil-fuel industries and forcing prices to reflect the actual costs of environmental damage. To reduce market barriers faced by clean-energy technology, Greenpeace advocates offering producers of sustainable power priority access to the electricity grid and reducing the governmental red tape that inhibits their startup.

"None of [the solutions presented by mainstream groups] address the power structures. None of them address corporations. None of them address a lack of democracy."

"What would be the other option?" asked Coequyt. "Mandate that every house has to have solar panels on it and that coal plants have to shut down?"

According to Tokar, Greenpeace and other groups should be calling for the funding of public transportation and subsidies to make housing more energy efficient. "We can do all of these things immediately," he said.

Dissidents also rebuke the mainstream environmental community for not pushing hard for a less-energy-intensive lifestyle in the United States.

Coequyt acknowledged Greenpeace is not yet urging Americans to fundamentally change the way they live to fight climate change. "What we're saying right now is that we have the technology, and we can reduce our energy through efficiency use so much, and we can do it without having to completely change our lifestyle," he said. "But it is certainly possible that in the near future we may have to have a more-urgent call."

But for some environmentalists, making the urgent call for lifestyle changes -- from something as tame as driving less to more radical changes like adopting a vegetarian, localized diet -- should go hand in hand with the push for larger, system-wide greenhouse-gas reductions and energy efficiency. They say radically scaling back consumption is needed to ensure global environmental sustainability and equity.

Mark Hertsgaard, an environmental journalist, said that to avoid "irrevocably cooking" the planet, "we cannot continue this resource-intensive life." Given a rising global population and unmet energy needs of poorer countries, he said: "At the end of the day, we also have to cut back on our appetite. That's just arithmetic."

Morris, of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, said environmentalists need to start pushing large-scale changes into the public discourse. "We need to start asking for the kind of sacrifice that will be required," he said.

Political Disconnect

Another plan published by the United States Climate Action Partnership (US-CAP), a coalition of corporations and environmental groups, calls for legislation to rapidly enact a "mandatory emission-reduction pathway," with an ultimate goal of 60 to 80 percent carbon reductions by 2050.

The partnership includes the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and the World Resources Institute. They are joined by nine corporations -- including DuPont, BP America and General Electric.

Vicki Arroyo, who is with the Pew Center, said their proposal is "ambitious."

But, Arroyo said, the plan "can't start today" because passing legislation takes time. "There really is no way in our system to move any faster than what's being recommended here," Arroyo said.

Many of the proposals reflect the need to court the Bush administration and politicians, who have refused to call for tough measures on climate change.

Bill McKibben, an environmentalist organizing national demonstrations against climate change with the new "Step It Up" campaign, likened the United States's stance on global warming to an "ocean liner heading in the other direction entirely." He said, "[Eighty percent reductions by 2050] seems to be at the moment the outer limit of what's politically possible."

For author and radical environmentalist Derrick Jensen, the obstacles to faster changes presented by the US political system, illustrate the need for more-holistic measures.

"None of [the solutions presented by mainstream groups] address the power structures," Jensen said. "None of them address corporations. None of them address a lack of democracy. ... The environmental groups are not questioning this larger mentality that's killing the planet."

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/49407/