With a few exceptions, most agree global warming is an issue that requires immediate attention.
The science strongly suggests the warming of the planet will increase intense heat that will negatively impact crops and livestock.
With more people being potentially exposed to diseases like malaria and cholera, this phenomenon will undoubtedly impact adversely low-income individuals and seniors. And with the increased potential for events such as Hurricane Katrina, we stand to witness a rise in ecological, sociological and health-related catastrophes.
As an issue, global warming impacts everything from the economy to national security.
Given that the United States is the leader in the use of fossil fuels globally, it is incumbent upon the presidential candidates to offer proactive solutions. This is especially true for the Democratic presidential candidates who plan to make global warming a major issue of difference in the general election.
Though the conventional wisdom suggests Sen. Hillary Clinton is the policy wonk, while Sen. Barack Obama is the masterful rhetorician, I found their position papers on energy and the environment quite similar in their approach with each missing a key component.
Clinton's plan centers on a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, stronger energy and auto efficiency standards and a significant increase in green research funding. In addition, she suggests her plan will reduce America's reliance on foreign oil and address the looming climate crisis.
She sets targets, the plan would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 to avoid the worst effects of global warming, and cut foreign oil imports by two-thirds from 2030 projected levels, more than 10 million barrels per day.
Obama supports implementation of a market-based cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions by the amount scientists say is necessary: 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Obama's cap-and-trade system would require all pollution credits to be auctioned.
Clinton and Obama offer very specific environmental platforms. Their position papers combine for nearly 2,000 words of similar detail, but there were two words that were glaringly missing: China and India.
Any environmental plan that does not include working directly with China and India to reduce their global emissions is merely campaign rhetoric.
The rapidly expanding economies of China and India are showing a dramatic increase in CO2 emissions. China, which is already the second largest polluter, behind the United States, increased its emissions by 33 percent between 1992 and 2002, India's emissions grew 57 percent during the same period.
China and India's economic growth depends largely on high polluting, coal-based manufacturing. According to projections, China will soon surpass the United States as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, which scientists say cause global warming.
Last year, China proposed a plan that would improve energy efficiency while resisting any mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions.
Global warming is inclusive in nature, making no distinction from where it will draw its greenhouse gases. The next president, regardless of party, must try where the present administration failed. This, however, is easier said than done.
The next president must make the argument to China and India that the manner in which they are now realizing economic growth (the same manner the United States used for more than a century) is bad for the planet. Though the task may be an arduous one, it is a challenge that the next commander in chief must address forthrightly.
Whatever good intentions Clinton and Obama have toward tackling global warming, the fact that neither mentions a way to include two countries that total roughly 2 billion in population and are engaged in rapid economic growth built on high polluting, coal-based energy, renders both plans incomplete.
Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and syndicated columnist. He is the author of "Strip Mall Patriotism: Moral Reflections of the Iraq War." E-mail him at byron@byronspeaks.
Follow Byron Williams on Twitter: www.twitter.com/byronspeaks
Jake Schmidt: China Signals New Efforts to Address their Global Warming Pollution
For too long, China and the U.S. have hidden behind the other's inaction. Yet both countries are changing; both countries are beginning to act. Now there is opening for partnership.
I agree that earth warmed in the 20th century.So naturally we are still near the warming peak but have started the decline from the 5 year moving average peak in about 2003.
The TSI is only a proxy for not a measure of the Sun - earth climate interaction.
It is clearly IMPOSSIBLE from observing an increasing trendline when the second derivative happens, and a downward slope begins. How can you possibly state with any conviction without data that we are "near the warming peak" is simple hogwash.
You don't know when the peak will occur, and how the resultant trend will continue. We are currently undergoing a mixture of localized climates based on odd local conditions. China is cooling because of intense particulate haze. This is often known as "dimming", where temperatures are cooling because direct sunlight never reaches the ground. As they become more efficient, they will reverse this, and we'll see a rocketing of temperatures.
One other very critical note- we are seeing serious increases in water temperatures. This year alone saw the greatest increase in arctic ice melt from below the surface that has ever been recorded.
What makes this critical, is not the total melt, but the melt caused by increasing temperatures of the Arctic Ocean. This is a trend that takes decades to reveal itself, as oceanic temperatures are very slow to change. It has been postulated that we will no longer have Arctic coverage during summer months within the next 10 years, which will also dramatically increase global temperatures.
Ice reflects sunlight, water absorbs it.
The greatest changes have been seen in higher latitudes; indeed we are seeing the end of the "permafrost" as it is turning to mud in much of the Northern Hemisphere! How does any of this data reconcile with your supposed "end" of the warming trend?
In addition to diplomacy and grand plans to reduce carbon emissions, we would be advised to also begin planning for floods, famine and population migrations.
Much of the CO2 production increase in India and China has been not for native consumption, but for US and EU production. In essence, we've shifted pollution and carbon emissions from the first world, to the third, but we've kept our consumption levels at the same and indeed accelerated rates.
So the clue is a carbon tax. If an item travels more than 1000 km from point of origin to destination, tax it. The more the distance, the more the tax.
This will dramatically reduce imports, clean the environment, and bring jobs back to first-world industrialized nations.
We lost credibility and leverage over the last several years under Bush, mouthing the words peace and democracy while fighting wars over oil and greed. We have a hypocrisy problem.
This election can help to set it right. Americans need to commit themselves to cutting emissions, consumption, conservation, and with redoubled investment in alternative energy. Then maybe others will listen to us again.
After all, the majority of global warming damage done to date has been caused by the US. Other developed nations sure... but mostly us.
So I think the candidates are not wrong to put forward a plan for America, and focus on America first.
And guess what -- China *is* taking steps to be green... Al Gore spoke in Beijing at the Academy of Sciences, as shown in the documentary INCONVENIENT TRUTH. The one good thing about totalitarianism is that when government gets behind a project, things get done.
There are towns where the streetlights are all solar powered. There are experimental green buildings, even a green community. Imagine if China invests in solar energy, but America lags behind, quibbling over who goes first... Do we want to lead the way? Or do we want to just be yet another consumer market for imported goods?
If China were as a single territory to adopt and develop electric cars, they would dominate the world market.
It should be us instead. American investments and commitment to alternative energy is not something for debate. We need it to fight global warming, to preserve the planet for future generations -- and in the short term, we need it to be competitive.
It's pure self interest that should motivate America in becoming green.
http://tinyurl.com/yzh39x
http://tinyurl.com/3ddvuj
In a warming world, carbon sinks will become carbon emitters, not only significantly reducing the ability of nature to remove CO2 from the air (estimated 30% reduction by 2030!), but also dramatically increase natural greenhouse gas emissions, overwhelming any cuts we make.
According to Dr James Hansen of NASA, any feasible planetary rescue plan must include a method of removing CO2 from the air.
Mr William's article about China and India emissions growth making Obama's (or Clinton and McCain's) emissions cutting plan unworkable only partly illustrates why no American political leader has proponed a realistic plan to avoid environmental catastrophe. Instead, to be realistic, they would also have to propose a method of removing vast amounts of CO2 from the air.
I suggest the low cost, highly scalable, and technically feasible method of biosequestration. Read my blog at www.myspace.com/dobermanmacleod for more information. Cutting emissions and waiting for a damaged Earth to remove the excess CO2 from the air is a weak mitigation strategy. Indian and Chinese emissions growth is but one reason why.
Oil dependent transportation and the oil wars which it necessitates are the real threats to our society, a return to warmer climate is not.
"those who out OF religious fundamentalism ascribe to the biblical/creationist view of a 6000 year old origin of the earth and humankind"
A very interesting, and somewhat erroneous article given the fact that China is far out pacing the US in renewable energy adoption and is the only country of the three you mention that is expected to reach a percentage of 18% renewable energy usage by 2020
Sure, it needs to be said that the presidential candidate needs to have an energy policy (that was G.W.'s motto after all), but the above is simply literary three card monty to get readers to look away from the fact that both the Clinton and Obama "plans" are far behind many other nations.
r
www.china-crossroads.com
cap 'n trade.
They BOTH want to cap 'n trade.
WHY?
Conventional Wisdom!
Nobody wants to talk carbon tax.
We will end up with a global C&T market.
Polluters keep on polluting while they buy allowances from who-knows-where and pass the cost on to consumers.
IN THEORY, somehow, that money finds its way back into the "market" system that develops the greener solutions to carbon emissions.
If the aim is to take money from consumers and put it back into the financial system so that we can fund greener solutions to solve our problems, then I have a simpler means to do it.
Carbon tax.
Conventional wisdom says NO.
Status Quo says NO.
Logic says yes.
Who needs a convoluted C&T with its derivatives and hedges and futures and future derivatives and future hedges, all of which are just taking a slice of the cost that consumers will have to pay eventually.
To Hillary and Barack: Get yer heads out of yer asses and FUND the solutions we need NOW.
Kill the Cap and trade system of pollution allowance trading.
NO POLLUTION ALLOWANCES!
NO POLLUTION ALLOWED!
STOP THE MADNESS!
http://www.presidentialprofiles2008.org/
This is a HUGE policy difference between the two candidates, and deserves further discussion, although the media seems to avoid it in their debates.
Thank you.
When it comes to NUCLEAR, he is neither here nor there.
When it comes to LIQUID COAL, he is neither here nor there.
Sounds like he favors keeping everything ON THE TABLE so that, minimally, we can figure out if we want it OFF or ON the table.
The "everything-is-in" energy policy of Barack Obama is evidence to me that he does not have an energy policy.
Would that we could all do everything.
Energy Policy is about priorities.
His policy is written by the energy industry, as can be seen from its trademark - It's all ON THE TABLE.
It's a risk-free policy, politically speaking, one that avoids completely the responsibility for providing real leadership in making energy choices.
Here's a rub.
I don't believe him.
I would like to believe that both Hillary and Obama support the other policy choice mentioned: that of requiring all existing and new coal plants to re-tool or upgrade to be able to capture carbon emissions at the source - this, once the technology is available.
It is vitally important that both candidates support this option for the simple reason that it enables us to move forward in a well-planned manner to continue the development of coal-based electricity production as a policy foundation.
Only THEN can we begin to evaluate the relative benefits and costs associated with continuing to support nuclear energy as a choice, or NOT.
"Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology: Obama will significantly increase the resources devoted to the commercialization and deployment of low-carbon coal technologies. Obama will consider whatever policy tools are necessary, including standards that ban new traditional coal facilities, to ensure that we move quickly to commercialize and deploy low carbon coal technology."
This is tiring, hearing people invoke what "the other guy" is doing, when in fact the American People and their Lawmakers and the Administrators of their Government, have a jurisdiction and control over only themselves, and what they do, and not over "the other guy" and what he does.
Whether intentional or not, this invoking of "the other guy" and what he does, seems to serve mostly to confusing and distracting our own efforts to reduce our own fossil fuel emissions (of which we are the global leader in making, as the essay mentions)...
Whether intentional or not, this "other guy" argument seems to paralyze our own actions in this matter, and threatens to stop our efforts, and scuttle them.
Whether this is intentional or not in the above essay, it certainly is intentionally part of the argument, made by the U.S. industries most affected by the Regulatory efforts to address hazardous emissions.
It's like listening to the weaseling excuses made by children: "But look at the other guy (and not at me), look at what he's doing!"
Look at China and India, look at what they're doing!
It's childish, and as an argument being made by those in the U.S., it serves to only confuse and distract from the Regulation of our own fossil fuel emissions (of which again, we are the global leader in).
Our jurisdiction in this world extends only to what we do, and not to others.
Get your own house in order first, and make your own efforts regarding what it is you do, and what it is you control... before you start judging your neighbor's house, and what it is he does.