30 years of earth day: Daunting as it is, global warming is a solvable crisis

30 years of Earth Day: Daunting as it is, global warming is a solvable crisis

By JOHN NOEL
and ROBERT PREGULMAN

Thirty years ago, the environment was firmly in the public's mind but repeatedly overlooked in Washington — until April 22, 1970. That first Earth Day, millions of people joined in a mass demonstration of concern for the environment, shaking the political establishment and putting the issue firmly in the middle of public discourse. Within three years, Congress banned DDT, passed the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air Act, and an executive order established a federal agency to protect the environment.

This legacy has blossomed so that we now have safeguards that protect our water, control solid waste, and clean up toxic pollution.

But the environment still needs defenders. Today, we face a global threat that no one imagined at the first Earth Day — global warming.

Every few weeks, it seems, scientists are finding more evidence that global warming is occurring now, faster than we thought and with serious implications for our health, our environment, and our economic well being.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently released a report showing that, since 1976, the earth has been warming faster than scientists predicted.

Another report followed a few weeks later showing that the oceans have warmed significantly.

The 1990s were the hottest decade on record; 1998 and 1999 saw some of the worst weather-related damage on record. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the impacts of global warming in Tennessee could cause a 2-3 degree aggregate temperature increase in the state and a decrease in forested areas of up to 15% within the next 100 years.

Carbon dioxide, the pollution that causes global warming, comes from the same sources as the pollution that causes smog, lung disease, acid rain, and mercury contamination of lakes and streams — electric-generating power plants, cars, and heavy industry. It's time to move away from 19th century technologies that rely on burning coal and oil and utilize the cleaner, more efficient alternatives available to us.

This is especially important in Tennessee. A recent U.S. Public Interest Research Group report ranks TVA — which operates all 6 coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and several more in the Tennessee Valley — third in the nation for sulfur dioxide emissions, second for nitrogen oxide emissions, third for carbon dioxide emissions, and fifth for mercury emissions.

Nevertheless, clean energy, cleaner air, and a healthier environment are within our grasp. There are affordable, readily available technologies that can substitute for coal and oil burning and give us the same mobility and electricity we want.

These alternatives are renewable energy from undepletable resources — the wind and sun — and energy efficiency technologies that allow us to get much more power out of the fuels we use.

These solutions will also help lead America into an age of energy security when our pocketbooks will not be vulnerable to the whims of oil-producing nations. There is no better way to inoculate consumers against the unpredictable political winds in OPEC countries than by utilizing our own clean resources.

Yesterday, as Earth Day 2000 was observed, a goal was set: Build political support for the Clean Energy Agenda — an ambitious but achievable blueprint for a clean energy future.

• Clean power from renewable sources like the wind and sun, and double the efficiency of energy use in homes, buildings, transportation and industry.

• Clean air with strict limits on the pollution from power plants.

• Clean cars that go much farther on a gallon of gas or don't even need gasoline at all.

• Clean investments of federal funds in renewable and other energy technologies rather than subsidizing the oil and coal industries.

Thirty years from now, hopefully Americans will look back on Earth Day 2000 as the watershed event that flipped the switch on dirty energy technologies. It should mark the beginning of the end for America's addiction to dirty fossil fuels.

(Noel owns a real estate investment company in Nashville and is on the board of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. Pregulman is the southern field director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, an environmental and consumer advocacy organization.)