Obama can't postpone action to reverse global warming

Obama can't postpone action to reverse global warming

• PUBLISHED DECEMBER 2, 2008 12:15 AM

About 10,000 representatives from nearly every nation began a 12-day meeting Monday in Poznan, Poland, in hopes of crafting a new pact to address global climate change. The pact will replace the Kyoto Treaty, which expires in 2012.

The Kyoto Treaty suffered because the Bush administration refused to have the U.S. ratify the agreement, claiming it would harm the economy. But, according to news reports, hopes are high that under President-elect Barack Obama the U.S. role will change and Obama will become a leader in addressing the single most daunting challenge facing the world.

The nations gathered at the United Nations Climate Change Conference have set a deadline of December 2009 to have an agreement ready to sign. That gives the Obama administration little time, but the urgency is real. Time is running out.

A report came out of the International Union for Conservation of Nature meeting in Barcelona in October that 35 percent of the world's birds, 52 percent of its amphibians and 71 percent of warm-water reef-building corals are likely to be particularly susceptible to climate change. The report said specialized habitat requirements, such as species with water-dependent larvae and those unable to disperse due to barriers such as large water bodies or human-transformed habitats are most at risk. IUCN is the world's oldest and largest global environmental network.

The damage is already being seen. Discovery News reported in October that fewer than half of the populations of four species of amphibians in Yellowstone National Park remained 15 years after an initial survey in 1992 and 1993. Researchers blamed climate change.

Scientists have also blamed carbon dioxide pouring into the air for a rapid change in the acidity of water off an island on the coast of Washington state. The ocean there is becoming acidic 10 times faster than expected, and the island's ecosystem is changing rapidly as a consequence, according to the author of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

During an 8-year-period, 10 to 20 percent of the mussels on the island have been replaced by acid-tolerant algae and 60 to 70 percent could disappear in coming decades, according to the study's author, J. Timothy Wootton.

That could be a pretty big deal, he told National Public Radio's Richard Harris, because mussels provide shelter for many animals that live along the tide line and they form a key

part of the food web that includes commercial fish species.

It will require hard work and focus for Obama to take the lead the international community hopes he will in time to meet a December 2009 deadline, but the president-elect is already committed to building a green infrastructure based on more mass transit, alternative energy technologies, more fuel-efficient cars – a new infrastructure that will reduce America's carbon footprint.

Building a green infrastructure, as envisioned in a report from the Center for American Progress, led by John Podesta, chief of Obama's transition team, would not only free America from dependence on foreign oil, it would energize the nation's economy.

"This report demonstrates how a new Green Recovery program that spends $100 billion over two years would create 2 million new jobs, with a significant proportion in the struggling construction and manufacturing sectors," Podesta wrote when the report was released in September. The state-by-state breakdown in the report shows North Carolina receiving $2.9 billion of the "green" economic recovery program and projects the creation of 62,015 jobs as a result of the stimulus.

But the economic crisis the country and the world face will make achieving these goals a gargantuan challenge. Utility companies across the U.S. are cutting their budgets for clean energy projects, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Duke Energy Corp cut a rooftop solar project in North Carolina by half, to 400 roofs from 800 roofs. Duke also removed $400 million from its 2009 budget that it had planned to spend on wind power.

The economic downturn also makes it more likely Obama will run into opposition trying to implement the "cap and trade" approach for reducing greenhouse gases that he favors. The government would set an overall cap on how much global warming pollution businesses can emit, tightening the cap over time. Businesses would be able to buy and sell pollution credits.

The program would likely result in families paying more for electricity, for gasoline and for natural gas or oil to heat their homes, Dallas Burtraw, an economist at the Washington think-tank Resources for the Future, told NPR.

The government could mitigate the impact on households by auctioning the credits that allow companies to pollute, instead of giving them away. By doing so it could raise $100 billion a year. Some portion of that could go to households in the form of an energy rebate.

Challenging as it will be, Obama can't afford to fail to meet his commitment to move America toward a green energy future. Too much depends on rapid action to reduce the greenhouse gases that are slowly killing our planet.