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By Bill Mckibben
When global warming first emerged as a potential crisis
in the late 80s, one academic analyst called it the
public policy problem from hell. The years since have
only proven him more astute.
How well we handle global warming will determine
what kind of century we inhabit - & indeed what kind
of planet we leave behind to everyone & everything
that follows us. It is the environmental question, the
one that cuts closest to home & also floats off most
easily into the abstract. So far it has been the ultimate
cant get there from here problem, but the time has
come to draw a roadmap one that may help us deal
with the handful of other issues on the list of real,
world-shattering problems.
The first thing to know about global warming is this:
The science is sound. In 1988, when scientists first
testified before Congress about the potential for rapid
& destabilizing climate change, they were still
describing a hypothesis. It went like this: Every time
human beings burn coal, gas, oil, wood, or any other
carbon-based fuel, they emit large quantities of carbon
dioxide. (A car emits its own weight in carbon annually
if you drive it the average American distance.) This
carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere. Its not
a normal pollutant it doesnt poison you, or change
the color of the sunset. But it does have one
interesting property: Its molecular structure traps heat
near the surface of the planet that would otherwise
radiate back out to space. It acts like the panes of
glass on a greenhouse.
The hypothesis was that we were putting enough
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to make a
difference. The doubters said no that the earth
would compensate for any extra carbon by forming
extra clouds & cooling the planet, or through some
other feedback mechanism. And so, as scientists will,
they went at it. For 5 years lavishly funded by
governments that wanted to fund research instead of
making politically unpopular changes- scientists
produced paper after paper. They studied glacial
cores, tree rings, & old pollen sediments in lake beds
to understand past climates; they took temperature
measurements on the surface & from space; they
refined their computer models & ran them backward in
time to see if they worked. By 1995 they had reached
a conclusion. That year the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of all the worlds
climatologists assembled the auspices of the United
Nations, announced that human beings were indeed
heating up the planet.
The scientists kept up the pace of their research for
the next 5 years, & in 2001 published a series of
massive updates to their findings. These results are
uniformly grimmer
than even 5 years
before. They include:
The prediction
that humans
will likely heat
the planet 4
to 6 degrees
Fahrenheit in this century, twice as much as
earlier forecast, taking global temperatures to
a level not seen in millions of year, & never
before in human history.
bigger houses & the heating & cooling bills that come
with them; our penchant for jumping on airplanes at
the drop of a hat; & so on. But if you wanted one
glaring example of our lack of balance, you could do
worse that point the finger at sport utility vehicles.
QUESTIONS:
(Answer in your notebooks). Be sure to address all parts
of the question!
1. How does carbon dioxide enter the
atmosphere?
a. What does it do?
2. List the general predictions (what will occur) as
a result of global warming.
3. Explain the impact of hydrology
4. McKibben writes, The normal answer when
youre mounting a campaign, is to look for selfinterest, to scare people by saying what will
happen to use if we dont do something: All the
birds will die, the canyon will disappear
beneath a reservoir, we will choke to death on
smog. He says that wont work. Why not?
5. McKibben believes that one reason this must be
a moral crusade is because it is the wealthier
countries attacking the poorer countries
weve never figured out a more effective way
to harm the marginalized & poor of this
planet. How does global warming
disproportionately affect the worlds poor?
6. Discuss the impact on the environment (coral
reefs & animals)
7. McKibben states that the villain of global
warming is us.