by Olivier Simon
Daily Lobo columnist
While a few fringy folks continue to deny the existence of, or human role in, climate change, the issue has been gradually advancing in public consciousness - no thanks to our media and political apparatus, which continue to grossly misrepresent it.
Of course, the idea of a runaway greenhouse effect triggered by human-made carbon emissions has been around for decades without causing much change in the way we do things. And until recently, the aforementioned "fringesters" sowed enough uncertainty to keep the debate on global warming open, long after the point where enough information had come in to warrant action.
Americans are starting to realize global warming's overwhelming importance, the magnitude of the risks and perils it represents, and the fact that oceans will not protect us from it.
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The utter bizarreness of this winter's weather should close the case for anyone who has suspended their opinions of global warming until they saw it for themselves. From Europe's warmest winter in 1,300 years, to 72 degree temperatures and blooming daffodils in New York - which recently recorded its first tiny snowfall of the season, the latest ever recorded - the evidence of warming is on full display.
Elsewhere, freakishly cold temperatures have almost obliterated California's orange and avocado harvests, while central Texas has been paralyzed by ice storms.
But on balance, 2006 will go down as the sixth hottest year in global record-keeping and the warmest in U.S. history. Globally, last year was the hottest ever
recorded.
In the face of this hair-raising evidence, the prime movers of the business world are finally giving up their "a better world is possible if we dare to do nothing" games. Recently, a coalition of companies, including Alcoa and GE, stepped forward to call for strict CO2 caps. Even ExxonMobil, long notorious as the most powerful corporation still obfuscating the reality of climate change, seems to be on the verge of reconsidering its position.
Make no mistake, it's already partly too late. There's no stopping global warming from this point, let alone undoing it in the near future. With a shove of 7 billion tons in annual carbon emissions, we humans have managed to nudge loose a gigantic boulder that seems absolutely destined to encounter us on our market-based, uphill march of progress. That collision will come with unhappy results for all, though especially for those already worse off.
But we can at least limit the damage and make things turn out much less bad.
I know that's hardly an inspiring goal. It has always seemed that the environmentalist message has been one of keeping bad things from happening, which is itself a little too abstract to motivate a lot of people. If the nasty stuff we want to prevent has never happened before, how do we know it's going to happen at all, right?
Now it's manifest, but the message is even less inspiring - we can't prevent the bad stuff from happening. It's already rolling. Like the boulder, it's got a lot of momentum. Even the most optimistic scenarios from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show atmospheric CO2 levels hitting 500 parts per million by mid-century, a 35 percent rise over today's already extraordinary levels, and then continuing upward through 2100. Considering the recent global trends in climate, the release of the IPCC's new report early next month isn't likely to be any sunnier.
But the difference between the worst- and best-case scenarios is still huge. So, what we've got to hope and work for now is having things end up less badly than they're already projected to be. This goal may be somewhat disillusioning, but it's attainable, and millions of lives depend on it. It is not cause to freeze up in despair. It is a reason to try all the harder.
But try at what? What can we
do here?
How about this: The Legislature will soon vote on whether to offer juicy incentives for the construction of the Desert Rock power plant, a huge facility that, if built, would pour 10 million tons of greenhouse gases - not to mention mercury and other pollutants - into the New Mexico skies and make our state's fledgling attempts to control such gases a joke. A great way to make a difference would be to contact your legislator and strongly urge him or her to vote against the incentives.
Or, if you have more time, consider taking the message to the Roundhouse in person: There will be a rally at the Capitol on Feb. 5 starting at 2 p.m. to urge our leaders to defeat this unconscionable measure. For more info, contact Robb Thomson at Robbm@
toast.net
Olivier Simon is a senior majoring in biochemistry and president of the College Greens at UNM.
