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Reading the Environment
Singer Sheryl Crow & ”An Inconvenient Truth“ documentary producer Laurie David on their ”Stop Global Warming College Tour“ www.sherylcrow.com/images/local/500/813f0397-...
Ever since Louis Agassiz introduced the notion of ice ages in the 1830s, we’ve known that prehistoric climates differed markedly from the present. And it’s been clear for many decades that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases keep our planet warmer than it would otherwise be. But it’s taken a long time to truly connect the dots, to fully understand that we can push our planet’s climate into dangerous, uncharted territory just by the way we go about living our lives. The Rough Guide to Climate Change (2006): Introduction
Rachel Carson’s classic book Silent Spring (1962), in which Carson described the effects of pesticides on plants, animals, and humans, is credited with stimulating the growth of the American environmental movement and federal environmental legislation. Her book educated many people about the dangers of indiscriminate pesticide use and challenged them to become informed and to act. This project begins with the most pressing environmental issue of our time—global climate change, an issue Carson would probably be writing about if she were alive today—and challenges you to become educated: ”to become informed and to act.“
Getting Started Questionnaire 1. How convinced are you that global warming is happening? (a) completely convinced (b) mostly convinced (c) not so convinced (d) not at all convinced
2. How well do you understand global warming? 1 2 3 4 (very well) 3. Which comes closer to your own view? (a) most scientists think global warming is happening (b) most scientists think global warming is not happening (c) there is a lot of disagreement among scientists (d) I do not know enough to say 4. How concerned are you about climate change? 1 2 3 4 (very) 5. Do you believe that we need to take immediate action? __Yes __No 6. Do you believe that climate change is exaggerated and that change will be modest over the next 100 years? __Yes __No As you may know, global warming is said to be partly caused by the emission of carbon dioxide from the burning of gasoline, oil, coal, and natural gas in cars, homes, and electric power plants. Do you favor or oppose each of the following as a way for the federal or state governments to reduce both carbon dioxide emissions and global warming? How about… 7. Agreeing to an international treaty that requires the United States to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide 90% by the year 2050.“ __Yes __No 8. Requiring automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of cars, trucks, and SUVs to 35 miles per gallon, even if it meant a new car would cost up to $500 more to buy.“ __Yes __No 9. Requiring electric utilities to produce at least 20% of their electricity from wind, solar, or other renewable energy sources, even if it cost the average household an extra $100 a year. _Yes_No 10. Requiring that any newly constructed home, residential, or commercial building meet higher energy efficiency standards. __Yes __No 11. Increasing taxes on gasoline so people either drive less or buy cars that use less gas. _Yes _No 12. If a presidential election were held today, how important would a candidate’s position on global warming be in your decision about whom to vote for – (a) extremely important, (b) very important, (c) somewhat important, or (d) not that important? Questions 6-12 are from Yale University Gallup Poll http://environment.yale.edu/news/5305-american-opinions-on-global-warming/ QuickWriting
To what extent do you think your generation is engaged with climate and other environmental issues? Take five minutes to write a response. Networking Join a small group to discuss some responses to the questionnaire and your QuickWriting.
Language & the Environment Naming the Problem In "The War of the Words: How Linguistic Differences in Reporting Shape Perceptions" (Newsweek, April 16, 2007, 74), Jerry Adler makes the point that what people call something is anything but neutral.
April 3, 2006 PHOTO BY ARCTICNET--NCE climate change Climate crisis climate emergency
GLOBAL WARMING GLOBAL DISRUPTION
QuickWriting
How does the choice of language affect public attitudes? Which people might prefer which terms and why? QuickWrite for 5 minutes. IDENTIFYING THE CAUSE: A Matter of Degrees
Read this brief report in the Science section of the New York Times. Pay careful attention to the language in reference to the cause. Also notice that ”global warming“ is the title, but the intergovernmental panel uses ”climate change.“
Science > Topics > Global Warming
Erin Aigner, Jonathan Corum, Vu Nguyen SCIENCE, December 11, 2007
Timeline In its fourth assessment of global warming, released Feb. 2, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used its strongest language yet in drawing a link between human activity and recent warming.
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Global Warming On Feb. 2, 2007, the United Nations scientific panel* studying climate change declared that the evidence of a warming trend is "unequivocal," and that human activity has "very likely" been the driving force in that change over the last 50 years. The last report by the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 2001, had found that humanity had "likely" played a role. The addition of that single word "very" did more than reflect mounting scientific evidence that the release of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from smokestacks, tailpipes and burning forests has played a central role in raising the average surface temperature of the earth by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1900. It also added new momentum to a debate that now seems centered less over whether humans are warming the planet, but instead over what to do about it. In recent months, business groups have banded together to make unprecedented calls for federal regulation of greenhouse gases. The subject had a red-carpet moment when former Vice President Al Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," was awarded an Oscar; and the Supreme Court made its first global warming-related decision, ruling 5 to 4 that the Environmental Protection Agency had not justified its position that it was not authorized to regulate carbon dioxide. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-cla#
*The UN’s climate panel groups 2,500 researchers from more than 130 nations.
Fact: There is a warming trend. (The evidence is ”unequivocal.“)
2001 Human activity has ”likely“ played a role.
2007 Human activity has ”very likely“ been the ”driving force.“
QuickWriting How does the choice of language here (”very likely“ rather than ”likely“) affect public attitudes? And what about the choice to use ”the driving force“ rather than ”played a role“? Write again for five minutes.
Networking Join a small group to discuss how language choices affect attitudes. Can you think of some other examples that you could use to support this claim? Readers at Work: A Guided Reading Assignment
It is…obvious from published research that human activity is a cause of change; we just don’t know how big its contribution is. Is it necessary to know that to the last percentage point, though? -Vaclav Havel Václav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, is an internationally recognized authority on the problems of a globalized world. Why does Havel believe it is not necessary to know precisely the degree humans have contributed to global climate changes? Read the following OP-ED from which this quotation was excerpted. Consider these questions when you read: How does the very title of his commentary indicate his different emphasis from the conversation about carbon emissions reduction? While Havel begins by addressing cause, as that was the focus at the time he joined the conversation, what is his focus? Instead of debating as a member of a political party or according to ideology, what does Havel propose? How would you describe his tone (the way he relates to readers through his linguistic choices)?
Our Moral Footprint Vaclav Havel New York Times, OP-ED September 27, 2007, A3
Prague OVER the past few years the questions have been asked ever more forcefully whether global climate changes occur in natural cycles or not, to what degree we humans contribute to them, what threats stem from them and what can be done to prevent them. Scientific studies demonstrate that any changes in temperature and energy cycles on a planetary scale could mean danger for all people on all continents. It is also obvious from published research that human activity is a cause of change; we just don’t know how big its contribution is. Is it necessary to know that to the last percentage point, though? By waiting for incontrovertible precision, aren’t we simply wasting time when we could be taking measures that are relatively painless compared to those we would have to adopt after further delays? Maybe we should start considering our sojourn on earth as a loan. There can be no doubt that for the past hundred years at least, Europe and the United States have been running up a debt, and now other parts of the world are following their example. Nature is issuing warnings that we must not only stop the debt from growing but start to pay it back. There is little point in asking whether we have borrowed too much or what would happen if we postponed the repayments. Anyone with a mortgage or a bank loan can easily imagine the answer. The effects of possible climate changes are hard to estimate. Our planet has never been in a state of balance from which it could deviate through human or other influence and then, in time, return to its original state. The climate is not like a pendulum that will return to its original position after a certain period. It has evolved turbulently over billions of years into a gigantic complex of networks, and of networks within networks, where everything is interlinked in diverse ways. Its structures will never return to precisely the same state they were in 50 or 5,000 years ago. They will only change into a new state, which, so long as the change is slight, need not mean any threat to life. Larger changes, however, could have unforeseeable effects within the global ecosystem. In that case, we would have to ask ourselves whether human life would be possible. Because so much uncertainty still reigns, a great deal of humility and circumspection is called for. We can’t endlessly fool ourselves that nothing is wrong and that we can go on cheerfully pursuing our wasteful lifestyles, ignoring the climate threats and postponing a solution. Maybe there will be no major catastrophe in the coming years or decades. Who knows? But that doesn’t relieve us of responsibility toward future generations. I don’t agree with those whose reaction is to warn against restricting civil freedoms. Were the forecasts of certain climatologists to come true, our freedoms would be tantamount to those of someone hanging from a 20th-story parapet. Whenever I reflect on the problems of today’s world, whether they concern the economy, society, culture, security, ecology or civilization in general, I always end up confronting the moral question: what action is responsible or acceptable? The moral order, our conscience and human rights — these are the most important issues at the beginning of the third millennium. We must return again and again to the roots of human existence and consider our prospects in centuries to come. We must analyze everything open-mindedly, soberly, unideologically and unobsessively, and project our knowledge into practical policies. Maybe it is no longer a matter of simply promoting energy-saving technologies, but chiefly of introducing ecologically clean technologies, of diversifying resources and of not relying on just one invention as a panacea. I’m skeptical that a problem as complex as climate change can be solved by any single branch of science. Technological measures and regulations are important, but equally important is support for education, ecological training and ethics — a consciousness of the commonality of all living beings and an emphasis on shared responsibility. Either we will achieve an awareness of our place in the living and life-giving organism of our planet, or we will face the threat that our evolutionary journey may be set back thousands or even millions of years. That is why we must see this issue as a challenge to behave responsibly and not as a harbinger of the end of the world.
The end of the world has been anticipated many times and has never come, of course. And it won’t come this time either. We need not fear for our planet. It was here before us and most likely will be here after us. But that doesn’t mean that the human race is not at serious risk. As a result of our endeavors and our irresponsibility our climate might leave no place for us. If we drag our feet, the scope for decision-making — and hence for our individual freedom — could be considerably reduced. This article was translated by Gerald Turner from the Czech. _________________________________________________________
Notice in his title how Havel switches the focus in the conversation at the time from ”carbon footprint“ to ”moral footprint.“ He begins with a rhetorical question—”Is it necessary to know…to the last percentage point?“—to assert more emphatically his view: We do not need to know precisely how much human activity is contributing to climate change. (Paraphrase): We know enough to act and we should not waste any time.
”The effects of possible climate changes are hard to estimate….Its structures will never return to precisely the same state they were in 50 or 5,000 years ago.“ (Paraphrase): They will change into a new state, which is not a problem as long as the change is slight.
”Maybe there will be no major catastrophe.“ Not knowing ”doesn’t relieve us of responsibility toward future generations.“ The moral question: ”What action is responsible or acceptable?“ What are ”our prospects“?
(Paraphrase): We must analyze with open minds and come up with some practical policies.
1. What name does Havel use for this environmental issue? See ”Language & the Environment: Naming the Problem“ (p. 0) for a list of names. In an attempt to remain neutral while seeking evidence, the intergovernmental panel used the same name. Why do you suppose Havel made this choice? How does the decision he made as a writer affect readers in comparison to other linguistic choices he could have made?
2. How often does he use the word ”responsibility“ (”responsible,“ ”responsibly,“ irresponsibility“) in the last half of his essay? How does this repetition help emphasize Havel’s moral question?
3. Review the last three paragraphs and identify the Xs and Ys in the following:
Maybe it’s no longer a matter of X, but chiefly of Y. X is important, but equally important is Y. Either X or Y. We must see this issue as X and not Y. How does the X/Y syntactic structure contribute to the tone (how he relates to readers)?
4. Review the Ys (you filled in) above. Explain in your own words (paraphrase) how Havel thinks we should respond—generally and specifically.
5. How would you describe the overall tone of Havel’s essay—the way he comes across to readers because of the linguistic and rhetorical choices he has made?
QuickWriting Re-read the last paragraph. When Havel writes, ”We need not fear for our planet. It was here before us and most likely will be here after us. But that doesn’t mean that the human race is not at serious risk“—is he implying that if human beings continue to act irresponsibly, the human race is seriously at risk? Should we ”be worried“? QuickWrite for five minutes.
Networking Join a small group to discuss your reflections as well as the tone of Havel’s writing. Learn More about Havel’s background, especially his politics. What stands out for you in relation to his commentary?
Reading Selections: Topics for Analysis
Climate Change: A Heated Debate
Al Gore Sounds Global Warming Alert—”The climate crisis is a planetary emergency....The message is unmistakably clear. This crisis means ‘danger’!“ An Inconvenient Truth
Eric Lee Gore Shared the Nobel Peace Prize for his Climate Change Work
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth was awarded an Oscar for best documentary (2006).
Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech (2007) Al Gore
I have a purpose here today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for many years. I have prayed that God would show me a way to accomplish it. Sometimes, without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and painful vision of what might be. 119 years ago, a wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life’s work, unfairly labeling him the ”Merchant of Death" because of his invention—dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, the inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace. Seven years later, Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bear his name. Seven years ago tomorrow, I read my own political obituary in a judgment that seemed to me harsh and mistaken, if not premature. But that unwelcome verdict also brought a precious, if painful, gift: an opportunity to search for fresh new ways to serve my purpose. Unexpectedly, that quest has brought me here. Even though I fear my words cannot match this moment, I pray that what I’m feeling in my heart will be communicated clearly enough that those who hear me will say, ”We must act.“ The distinguished scientists with whom it is the greatest honor of my life to share this award have laid before us a choice between two different futures, a choice that, to my ears, echoes the words of an ancient prophet: ”Life or death, blessings or curses. Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.“ We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency, a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here. But there is hopeful news, as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst—though not all—of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly. However, despite a growing number of honorable exceptions, too many of the world’s leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler’s threat—and I quote—”They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.“ So, today, we dumped another seventy million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun. As a result, the earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing distress, is that something basic is wrong. We are what is wrong, and we must make it right. Last September 21st, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented alarm that the North Polar ice cap is, in their words, ”falling off a cliff.“ One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than twenty-two years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as seven years. Seven years from now. In the last few months, it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter. Major cities in North and South America, Asia and Australia are nearly out of water due to massive droughts and melting glaciers. Desperate farmers are losing their livelihoods. Peoples in the frozen Arctic and on low-lying Pacific islands are planning evacuations of places they have long called home. Unprecedented wildfires have forced a half-a-million people from their homes in one country and caused a national emergency that almost brought down the government in another. Climate refugees have migrated into areas already inhabited by people with different cultures, religions and traditions, increasing the potential for conflict. Stronger storms in the Atlantic and the Pacific have threatened whole cities. Millions have been displaced by massive flooding in South Asia, Mexico and eighteen countries in Africa. As temperature extremes have increased, tens of thousands have lost their lives. We are recklessly burning and clearing our forests and driving more and more species into extinction. The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed. We never intended to cause all this destruction, just as Alfred Nobel never intended that dynamite be used for waging war. He had hoped his invention would promote human progress. We shared that same worthy goal when we began burning massive quantities of coal, then oil and natural gas. Even in Nobel’s time, there were a few warnings of the likely consequences. One of the very first winners of the prize in chemistry worried that, in his words, ”We are evaporating our coal mines into the air.“ After performing 10,000 equations by hand, Svante Arrhenius calculated that the earth’s average temperature would increase by many degrees if we doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Seventy years later, my teacher, Roger Revelle, and his colleague, Dave Keeling, began to precisely document the increasing CO2 levels day by day. But unlike most other forms of pollution, CO2 is invisible, tasteless and odorless, which has helped keep the truth about what it is doing to our climate out of sight and out of mind. Moreover, the catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented, and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable. We also find it hard to imagine making the massive changes that are now necessary to solve the crisis. And when large truths are genuinely inconvenient, whole societies can, at least for a time, ignore them. Yet, as George Orwell reminds us, ”Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.“ In the years since this prize was first awarded, the entire relationship between humankind and the earth has been radically transformed. And still, we have remained largely oblivious to the impact of our cumulative actions. Indeed, without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself. Now, we and the earth’s climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: ”Mutually assured destruction.“ More than two decades ago, scientists calculated that nuclear war could throw so much debris and smoke into the air it would block life-giving sunlight from our atmosphere, causing a ”nuclear winter.“ Their eloquent warnings here in Oslo helped galvanize the world’s resolve to halt the nuclear arms race. Now, science is warning us that if we do not quickly reduce the global warming pollution that is trapping so much of the heat our planet normally radiates back out of the atmosphere, we are in danger of creating a permanent ”carbon summer.“ As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, ”Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice.“ Either, he notes, ”would suffice.“ But neither need be our fate. It is time to make peace with the planet. We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the eleventh hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal struggle. These were not comforting and misleading assurances that the threat was not real, not imminent; that it would affect others but not ourselves; that ordinary life might be lived, even in the presence of extraordinary threat; that Providence could be trusted to do for us what we would not do for ourselves. No, these were calls to come to the defense of the common future. They were calls upon the courage, generosity and strength of entire peoples, citizens of every class and condition who were ready to stand against the threat, once asked to do so. Our enemies in those times calculated that free people would not rise to the challenge; they were, of course, catastrophically wrong. Now comes the threat of climate crisis, a threat that is real, rising, imminent and universal. Once again, it is the eleventh hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing and at some near point would be unsustainable and unrecoverable. For now, we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: Have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion? Mahatma Gandhi awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with what he called ”Satyagraha,“ or ”truth force.“ In every land, the truth, once known, has the power to set us free. Truth also has the power to unite us and bridge the distance between ”me“ and ”we,“ creating the basis for common effort and shared responsibility. There is an African proverb that says, ”If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.“ We need to go far, quickly. We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action. At the same time, we must ensure that in mobilizing globally, we do not invite the establishment of ideological conformity and a new lockstep ”ism.“ That means adopting principles, values, laws and treaties that release creativity and initiative at every level of society in multifold responses originating concurrently and spontaneously. This new consciousness requires expanding the possibilities inherent in all humanity. The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the sun’s energy for pennies or invent an engine that’s carbon negative may live in Lagos or Mumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and inventors everywhere on the globe have the chance to change the world. When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual energy unleashed can transform us. The generation that defeated fascism throughout the world in the 1940s found, in rising to meet their awesome challenge, that they had gained the moral authority and long-term vision to launch the Marshall Plan, the United Nations and a new level of global cooperation and foresight that unified Europe and facilitated the emergence of democracy in Japan, Germany, Italy and much of the world. One of their visionary leaders said, ”It is time we steered by the stars and not by the lights of every passing ship.“ In the last year of that war, you gave the Peace Prize to a man from my hometown of 2,000 people: Carthage, Tennessee in the U.S.A. Cordell Hull was described by Franklin Roosevelt as the ”Father of the United Nations.“ He was an inspiration and hero to my own father, who followed Hull in the Congress and the U.S. Senate and in his commitment to world peace and global cooperation. My parents spoke often of Hull, always in tones of reverence and admiration. Eight weeks ago, when you announced this prize, the deepest emotion I felt was when I saw the headline in my hometown paper that simply noted I had won the same prize that Cordell Hull had won. In that moment, I knew what my father and mother would have felt, were they alive. Just as Hull’s generation found moral authority in rising to solve the world crisis caused by fascism, so can we find our greatest opportunity in rising to solve the climate crisis. In the Kanji characters used in both Chinese and Japanese, ”crisis“ is written with two symbols, the first meaning ”danger,“ the second, ”opportunity.“ By facing and removing the danger of the climate crisis, we have the opportunity to gain the moral authority and vision to vastly increase our own capacity to solve other crises that have been too long ignored. We must understand the connections between the climate crisis and the afflictions of poverty, hunger, HIV/AIDS and other pandemics. As these problems are linked, so too must be their solutions. We must begin by making the common rescue of the global environment the central organizing principle of the world community. Fifteen years ago, I made that case at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Ten years ago, I presented it in Kyoto. This week, I will urge the delegates in Bali to adopt a bold mandate for a treaty that establishes a universal global cap on emissions and uses the market in emissions trading to efficiently allocate resources to the most effective opportunities for speedy reductions. This treaty should be ratified and brought into effect everywhere in the world by the beginning of 2010, two years sooner than presently contemplated. The pace of our response must be accelerated to match the accelerating pace of the crisis itself. Heads of state should meet early next year to review what was accomplished in Bali and take personal responsibility for addressing this crisis. It is not unreasonable to ask, given the gravity of our circumstances, that these heads of state meet every three months until this treaty is completed. We also need a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store carbon dioxide. And most important of all, we need to put a price on carbon, with a CO2 tax that is then rebated back to the people, progressively, according to the laws of each nation, in ways that shift the burden of taxation from employment to pollution. This is by far the most effective and simplest way to accelerate solutions to this crisis. The world now needs an alliance, especially of those nations that weigh heaviest in the scales where earth is in the balance. I salute Europe and Japan for the steps they’ve taken in recent years to meet the challenge, and the new government in Australia, which has made solving the climate crisis its first priority. But the outcome will be decisively influenced by two nations that are now failing to do enough: the United States and China. While India is also growing fast in importance, it should be absolutely clear that it is the two largest CO2 emitters—and most of all, my own country—that will need to make the boldest moves or stand accountable before history for their failure to act. Both countries should stop using the other’s behavior as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment. These are the last few years of decision, but they can be the first years of a bright and hopeful future if we do what we must. No one should believe a solution will be found without effort, without cost, without change. Let us acknowledge that if we wish to redeem squandered time and speak again with moral authority, then these are the hard truths. The way ahead is difficult. The outer boundary of what we currently believe to be feasible is still far short of what we actually must do. Moreover, between here and there, across the unknown, falls the shadow. That is just another way of saying that we have to expand the boundaries of what is possible. In the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, ”Pathwalker, there is no path. You must make the path as you walk.“ We are standing at the most fateful fork in that path. So I want to end as I began, with a vision of two futures, each a palpable possibility, and with a prayer that we will see with vivid clarity the necessity of choosing between those two futures, and the urgency of making the right choice now. The great Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote, ”One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door.“ The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask, ”What were you thinking? Why didn’t you act?“ or they will ask instead, ”How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?“ We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource. So let us renew it, and let us say together: ”We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act.“
Climate Change 101: Key Global Warming Facts
Dennis T. Avery Capitalism Magazine April 20, 2008
Dennis Avery is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic (2000). With climate physicist S. Fred Singer, he co-authored Unstoppable Global Warming (2007). Avery and Singer argue that the cause of the Earth’s warming is a function of a 1,500 year ”unstoppable“ cycle in solar energy. In the following article, Avery summarizes their argument. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ The Earth’s warming since 1850 totals about 0.7 degrees C. Most of this occurred before 1940. The cause: a long, moderate 1,500-year climate cycle first discovered in the Greenland ice cores in 1983. The cycle abruptly raises our temperature 1 to 3 degrees C above the mean for centuries at a time--as it did during the Roman Warming (200 BC to 600 AD) and Medieval Warming (950 to1300 AD). Between warmings, Earth’s temperatures shift abruptly lower by 1 to 3 degrees C--as they did during the 550 years of the Little Ice Age, which ended in 1850. The ice cores and seabed fossils show 600 of these 1,500-year cycles, extending back at least 1 million years. CO2 Increases Lag Temperature Increases In Al Gore’s movie, the ice record from the Antarctic shows temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels tracking closely together through the radical ups and downs of four Ice Ages. The movie implies that more CO2 in the air produces higher temperatures. But we’ve recently done more refined ice studies, which show the temperatures changed about 800 years before the CO2 levels. More CO2 did not produce higher temperatures; instead, higher temperatures released more CO2 from the oceans into the atmosphere. If the climate models’ original greenhouse predictions had been valid, the Earth’s temperatures would have risen several degrees more by now than they have. The Earth’s net warming since 1940 is a barely noticeable 0.2 degrees C, over 70 years. For the sake of argument, let’s give the alarmists credit for half of this, or 0.1 degree C. Moreover, the Earth has experienced no discernible temperature increase since 1998, nearly nine years ago. Remember, too, that the atmosphere is approaching CO2 saturation--after which more CO2 will have no added climate forcing power. Temperatures, Sunspots, Cosmic Rays There is a 95 percent correlation between Earth’s temperatures and sunspots since 1860. There is virtually no correlation between our temperatures and CO2 in the atmosphere. The sunspot number has recently dropped to zero. In the past, when sunspot numbers and our temperatures have diverged, the sunspots have been the leading indicator. The temperatures have soon shifted to follow. Does this mean that Earth’s temperatures will soon decline? History says yes. How long will the global warming alarmists be able to sustain the public hysteria without strongly rising temperatures? This will be a key factor in the short-term future of climate warming legislation. Henrik Svensmark of the Danish Space Research Institute says cosmic rays are the link between the sun’s variability and Earth’s temperatures. More or fewer cosmic rays, depending on the strength of the ”solar wind,“ seed more or fewer of the low, wet clouds that cool the Earth. Further experiments to document this impact are planned in Europe. ”There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing, or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.“ That statement comes from a petition signed by more than 19,000 American scientists, available online at a site hosted by the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine at <www.oism.org>. Warming Cycles Are the Norm The Earth has had eight warming cycles since the last Ice Age. Several of these were apparently warmer than today, based on the evidence of fossils and isotopes. The Medieval Warming until recently was known as ”the little climate optimum.“ Human numbers increased with the long, stable growing seasons; there were fewer and milder storms; and there were fewer deadly disease epidemics. Bubonic plague attacked Europe during both the Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age. No wild species have gone extinct due to higher temperatures during the ”unprecedented warming“ of the past century. All of the existing species have been through even stronger warmings in the past. We have not examined their coping strategies, preferring to demand instead that somehow the climate cycle be stopped. Arctic ice area has hit a modern low in recent months, but this cannot be due to global warming because the Antarctic simultaneously has the most ice in modern times. The polar regions have their own climate cycles, which operate within the longer 1,500-year cycle. Earth also has the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the El Niño cycle, and a 22.5-year sunspot-related cycle in Southern Hemisphere rainfall. The new book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years cites hundreds of peer-reviewed studies by more than 500 fully qualified scientists who found evidence that 1) a natural, moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced several global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or
2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun’s irradiance;
3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly;
4) our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings;
5) human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills far more people than heat; and
6) corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate.
Despite being published in such journals such as Science, Nature, and Geophysical Review Letters, these scientists have gotten little media attention. http://www.capmag.com/article.as;?ID=5164 Andrew Revkin has been reporting on the environment for the New York Times since 1995. In 2005, he spearheaded a three-part Times series and one-hour documentary in 2005 on the transforming Arctic. In the following news article, Revkin adds the voices of a number of climate scientists who shift the either-or debate about global warming to a middle stance. ”These experts,“ writes Revkin, see a clear need for the public to engage now, but not to panic.“
A New Middle Stance Emerges in Debate over Climate Andrew Revkin New York Times January 1, 2007
Amid the shouting lately about whether global warming is a human-caused catastrophe or a hoax, some usually staid climate scientists in the usually invisible middle are speaking up. The discourse over the issue has been feverish since Hurricane Katrina. Seizing the moment, many environmental campaigners, former Vice President Al Gore and some scientists have portrayed the growing human influence on the climate as an unfolding disaster that is already measurably strengthening hurricanes, spreading diseases and amplifying recent droughts and deluges. Conservative politicians and a few scientists, many with ties to energy companies, have variously countered that human-driven warming is inconsequential, unproved or a manufactured crisis. A third stance is now emerging, espoused by many experts who challenge both poles of the debate. They agree that accumulating carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases probably pose a momentous environmental challenge, but say the appropriate response is more akin to buying fire insurance and installing sprinklers and new wiring in an old, irreplaceable house (the home planet) than to fighting a fire already raging. ”Climate change presents a very real risk,“ said Carl Wunsch, a climate and oceans expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ”It seems worth a very large premium to insure ourselves against the most catastrophic scenarios. Denying the risk seems utterly stupid. Claiming we can calculate the probabilities with any degree of skill seems equally stupid.“ Many in this camp seek a policy of reducing vulnerability to all climate extremes while building public support for a sustained shift to nonpolluting energy sources. They have made their voices heard in Web logs, news media interviews and at least one statement from a large scientific group, the World Meteorological Organization. In early December, that group posted a statement written by a committee consisting of most of the climatologists assessing whether warming seas have affected hurricanes. While each degree of warming of tropical oceans is likely to intensify such storms a percentage point or two in the future, they said, there is no firm evidence of a heat-triggered strengthening in storms in recent years. The experts added that the recent increase in the impact of storms was because of more people getting in harm’s way, not stronger storms. There are enough experts holding such views that Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist and blogger at the University of Colorado, Boulder, came up with a name for them (and himself): ”nonskeptical heretics.“ ”A lot of people have independently come to the same sort of conclusion,“ Dr. Pielke said. ”We do have a problem, we do need to act, but what actions are practical and pragmatic?“ This approach was most publicly laid out in an opinion article on the BBC Web site in November by Mike Hulme, the director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research in Britain. Dr. Hulme said that shrill voices crying doom could paralyze instead of inspire. ”I have found myself increasingly chastised by climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on climate change have not satisfied their thirst for environmental drama,“ he wrote. ”I believe climate change is real, must be faced and action taken. But the discourse of catastrophe is in danger of tipping society onto a negative, depressive and reactionary trajectory.“ Other experts say there is no time for nuance, given the general lack of public response to the threat posed particularly by carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels and forests that persists for a century or more in the air and is accumulating rapidly in the atmosphere and changing the pH of the oceans. James E. Hansen, the veteran climate scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who has spoken out about climate dangers since 1988, has recently said that scientists have been too quiet too long. ”If we want to avoid producing a different planet, we need to start acting now,“ and not with paltry steps, he said in a recent e-mail exchange with a reporter and other scientists. ”It seems almost to be a secret that we cannot put all of the fossil-fuel CO2 into the air without producing a different planet, and yes, dangerous change. There are people who don’t know that!“ Debate among scientists over how to describe the climate threat is particularly intense right now as experts work on the final language in portions of the latest assessment of global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In three previous reports, the last published in 2001, this global network of scientists operating under the auspices of the United Nations has presented an ever-firmer picture of a growing human role in warming. Studies used to generate the next report (portions are to be issued in February) have shown a likely warming in the 21st century — unless emissions of greenhouse gases abate — at least several times that of the last century’s one-degree rise. But substantial uncertainty still clouds projections of important impacts, like how high and quickly seas would rise as ice sheets thawed. Recent drafts of the climate report used a conservative analysis that does not project a rise most people would equate with catastrophe, scientists involved in writing it say. Other experts say this may send too comforting a message. Dr. Hulme insists that it is best not to gloss over uncertainties. In fact, he and other experts say that uncertainty is one reason to act — as a hedge against the prospect that problems could be much worse than projected. His goal, Dr. Hulme said, is to raise public appreciation of the unprecedented scale and nature of the challenge. ”Climate change is not a problem waiting for a solution (least of all a solution delivered and packaged by science), but a powerful idea that will transform the way we develop,“ he said in an e-mail message. Dr. Hulme and others avoid sounding alarmist, but offer scant comfort to anyone who doubts that humans are contributing to warming or believes the matter can be deferred. These experts see a clear need for the public to engage now, but not to panic. They worry that portrayals of the issue like that in ”An Inconvenient Truth,“ the documentary focused on the views of Mr. Gore, may push too hard. Many in this group also see a need to portray clearly that the response would require far more than switching to fluorescent light bulbs and to hybrid cars. ”This is a mega-ethical challenge,“ said Jerry D. Mahlman, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who has studied global warming for more than three decades. ”In space, it’s the size of a planet, and in time, it has scales far broader than what we go-go Homo sapiens are accustomed to dealing with.“ Dr. Mahlman and others say that the buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases cannot be quickly reversed with existing technologies. And even if every engine on earth were shut down today, they add, there would be no measurable impact on the warming rate for many years, given the buildup of heat already banked in the seas. Because of the scale and time lag, a better strategy, Dr. Mahlman and others say, is to treat human-caused warming more as a risk to be reduced than a problem to be solved. These experts also say efforts to attribute recent weather extremes to the climate trend, though they may generate headlines in the short run, distract from the real reasons to act, which relate more to the long-term relationship of people and the planet. ”Global warming is real, it’s serious, but it’s just one of many global challenges that we’re facing,“ said John M. Wallace, a climatologist at the University of Washington. ”I portray it as part of a broader problem of environmental stewardship — preserving a livable planet with abundant resources for future generations.“ Some experts, though, argue that moderation in a message is likely to be misread as satisfaction with the pace of change. John P. Holdren,* an energy and environment expert at Harvard and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, defended the more strident calls for limits on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. ”I am one of those who believes that any reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date look at the evidence makes clear that civilization has already generated dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system,“ Dr. Holdren said. ”What keeps me going is my belief that there is still a chance of avoiding catastrophe.“ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/science/01climate.html? * * * * *In an interview with Amy Goodman on ”Democracy Now,“ National Public Radio (July 3, 2008), award-winning environmental policy professor at Harvard John Holdren said that ”global warming“ is not the correct term; ”global disruption,“ he believes, more accurately describes climate change. ’Global warming’ [is] misleading. It implies something that’s mainly about temperature, that’s gradual, and that’s uniform across the planet. In fact, temperature is only one of the things that’s changing. It’s a sort of an index of the state of the climate. The whole climate is changing: the winds, the ocean currents, the storm patterns, snow packs, snowmelt, flooding, droughts. Temperature is just a bit of it. When he took office, President Obama chose Holdren as his science adviser. ______________________________________________________________________________________
A blog about climate change, the environment and sustainability. By 2050 or so, the world population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where, scientists say, humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. In Dot Earth, reporter Andrew C. Revkin examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits. Supported in part by a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Mr. Revkin tracks relevant news from suburbia to Siberia, and conducts an interactive exploration of trends and ideas with readers and experts. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/
BreakThrough: From the Politics of Limits to the Politics of Possibility An Interview with the Authors (Amazon.com, 2007)
Michael Shellenberger (left) and Ted Nordhaus right) have spent their careers working as strategists for environmental organizations. They founded the BreakThrough Institute and currently serve as managing directors of Environics, a social values research and strategy firm. Based on their provocative essay ”The Death of Environmentalism“ (2004), they co-authored the book BreakThrough: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility (2007).
Shellenberger and Nordhaus argue that ”the environmental movement had failed to achieve its major goals and would fail to make any progress unless it changed its rhetoric.“ In their view, gloom and doom rhetoric that ends with ”because if we don’t, global warming will kill us all“ will never succeed. Their philosophy is ”to invest and innovate our way to a cleaner future.“ Investment, they say, is the ”third wave of environmentalism.“ Craig Rubens, Investing in the Death of Environmentalism, Posted Nov. 7, 2007, earth2tech _________________________________________________________________________________________________ Amazon.com: Your book grew out of an essay you wrote, "The Death of Environmentalism," that had an impact on the environmental discussion beyond even your own expectations, I assume. What did you argue in the essay, and why do you think it struck a chord? Shellenberger and Nordhaus: We wrote the essay thinking that it would generate discussion among grantmakers and environmental insiders. We really didn't expect it to go viral and to be read by environmentalists and liberals all over the world. The essay was mostly about the failure of the environmental movement to make much progress on its agenda over the previous decade, but we could just as well have written it about any of the other liberal interest groups over that period. In the months after George W. Bush's reelection, a lot of liberals and environmentalists were ready to take a hard look at their political agenda, the Democratic Party, and the interest groups they supported. For that reason, our essay really did strike a chord. In the essay, we argued that the great successes of the modern environmental movement in the '60s and '70s had laid the seeds of their failure in the early years of the 21st century. That they had built institutions filled with lawyers and scientists well suited to lobby policy makers who basically shared their world view. This worked well when liberals controlled the Congress and much of the federal bureaucracy, and when the politics of the time were more supportive of active government efforts to regulate the economy and clean up the environment. But as social values shifted through the '80s and '90s, as modern conservatism rose to power, and as the electorate became a good deal more skeptical of both government and environmentalists, these strategies, and the institutions that were created to prosecute them, foundered. We argued that environmentalists needed to rethink the entire project, that these problems would not be solved simply with better PR and spin. Most especially, we argued that environmentalists needed to stop imagining that they were representing a thing called Nature or the Environment, separate from us (e.g. humans) in politics. It was for this reason that we argued that environmentalism had become a special interest, incapable of addressing large, complex, and global problems such as global warming. Amazon.com: You wrote the essay three years ago. What have you learned from the response it got?
Shellenberger and Nordhaus: First and foremost, we learned that there was a generational component to the debate that we really hadn't been conscious of when we wrote the essay. Those who came of age in the '60s and '70s, when the environmental movement, along with the larger liberal political agenda, was ascendant, were most defensive and critical of the essay. Their identities as environmentalists, and their identification with the environmental politics and strategies of that era, were most resistant to the idea that environmentalism needed to die so that a larger, more expansive politics might be born. Younger generations were much more open to our thesis and excited to get to work creating a post environmental movement. This remains the case. As we travel the country speaking to audiences about Break Through, it is younger audience members who are most inspired by our message and most committed to building a movement and a politics that not only saves us from global warming apocalypse but is also equitable, free, and prosperous.
Amazon.com: On one hand, you argue that global warming is a "monumental" crisis that demands a response beyond the more limited (and limiting) environmental policies of the past. On the other, you acknowledge that, despite a great deal of press attention, "global warming" still ranks at the very bottom of voters' concerns. How do you confront a crisis that voters don't care about?
We know that things like energy independence, getting off oil, getting out of the Middle East, and creating jobs and economic development in the new clean energy industries of the future are much higher priorities for most voters than capping carbon emissions or taxing dirty energy sources. So why not redefine our agenda as the solution to those problems?
Shellenberger and Nordhaus: By getting it out of the global warming/environmental ghetto. We know that things like energy independence, getting off oil, getting out of the Middle East, and creating jobs and economic development in the new clean energy industries of the future are much higher priorities for most voters than capping carbon emissions or taxing dirty energy sources. So why not redefine our agenda as the solution to those problems? We can still cap carbon, but that needn't be at the top of the agenda that we communicate to voters. Making big investments to get off oil, making clean energy alternatives widely available and cheap, and creating millions of new jobs in clean energy industries is a winner with American voters and can carry the whole suite of policies that we need to address global warming. . . .
Amazon.com: Some skeptics of your technological optimism argue that the kinds of breakthroughs you expect as a result from massive investment just don't come easily in the energy sector. Solar power, nuclear energy, hydrogen fuel cells: they have all been around for decades without weaning us from oil and coal. What makes you think that the next decades will be different?
Shellenberger and Nordhaus: They are right in part; energy is a sector of the economy that has been particularly resistant to innovation. This is precisely the problem. It is why we are still dependant on energy sources that are 100 to 150 years old while virtually every other sector of the economy has transformed itself. This is why we believe that the faith that many environmentalists still hold that carbon regulations and taxes will drive sufficient private sector investment into energy markets to create the kind of innovation we need is unfounded. It is worth noting that virtually every alternative energy source we have--solar, wind, nuclear, and battery and fuel cell technologies for storage--resulted from public innovation and R&D, not private. The problem is that we haven't done enough of it, and we have done it inconsistently. After a brief couple of years in the late '70s, public funding for clean energy technologies dried up and has been on the decline ever since. The levels of technology investment in the energy sciences pales compared to the kinds of investment we make in the computer and bio-sciences. Skepticism about the potential to achieve the kinds of breakthroughs we need has been a self-fulfilling prophecy. We don't make the investments we need to make, the sector fails to innovate, and then we conclude that it can't innovate. All of the barriers to innovation in the energy sector are arguments for a big commitment to public investment. Only the public sector can make the kind of long-term, common investments that we need to overcome those barriers to innovation. http://www.amazon.de/Break-Through-Environmentalism-Politics-Possibility/dp/0618658254
Analyze Create an analytical framework that compares and contrasts the positions about climate change presented in the reading selections. Begin by identifying the speaker or writer’s background and the kind of document (an Op-Ed or some other kind of commentary, news report, interview, or speech, for example) as well as publication date and any political affiliation you can learn about. For Gore, Avery, Revkin (experts he cites that support his ”middle stance“ reading), Shellenberger & Nordhaus (and you could include Vaclav Havel as well)—consider these categories: (1) Who is speaking? Background/Political Affiliation; (2) Kind of document & publication date; (3) Naming the Problem/Rhetoric (linguistic choices); (4) Identifying the Cause/Evidence; (5) Call for Action/Rhetoric; (6) Key question/Concern; and (7) Whose responsibility is this problem? ______________________________________________________________________ 1____________________2_______ 3_______4_______5_______6_______7________ Vaclev Havel Al Gore Dennis Avery Andrew Revkin Roger A. Pielke Jr. Mike Hulme James E. Hansen Jerry D. Mahlman John M. Wallace John P. Holdren Shellenberger & Nordhaus ______________________________________________________________________ Instead of just highlighting and making marginal notes, this framework can help you compare and contrast more easily and provide you with a reference point when you position yourself in this debate. You can also add more information or another category as you learn more. Use direct quotations whenever possible. Some specific related questions to consider: What is the political orientation of the Hudson Institute where Dennis Avery is a senior fellow? How does the magazine that published ”Climate Change 101“ define its interests? Did Avery or the organization he founded ever accept money from oil companies? What is NYTimes reporter Andrew Revkin’s focus in his blog DOT EARTH? How does Al Gore’s interest in ”collective“ efforts with regard to global warming differ from Avery’s? Reflect Position yourself in this heated debate about climate change. QuickWrite for 5 minutes. Then re-read your writing and write a sentence that makes clear where you stand at this time in this debate. Discuss Has the debate turned into more of a conversation today or is it just as heated as when Gore gave his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech (2007)? Read the following OP-ED piece ”Turned Off by Global Warming“ by Katherine Ellison of San Fransisco (New York Times, May 20, 2006): San Francisco - By now, only someone who has been hiding under a rock would need to see the new Al Gore movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," to learn that global warming is real. Even Time magazine caught up to the degree of the threat last month, with its cover story urging us to be "very worried." Many of us have also winced at the slick new television ad, co-sponsored by the national nonprofit group Environmental Defense, that depicts global warming as a speeding train headed straight for a little girl standing on the tracks. Well, I for one am very, very worried. As the mother of two young boys, I want to do everything I can to protect their future. But I feel like a shnook buying fluorescent light bulbs — as Environmental Defense recommends — when at last count, China, India and the United States were building a total of 850 new coal-fired power plants. Clearly, it's time for some radical ideas about solving global warming. But where's the radical realism when we need it? Here's the truly inconvenient truth: Scientists have long been warning that the world must cut back on greenhouse-gas emissions by as much as 70 percent, as soon as possible, if we're to have a fighting chance of stabilizing the climate. Yet even with full participation by the United States, the controversial Kyoto Protocol — the only global plan in the works — would hardly begin to do that. Its goal is to reduce emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. And so far, the best plan offered by American politicians — the Climate Stewardship act sponsored by Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman — has an even more modest goal: it aims to cut emissions in the United States merely to 2000 levels by 2010. And the Senate has rejected it twice. What we need is something more imaginative and daring. But where's the discussion of anything like that? The "Take Action" page on the Web site for Mr. Gore's movie offers no such vision — the boldest action it suggests is to back the McCain-Lieberman bill. And when I recently asked David Yarnold, Environmental Defense's executive vice president, why his group wasn't offering solutions more dramatic than Congress has thought up, he replied, "Why would you want to lobby for something that can't get done?" Last June, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California became one of the few elected politicians with the courage to talk about climate change in the language it requires by promoting a plan to reduce his state's greenhouse-gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050. But Mr. Schwarzenegger has since warned of the need to move slowly so as not to "scare the business community." While the California governor backpedals, a team of scientists, economists and business executives have put forward a potentially revolutionary plan. Outlined by Ross Gelbspan, a former Boston Globe reporter and editor, in his book "Boiling Point," the so-called Clean Energy Transition would start by turning over an estimated $25 billion in annual federal government payments now supporting the fossil-fuel industry to a new fund for renewable energy investments. It would also create a $300 billion clean-energy fund for developing countries through a tax on international currency transactions, while calling on industry to get in line with a progressive fossil-fuel efficiency standard, forcing greenhouse-gas emitters to immediately work on conservation. If megaproposals like the Clean Energy Transition, which would get the ball rolling on a global level, still strike us as romantic and implausible, it's only because our politicians, including the well-intentioned Mr. Gore, and smart, well-financed groups like Environmental Defense have denied us the leadership we need to achieve global warming solutions on par with the problem. Lacking such leadership, we're left with little more than our increasing anxiety and that scary, speeding train.
”What we need is something more imaginative and daring.“ What do you understand Ms. Ellison to mean? She wrote this OP-ED in 2006. Do you think her response would be different today? Discuss this response and follow up with a discussion particularly of her concluding paragraph. Given their ”reading“ of the environment, how do you think Shellenberger and Nordhaus (authors of BreakThrough) would respond, especially to the concluding sentence? Why do you think the position on climate change taken by these authors appeals to a younger generation?
Learn More July 23, 2007 Learn more about causes of climate change, human causes and natural climate shifts over time. When was the Earth, for example, substantially warmer than it is now? How were conditions different? How did the location of ancient continents shape ocean currents and lay the groundwork for ice ages? How have volcanic eruptions affected climate change? What are some major effects of global warming that have been predicted? Learn more about these effects. How much would C02 need to be reduced in the world today to substantially reduce global warming? How much has the U.S. reduced carbon emissions in the last two or three years? Learn how to calculate your carbon footprint. Read some reviews of Al Gore’s documentary ”An Inconvenient Truth.“ Read ”Putting Science into Context,“ a book review of Unstoppable Global Warming posted January 24, 2007 by Professor Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre. (NYTimes reporter Andrew Revkin mentioned him in his article ”A New Middle Stance.“) What is the Tyndall Centre? Read some book reviews of Jared Diamond’s Collapse. See, for example, Gregg Easterbrook’s review (New York Times) ”’Collapse’: How the World Ends“ and ”The Vanishing“ by Malcolm Gladwell (New Yorker). Read Bjorn Lomborg’s controversial book Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Climate Change or read a selection (for example, his argument that polar bears are not facing extinction) or visit his website. In contrast, read award-winning Canadian journalist Ed Struzik’s article ”Polar Bear Population on Thin Ice“ (Toronto Star, Nov. 26, 2007). Do some follow-up research to learn about findings from recent studies of polar bears. See the documentary ”Everything’s Cool“ (Gold & Hefland, 2007), a surprisingly entertaining way to advance the environmental dialogue. Read novelist Michael Crichton’s essay on climate change included at the end of his novel State of Fear. Check Heartland Institute’s website to learn its position on climate change. Does the Institute’s claim that ”it is not affiliated with any political party“ hold up? Learn about the politics of Milton Friedman, Senator James M. Inhofe, the Cato Institute, and the Washington Times mentioned on the Institute’s website. Read the full transcript of an interview with scientist John Holdren who believes ”global disruption“ more accurately describes climate change, not ”global warming“ (Interview with Amy Goodman, ”Democracy Now,“ National Public Radio, July 3, 2008). Learn more about the history of the environmental movement. Read ”The Death of Environmentalism“ (2004), the essay by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus that sparked considerable discussion. You can access a number of responses on the Internet, including ”There is Something Different about Global Warming“ by Carl Pope (Sierra Club). See also ”The Prejudice of Place“ from BreakThrough (included under ”Renewable Energy,“ pp. 0-00), especially the second part that addresses the authors’ concerns about the environmental movement. Learn about what kind of changes they think the environmental movement needs to make in the 21st Century. Learn More about some ways the younger generation is addressing environmental issues, including what is happening on your campus as well as on other campuses across the country. Learn about the Step It Up campaign organized by college students across the country. Learn about how some young entrepreneurs are ”going green.“ Options: You can work individually and select what you want to Learn More about or collaboratively in a small group followed by a presentation and discussion of your findings.
Following what you Learn More about, you may want to add to your analytical framework so that you respond from an even more informed background.
Write From your location as a college student and member of the younger generation, state and explain your position in this debate in relation to the reading you have done. Make specific references to the texts. (See ”Introducing & Incorporating Sources,“ Resources.) Think of your response as part of an online forum in which college students have done the same reading and are offering their perspectives. End not only by positioning yourself but also with the intent to stimulate discussion (live or online). More informal conversation can follow using the posted (or printed) perspectives as discussion prompts. Option: You can also write a brief abstract of your research report. If you are posting online, you could give viewers the option to Read More…
Sub/urban Sprawl: Environmental Issues
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