San Francisco Chronicle (www.SFGate.com), Sunday October 2,
2005,

Preparing for Global Warming:

Our government can do something about the weather.
Carl Pope (executive Director of the Sierra Club www.SierraClub.org)

When I set out on a monthlong trip to Asia this summer, I wasn’t
prepared
for time travel.

My journey turned out to be a tour of catastrophic weather-related
disasters: devastating floods in Bombay; vast drought-related fires and
smoke in Sumatra; and, upon my return, Hurricane Katrina. Most climate
scientists have been predicting that global warming would spawn an
increasing number of these events in the future. Seeing all three
catastrophes at once led me to one conclusion: That future is now.

There is no way to link any of these individual tragedies to global
warming, just as you can’t link any one cigarette to lung cancer. But
the
implications of climate change and the high costs of doing nothing are
impossible to ignore. Conservative estimates peg the cost of the
Katrina
recovery at $70 billion.

The global-warming cynics have tried to distract us with the
argument
that because we don’t know exactly how global-warming pollutants will
change
the climate, we don’t need to act quickly to reduce emissions. They
also
claim that we would be better off trying to adapt our societies to
global
warming instead of taking precautionary measures to prevent it. They
speak
of adaptation, an after-the-fact concept, not preparedness. They
emulate
Neville Chamberlain rather than Winston Churchill.

But the successive tragedies in Bombay, Malaysia and New Orleans
show how
thin the climate-variation band is that complex societies can handle.
How
could the 17 million people of Bombay prepare for 36 inches of rainfall
in
24 hours? Well, they could do some things — such as not build highways
that choke natural river beds, ban plastic bags that clog storm drains
and
protect their mangroves. But if we keep pumping greenhouse gases into
the
atmosphere, and 36 inches becomes 48, even those measures won’t keep
up.

Adapting to global warming is futile, but preparedness is
imperative.
Every city and state should assess its vulnerability to extreme weather
and climate change overall. If California is likely to have less
snowmelt,
we need more water conservation and less unplanned development. If a
faster snowmelt means that the Central Valley’s levees are at a risk
even
greater than those of New Orleans, we need to spend the money to
strengthen them. If higher sea levels mean re-engineered
sewage-treatment
plants, we should set aside the money to pay for them now. If
catastrophic
fires and hurricanes are inevitable, we must tighten our building codes
and require developers to build more defensible homes.

But preparedness alone is a stopgap. We need prevention, and the
only way
to limit our overall vulnerability is to rein in the greenhouse
pollutants
that are driving global warming. I am willing to bet that Americans
everywhere would be willing to do their part, if given the chance.

I’d put my money on people such as Savannah Rose Walters, age 12, of
Odessa, Fla. After learning that Americans waste 4 million gallons of
oil
every day by not properly inflating their tires, Savannah got such
companies as Sears and Goodyear to donate 1,000 tire gauges and
launched a
local public-education campaign to get people to “Pump ‘Em Up!”

People are so hungry for global-warming solutions that Jerry’s
Famous
Deli in Studio City delivers your rye-bread in a hybrid. Or consider
the
renaissance in public transit in cities such as Denver, Salt Lake City
and
even Los Angeles. If 1 in 10 Americans regularly used transit, the
United
States would reduce its oil consumption by 40 percent, according to
figures from the Center for Transportation Excellence. If you don’t
have
faith that Americans will do their part, remember that a third of
California residents responded to the 2001 energy crisis by reducing
their
energy demand by at least 20 percent.

But individual Americans can only do so much without the leadership
of
government. People can buy a more efficient car or air conditioner, but
they can’t design one. Our government should set the pace for
technological innovation, starting with our cars. Automakers have, but
are
not fully using, hybrid and other existing technology to make cars,
trucks
and SUVs run cleaner and go farther on a gallon of gas. If the federal
government simply required automakers to use the best available
technology, all vehicles could average 40 miles per gallon within 10
years.

Federal lawmakers should take a cue from states and cities that are
already leading the way. California and several other states already
require automakers to make cleaner vehicles. Charlotte, N.C., just
decided
to convert its entire municipal fleet to hybrid vehicles. More than 175
mayors across America, including San Francisco’s Gavin Newsom, signed a
Climate Protection Agreement committing their cities to reduce
global-warming emissions.

After Katrina, our country has never been more ready to embrace a
new
energy future to make us more secure in every way. In failing to
recognize
this, our leaders in Washington have exposed themselves as dangerously
out
of touch.

There’s an old saying that everyone talks about the weather, but no
one
ever does anything about it. If our federal government doesn’t act now
to
reduce global-warming pollution (adopting the same emissions standards
for
cars as California would be a huge first step), that’s exactly what
future
generations will say about us.

———————————————————————-

Blair takes heat for global-warming remarks

Debra J. Saunders (DJSaunders@sfchronicle.com)

WHENEVER a political leader speaks the truth about the Kyoto
global-warming treaty, the chattering classes treat him as if he were
that
upstart kid who said the emperor has no clothes. So pundits and
politicians have derided British Prime Minister Tony Blair for saying
he
had been “changing his thinking” about the global-warming pact.

On the first day of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, a
panel
chaired by former President Bill Clinton held earlier this month,
Blair, a
longtime supporter of the global-warming pact, said of Kyoto: “We have
got
to start from brutal honesty about the politics of how we deal with it.
The truth is, no country is going to cut its growth or consumption
substantially in light of a long-term environmental problem. What
countries are prepared to do is to try to work together cooperatively
to
deal with this problem in a way that allows us to develop the science
and
technology in a beneficial way.” Blair also said he didn’t think world
leaders would “start negotiating another major treaty like Kyoto.”

The wonder is that the savvy Blair didn’t come to his senses sooner
about
Kyoto.

A British official, talking without attribution as British officials
do,
told me Blair’s “remarks were taken out of context, the British
government
remains firmly committed to the Kyoto protocol. The prime minister has
consistently said we need to go beyond Kyoto.” Europeans have been
pushing
a top-down regulatory approach. President Bush says science can come to
the rescue. Blair prefers to walk in both worlds.

If Blair’s remarks have been over-hyped, it’s because they are on
the
money. Fact: Britain produces more carbon dioxide now than when Blair
entered No. 10 Downing Street in 1997. The Brits are far more energy
conscious than gas-guzzling Americans. How? Brits are more likely to
use
public transit, there’s a congestion tax for cars on Central London
streets, there has been a national effort to eschew the use of coal –
and
still the United Kingdom’s greenhouse gases are up. That’s what happens
in
a strong economy.

The government counters that, even though greenhouse gas emissions
have
increased, the United Kingdom is “on track” to meet its Kyoto goal of
reducing emissions some 12.5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. (When
the
treaty was negotiated, the United Kingdom’s emissions measured at 5
percent below 1990 levels.) Meanwhile, it is clear that all but a
handful
of countries in Kyoto-treaty-loving Europe, which pledged a continental
reduction of 8 percent below 1990 emissions, will fail to meet their
Kyoto
goals.

Here’s another brutal, honest fact about Kyoto: Before then-Vice
President
Al Gore left for the global-warming conference in 1997, the Senate told
the Clinton administration, via a 95-0 vote, not to agree to a treaty
that
exempted developing nations. Gore ignored the Senate, which ultimately
would have to ratify the treaty. No wonder then that Clinton, who did
not
take the opportunity last week to disagree with Blair, never asked the
Senate to vote on Kyoto ratification while he was in office.

Of course Clinton stayed mum. He said he supported Kyoto, which
would
have made America reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent
below
1990 level. Lo and behold, emissions were 14 percent higher than the
1990
level when Clinton left office in 2001.

While the left likes to fault Bush on Kyoto, even 2004 Democratic
presidential candidate John Kerry said, if elected, he would not ask
the
Senate to ratify Kyoto.

It should be noted that Kerry was one of the 95 senators who voted
no
before Gore left for the Kyoto conference. Be it also noted that there
are
those who criticize Bush for not giving lip service to Kyoto yet drive
big
SUVs. I do not write this to brand them as hypocrites — but to point
out
that if the folks who believe global warming is a severe threat to the
planet don’t ride the bus, why would anyone else?

Last week, the New York Times reported that polar ice caps have
shrunk to
their smallest size in a century (not so very long, geologically
speaking), and some scientists posit human-induced global-warming must
be
a factor. But wait. The Houston Chronicle reported this month that NASA
has observed that polar ice caps are shrinking — on Mars.

You can’t blame SUVs for ice melting on Mars.

The enviros say that scientists are on their side. That’s easy to
say, as
the left ignores scientists who aren’t. The fact is, this is a highly
political issue, and even scientists who want to go strictly by the
data
get sucked into the political vortex. Pro or con, they can’t help but
become partisans.

So, see what happened when Blair finally got real on Kyoto? He spoke
the
truth — not particularly forcefully, I might add — and Our Betters in
Europe dismissed him as Dubya’s lapdog. After all, how dare he not fawn
over the beautiful vestments on the emperor’s nude body?

———————————————————————-

Copyright, both articles, 2005 SF Chronicle.