Facing and Reversing Global Climate Change
~by Stella Koch

Global climate change is real. The debate ended in 2007, when the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its findings in a report produced by 620 authors and editors and reviewed by another 600 experts. The IPCC concluded that increasing greenhouse-gas concentrations resulting from human activity such as fossil-fuel burning and deforestation are responsible for most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century.[1] The predicted consequences include significant wildlife extinctions (perhaps as many as a million species) as well as changes in rain patterns and distribution that could have significant consequences on food production and fresh-water availability worldwide. In addition, several hundred million people could be displaced, as rising sea levels flood out entire coastal communities and countries.  The most vulnerable areas include the world’s island nations, Southeast Asia, and, in the U.S., Louisiana and Florida.  The air surrounding the Earth is made up of different gases: about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% carbon dioxide, water vapor, and other gases.[2] Carbon dioxide in small amounts is natural in the atmosphere.  Humans and other animals produce it as we breathe, and plants and algae use it to make sugar through the process of photosynthesis.

Human activity is adding gases to the atmosphere in significant amounts. Our burning of fossil fuels like oil, natural gas, and coal to generate electricity or to power vehicles and manufacturing processes has increased the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air. Our production and use of fossil fuels and our agricultural practices, such as livestock farming, release methane (MH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) into the air. It appears that the amount of carbon dioxide and methane now in the air exceeds the natural range of those two gases in the last 650,000 years. Put simply, we are putting carbon dioxide into the air much faster than plants and algae can absorb it.[3]

These gases are called greenhouse gases because they linger in the atmosphere, trap heat near the Earth’s surface and warm the planet, just as the glass in a greenhouse traps and holds the heat from the sun’s rays. The solution to the problem is obvious: we need to reduce these global-warming greenhouse gases by at least 80 percent by 2050 if we are to stave off the direst consequences of global climate change.[4]

The United States has approximately 5 percent of the world’s population and yet contributed 22.2 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases created by burning fossil fuels.[5] We’ve seen leadership at the city, county, and state levels on this issue (for example, Governor Schwarzenegger of California has pushed various initiatives throughout his tenure to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions), but until recently the U.S. government has done little to address the issue of greenhouse gases and climate change.This year, with a new Congress and a new president, there is the hope that something of significance can be accomplished at the federal level.  By a vote of 219-212, on Friday, June 26, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey Bill, the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act.  This bill, more than 900 pages long, calls for a cap-and-cost on carbon output, and uses the revenues to create green jobs and a new green economy.  Implementing this bill will reduce carbon emissions 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050.[6]  The U.S. Senate also needs to pass a similar bill this year.  This legislation needs to be passed and sent to President Obama to sign into law.  You can help Congress pass good climate-change legislation. We are all represented (unless we live in Washington, D.C.) at the federal level by one congressional representative and two senators; you need to contact them. For contact information on your two senators and your representative, use the League of Women Voters Web site: http://takeaction.lwv.org/lwv/dbq/officials/.

Take Action
1.  Find out how your member of the House of Representatives voted, by going to http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-26-waxman-markey-bill-vote-count/. Then call or email your member.  If they voted for the bill, thank them.   If they did not vote for the bill, tell them of your disappointment and ask them to support any future efforts to pass good global climate-change legislation.

2.  Email or call your two senators.  Ask them to support, this fall, a robust climate-change bill that will require the 80 percent reduction of greenhouse gases by 2050.

[1] "Summary for Policymakers," Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC, Cambridge University Press, 2007. http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf

[2] “Article 1 – The Air We Breathe,” World Almanac Education Group, Inc., 2005.  http://staff.fcps.net/jholley/documents/Article%201-THE%20AIR%20WE%20BREATHE.pdf

[3] "Humans Put CO2 Into Atmosphere 14,000 Times Faster Than Nature," by Deborah Zabarenko, News Daily, April 27, 2008: http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2008/04/humans-put-co2-into-atmosphere-14000.html

[4] “World Needs to Axe Greenhouse Gases by 80 pct: Report,” By Alister Doyle, April 19, 2007, Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL194440620070419

[5] Compiled in 2007 by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) in the United States Department of Energy. the CDIAC, and its subsidiary the World Data Center for Atmospheric Trace Gases focus on obtaining, evaluating, and distributing data related to climate change and greenhouse-gas emissions. http://cdiac.ornl.gov/z

[6] “Chairmen Waxman, Markey Release Discussion Draft of New Clean Energy Legislation,” March 31, 2009, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, http://energycommerce.house.gov/