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Sat, 17 Jun 2006

We Are Not Helpless in The Face of Global Warming

Article Excerpt: Global Warming/Local Hope

By Paul Rogat Loeb, published on Friday, June 16, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

As the evidence of global warming becomes inescapable, I fear Americans will switch instead to a fatalistic pessimism. Maybe it's real and maybe it's our fault, this sentiment goes, but at this point there's nothing we can do, so we're off the hook.

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Yet people are beginning to act, sometimes from unexpected places. By so doing they're opening up new possibilities. The heads of BP Amoco and the world's largest reinsurance companies, Swiss Re and Munich Re, have spoken out. So has the vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, joined by other key evangelical leaders like the country's largest megachurch pastor, Reverend Rick Warren. In Britain, even the Conservatives are demanding the issue be made a top national priority.

In spring 2005, in Seattle, where I live, Mayor Greg Nickels recognized that even though the Bush administration was still denying the consequences of global warming, local mayors could still take a stand. Nickels committed Seattle to meet or exceed the Kyoto standards of greenhouse gas reduction and challenged the mayors of other cities to make the same commitment. Now 238 cities have signed the US Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement, from New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago to Omaha, Charlottesville, and Laredo. Together they represent 44 million people and greenhouse gas emissions exceeding those of the combined population of Great Britain, the Netherlands and Scandinavia.

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It's tempting to dismiss these initiatives as insignificant, given the magnitude of the challenge. Cuts in greenhouse emissions need to be far more drastic than Kyoto's limited reach of reducing emissions to 7% below the 1990 levels by 2012.. But efforts like Seattle's and some of the other cities and businesses offer a path forward, a way to act despite the Bush administration's massive denial. Each city inspires the next. So does each business. ...................

Read the rest of the article: Global Warming/Local Hope