Doomsday from Global Warming? Not Likely

January 14, 2007 – Vol.11 No.43

DOOMSDAY FROM GLOBAL WARMING? NOT LIKELY.

Hotheads may bring on nuclear Armageddon, but footdraggers on global warming are slowly getting up to speed. Corporate America, well Corporate World, with too much to lose, too much to gain, won’t let global warming and climate change spoil the party.

Yes, someday soon North Korea might have the capability to drop a big one on San Francisco. But a barrage of US missiles would quickly incinerate the little country. (Why would North Korea even consider this?)

Iran might be seeking nuclear weapons within its nuclear power program. But its economy is dragging as its oil supplies dwindle and bad economic policy is made worse by UN sanctions.

A US, or perhaps Israeli, strike on Iran? Neither country would have any friends for the rest of the century. It’s only 2007.

(The US should really just sit and wait. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is already weakening under his own rhetoric. In another six months or a year he could be gone, particularly if his economy continues in its southerly direction.)

And the growing fleet of international terrorists, they could do us all in, right? Maybe the West should find jobs for those in the Middle East to keep budding ne'er-do-wells out of trouble.

Unfortunately the world is full of hotheads and school yard bullies. Some of those have found their way into positions of power and are willing to pull the trigger when the mood suits them.

It’s a scary world at the moment.

This week the Doomsday Clock was moved to five minutes before midnight because worried scientists connected with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) - which created the hypothetical Doomsday Clock in 1947 - think both nuclear Armageddon and the ravages of global warming will put an end to the human race as we know it.

Unstable leaders in unstable countries may pull the nuclear trigger, but the corporate world is driven by smart, cooler heads. Now that they’ve caught on that global warming can mean big trouble for profits, and at the same time create some new profit opportunities, they’re showing signs that they’re willing to take on the task of fixing the problem.

While the nuclear threat seems to worsen daily, the global warming threat is at least being discussed now at levels unheard of in memory. For that we have hope.

What’s changed?

The footdraggers in industry as well as stalling politicians, have either been replaced or have, finally, done their homework.

Here’s some evidence:

--- General Motors’ plans to produce plug-in hybrids that take automobiles out of the climate change equation are a sea change in long-term company planning.

If GM does this others will quickly follow suit. (If they’re not planning to do so already.)

--- ExxonMobil has unfunded organizations it had been supporting that were vocal global warming skeptics. The company is now willing to debate solutions rather than battle the science. This also is a major shift in company policy towards climate change.

(The unfunding may be the result of a report recently published by the Union of Concerned Scientists showing that Exxon had channeled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to 43 organizations who seeked to confuse, downplay and generally misinform the public on global warming science. In other words, try to cover it up.)

--- Other major US corporations - Alcoa, BP America, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, DuPont, FPL Group, General Electric, Lehman Brothers, PG&E, and PNM Resources - along with four leading non-governmental organizations - Environmental Defense, Natural Resources Defense Council, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and World Resources Institute - have formed the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP).

The goal of the group of household names “is to help our nation create public policy that would act aggressively and sustainably to slow, stop and reverse the growth of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.”

The group too, urges “lawmakers to enact a policy framework for mandatory reductions of GHG emissions from major emitting sectors, including large stationary sources, transportation, and energy use in commercial and residential buildings.”

USCAP is looking for a cap-and-trade system to help cut emissions as well as a national program to accelerate research, development and deployment of alternative technologies.

The effort to stem greenhouse gas emissions must be global, they say.

They didn’t say that 10 years ago when Kyoto was being drawn up.

--- In Europe there’s a similar corporate organization - Combat Climate Change - with 18 signing members, some American. It too is looking for solutions.

The group already has a research report out saying that keeping climate change under control would be less expensive than previously thought - about .6 percent of annual global Gross Domestic Product. (Less than the Stern report predicted.)

The report, completed by member Vattenfall, says that keeping climate under control will be an ongoing project, part of doing business, pretty much forever into the future.

--- Massachusetts has rejoined Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The group was formed to discuss the creation of a cap-and-trade system for emissions from power plants.

Newly sworn-in Governor Deval Patrick brought the state back into RGGI on a campaign promise. He plans to use the auction of greenhouse gas certificates to build a renewable energy industry in the state.

--- Major corporations are teaming up to do direct battle with climate change.

For instance General Electric and power company AES announced that they’d work together to develop greenhouse gas reduction projects to capture or destroy methane emissions from agriculture, coal mining and sewage treatment plants. Where they couldn’t do that they’d develop projects, such as efficiency enhancements and renewable energies, that would create offsets for methane emissions.

The goal? Ten million metric tons of annual greenhouse gas reductions or offsets each year by 2010.

Scientists tend to be pessimistic. Perhaps they have little faith in the business world.

True, industry may have created the global climate mess, but big business, now that it fully understands the situation, isn’t going to sit back and let future profits wither away while missing out on many new business opportunities of the near future.

Scientists ... have some faith in the power of money.

Visit the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at http://www.thebulletin.org/ AES at http://www.aes.com/ , ExxonMobil at http://www.exxonmobil.com/ , GM at http://www.gm.com/ , GE at http://www.ge.com/ , RGGI at http://www.rggi.org/ , Union of Concerned Scientists at http://www.ucsusa.org/ , Combat Climate Change http://www.combatclimatechange.org/ , their Curbing Climate Change report at http://www.vattenfall.com/www/vf_com/vf_com/Gemeinsame_Inhalte/DOCUMENT/360168vatt/386246envi/Curbing_climate_report.pdf