Global Warming Is Too Critical to Get Cold Shoulder

From the Chicago Sun-Times
July 6, 2006
By David T. Schiff

In October, the U.S. population will top 300 million, thanks partly to the birth of a child every eight seconds. Those children will enjoy life expectancies of about 78 years. They will also be lifelong witnesses to global climate and ecosystem change, with potentially dire consequences.

In this and successive election years, where will we find the leaders with the courage to say: “Consume less, pollute less, harbor your resources and care for your planet”? At the very least, in the United States, we must find the will to increase fuel economy standards and lessen our excessive use of gasoline; we must value our natural resources, not just in the abstract, but in practice . . . and, we should do so much more.

The time is here to recognize our vulnerability to excessive “greenhouse gases”; carbon dioxide and other trace gas emissions must be curtailed. We must learn to restrain our complacency on burning fossil fuels, for environmental sustainability is a necessity. We must not forget the connection between global climate change and conservation of wildlife and wild lands. Much of the world contributes to global climate change by deforestation and cultivation of crops, increasingly for the benefit of consumers far from the denuded forests, drained wetlands and butchered mangroves. These ecosystem and global climate changes from industrial processes and land-cover decimation both affect nature as well as human beings; protecting biodiversity is crucial to human welfare.

For the first time in the history of our planet, about half all plant production is controlled by human beings. That this much photosynthesis, through agricultural, forestry and fisheries practices, is affected by mankind's actions holds huge implications, as so much of our activity has the effect of releasing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. Protecting natural lands, in addition to the benefits for wildlife conservation, also offers the benefit of creating or protecting “carbon sinks,” which appear to balance the losses from carbon releases into the atmosphere. Climate change, itself, threatens that balance, as drying and thawing processes cause tundra, high latitude forests and wetlands to release -- not store -- carbon.

Effective conservation of wildlife and wild lands, including reforestation and restoration of grasslands and wetlands, is good for climate stability. Failure to conserve these terrestrial contributors threatens to create autocatalytic processes that will accelerate over time.

This all connects back to pressures to increase rural productivity in poor countries. Conversion of natural land cover to cotton, palm oil and sugar cultivation is not beneficial to climate stability; often, the dislocated populations contribute further to deforestation and burning. We must maintain the Earth's great "carbon sinks" in the Amazon, Southeast Asia and the North American Great Plains, among others; substituting ethanol as a fuel, in the long run, is not the savior of extensive petroleum product usage. This prescription is bad for poor people, bad for wildlife and bad for the global climate.

Historically, governments have provided incentives (or disincentives) for humankind's activities, whether by building dams or roadways, instituting tax relief or imposing tariffs of various kinds on goods and services, leaving populations to adjust their actions accordingly. The future of human activities needs largely to be shaped by the dictates of market forces. New technologies need encouragement. A more realistic, and less political, discussion of nuclear generating plants is needed; the utilization of geothermal and solar energy systems should be further explored. When petroleum displaced whale oil in the mid-19th century, it was a brand-new source of energy, a miracle commodity whose shortcomings wouldn't be revealed for 150 years.

Perhaps another miracle lies waiting to be discovered, and elected officials should stimulate the search for it; but in the meantime we should save -- energy, commodities, wildlife and wild lands -- and prepare to adapt to a different world.

We can also continue to push the curve of human population down from its amazing growth in the 20th century. For those 6.5 billion of us already here, and for those demographically predestined to join us, we must abandon our profligate habits, assume responsibility for the biosphere that remains and show the political courage that has been so lacking worldwide, as we have imperiled the lives of future generations by spending down their natural endowment. Hopefully, in the future, leaders more attentive to society's greater needs will emerge.

David T. Schiff is chairman of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

For Media Contact Information, Please Click Here.