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Climate report must inspire action
By Derek Larson
St. Cloud (MN) Times
Have you heard the one about the priest, the rabbi and the ostrich who walk into a bar across from the United Nations? No?
Well perhaps you've heard the one about the 600 scientists from 40 countries who wrote a report on climate change that was reviewed by 620 more experts and 113 governments before it was released Friday?
If not, you should have.
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may well represent the tipping point in the world's response to the threat of global warming. Six years in the making, the IPCC study has laid to rest the idea that the jury is still out on climate change (most scientists have been decided for years) and, with luck, the report will spur action.
The report comes when signs of awakening are coming from all sectors of society.
Evangelical Christians have organized to address the issue. Business leaders have called for new regulations on carbon emissions. Recently under new management, Congress is holding hearings on climate change and investigating charges Bush administration officials muzzled federal scientists and punished researchers for revealing results of climate-related work.
And while the president's Iraq policy rightly drew the most attention during last month's State of the Union address, the fact that he uttered "global climate change" prompted headlines nationwide.
Slow to change
Have you wondered why most of the world has accepted what credible scientists have been saying about climate change for years, while here in the United States our president tells us that "the issue needs more study?" The answer is really quite simple: politics.
Back in 2003, Republican strategists realized they were losing the environmental debate. That spring, Republican consultant Frank Luntz wrote a memo to party strategists arguing that "voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly... Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate."
That's exactly what the president and his allies in the oil, gas, coal and electric power industries did. Exxon-Mobil spent $16 million from 1998-2005 creating organizations to foster the impression that scientists were still debating climate issues.
A nation awakens
Oddly enough, this scenario has played out before. In 1962, an unassuming marine biologist named Rachel Carson published "Silent Spring," a damning indictment of the pesticide industry. The unabated and unnecessary use of pesticides, she argued, would culminate in a world devoid of birds and a spring without birdsong. More pressingly, the same products that industry claimed brought "better living through chemistry" were already sowing cancers and other horrors in humans.
Carson was savagely attacked by the chemical industry, accused of being a hysterical woman, a lesbian, a Communist and an unqualified spinster. Carson died of breast cancer less than two years after her book was published and did not live to see the environmental movement she helped give birth to flourish.
But "Silent Spring" was translated into 35 languages and sold millions of copies worldwide, changing history not because it offered radically new ideas, but because average people read it and finally began to question the industry's claims that pesticides' convenience came without side effects.
It is possible the IPCC report could become the "Silent Spring" of the 21st century. Now that its findings have been released, any remaining debate about whether climate change deserves our attention should be limited to the reactionary fringe. What remains for the rest of us is much more important. Deciding what to do about it, how quickly and at what cost will be the defining tasks of this generation of world leaders, and they need our help. Hopefully they won't pass the job on to the next generation unfinished.
