HISTORY AT RISK: THE CRISIS OF THE GLOBAL CLIMATE
By Ross Gelbspan (c)1999
It is not news that climate shapes history. What is news is that the heating of our
atmosphere has propelled our climate into a new state of instability. This new era of
climate change could well be the most profound threat ever facing humanity. The most
predictable casualty of climate change is stability -- in our political systems, our economic
organizations and our weather.
Perhaps because we are not experiencing heat waves of record-setting duration the public
is happy to believe that global warming is a non-event. What most people don't
understand is that prolonged, detectable warming is preceded by a period of unstable
climate marked by extreme and unseasonal weather.
In 1995, a panel of more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries reported to the United
Nations that Earth has already entered a new period of climatic instability likely to cause
widespread economic, social and environmental dislocations -- including sea level rise of
up to 3 feet, increases in floods and droughts, increasingly severe storms and temperature
extremes.[1]
Make no mistake. Climate change is here. Now. And its impacts have been felt over the
past several years all over the world.
-----------------------------------------------------------More than an "environmental" issue
In reporting on the issue of climate change for my book, The Heat Is On, (Perseus Books,
1997), it became clear that climate change is far more than a merely environmental issue.
Its dimensions cut to the core of our economic and political lives -- even to the basis of our
existence as an organized civilization. The crisis of the global climate clusters around
three issues of enormous scope and pervasive impact.
Its natural dimensions are of truly cosmic proportions. The 11 hottest years in recorded
history have occurred since 1980. The period from 1991 to 1995 constitutes the five
hottest consecutive years on record. 1997 just replaced 1995 as the hottest year in
history. And the planet is heating at a rate faster than at any time in the last 10,000
years.[2]
Its energy dimension is staggering to contemplate. It requires a total transformation of the
central nervous system of our civilization. To restore our inflamed atmosphere to a
hospitable state requires nothing less than rewiring the entire globe -- and replace every
oil-burning furnace, every gasoline-burning car, every coal-burning generating plant, with
renewable, climate-friendly energy sources. The earth's fossil fuel resources have blessed
us with a level of prosperity and abundance unimaginable a century ago. Today they are
propelling us forward into a century of disintegration.
1
Finally, the economic dimension of the climate crisis centers around a widening global
fault line which threatens to split humanity irreparably between rich and poor. The impact
of that inequality on the global climate rests on one simple fact: if tomorrow the U.S. and
the rest of the industrial world were to cut its emissions dramatically, that reduction would
be overwhelmed by the coming pulse of carbon from China, India, Mexico, Brazil and all
the developing nations who are struggling to keep ahead of the relentless undertow of
chronic poverty.
Today while governments try to ratify emissions reductions of six and seven percent, a
larger reality is being ignored. The science tells us clearly that to restore our atmosphere
to a hospitable state requires us to cut emissions by 60 to 70 percent.[3]
It is a fascinating and deeply engaging set of issues that challenges both our habits and
our intellects in ways that no other environmental problem ever has.
As one world-class scientist has observed, "If this unstable climate we are now beginning
to see had begun 150 years ago, the planet would probably never have been able to
support its current population of nearly six billion people."
The Central Drama
This, then, is the central drama underlying the issue of global warming: the ability of this
planet to sustain civilization versus the survival of the largest commercial enterprise in
history. The oil and coal industries together generate around two trillion dollars a year in
revenues. They support the economies of more than a dozen nations in the Middle East,
Latin America, Africa and elsewhere. In the battle against their inevitable transformation or
demise, their resources are virtually without limit.
Nevertheless, despite a highly pervasive and very successful industry-funded campaign of
deception and disinformation, the evidence of climate change is today irrefutable.
Extreme weather events
Begin with the most apparent evidence -- the relentless succession of extreme weather
events all over the world. By itself, anecdotal evidence is not conclusive. But it is certainly
compelling. A few selected examples from my notes:
In the spring of 1995, after five years without its normal killing frost, New Orleans was
overrun by termites.[4]That summer, more than 500 people in India died from an usual
heat wave.[5]Halfway around the world, the Midwest experienced its second 100-year
flood in three years. At least 700 people died that summer in Chicago of heat-related
effects.[6]That same summer of 1995 in Britain was the hottest since 1659 and the driest
since 1721.) In fact, the 24 months from May, 1995, to May, 1997, was the driest two-year
period in England since record keeping began.)[7]At the end of 1995, officials had to
cancel the World Cup ski tournament in Austria for lack of snow. At the same time,
residents of Sapporo, Japan, needed the army to dig them out of record snowfalls.[8]
In 1996, while floods plagued the northeastern United
States, a prolonged Midwestern drought recreated Dust Bowl
conditions and left U.S. grain reserves at their lowest
2
levels in 50 years.[9]That summer, people in the northeast
provinces of North Korea were reduced to eating leaves,
grass and wild roots following the most extreme floods in
memory.[10]At the same time, a succession of uncontrolled
fires in Mongolia destroyed more than 700,000 square
acres.[11]
One element of climate change involves the alteration of
precipitation and drought patterns and more intense rain
and snowfalls. As the atmosphere warms, it accelerates the
evaporation of surface waters. At the same time, the warmer
air expands to hold more water. So when the normal
atmospheric turbulence comes through, it dumps much more of
our rain and snow in severe, intense downpours than it did
a few years ago.[12]In July, 1996, Aurora, Ill., received
17 inches of rain in one day.[13]That August, more than 60
people died during a flash flood in the Spanish
Pyrenees.[14]In November, the worst floods in more than 50
years paralyzed Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria.[15]At the
end of the year, Moscow experienced its warmest December in
history.[16]
Moving forward into 1997, we saw a succession of very
destructive ice, snow and rainstorms in the Pacific
Northwest in January.[17]The worst rains in 30 years in
February destroyed half of Bolivia's crops.[18]In March, we
witnessed record flooding along the Ohio River.[19]Portugal
experienced its worst winter drought in 150 years which
destroyed 70 percent of that country's winter cereal
crops.[20]In April, the epic flooding of the Red River
devastated residents of North Dakota and Manitoba.[21]In
May, a torrential rainfall in Manila in left 120,000 people
homeless.[22]In July, the worst flooding in a century
plagued Poland and the Czech Republic.[23] A November
typhoon in Southeast Asia left 2,500 people dead or missing
in what Vietnamese officials called the "calamity of the
century."[24]That same month, unprecedented flooding left
more than 200,000 people homeless in Somalia and
Ethiopia.[25]Last December was the coldest in Moscow in 115
years (following the previous year's warmest December in
history).[26]And in my home town of Boston we saw a
60-degree Easter Sunday followed two days later by a
30-inch snowstorm, the third largest snowfall in Boston's
history.[27]
And 1998, which began with an extraordinary ice storm that
3
immobilized northern New England and Quebec for a month,
has brought us the fires in Brazil, Mexico and Florida,
killer heat waves in Texas and India, where some 4,000
people died of heat effects, Mexico's worst drought in 70
years, flooding in China which left 14 million people
homeless, the worst flooding in the history of Bangladesh
which left some 30 million people homeless, and the 11,000
hurricane casualties in Central America.
I think the point about extreme weather events is clear. My
own informal collection includes about 150 such events in
the last three years. That's about one a week. And what is
remarkable is that each one is record setting.
But anecdotal evidence does not constitute proof -- until
you add it to four other bodies of evidence: the
warming-driven spread of infectious disease; the escalating
crisis facing the world's property insurers; the official
findings of the 2,500-member Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC); and a series of profoundly troubling
physical changes taking place on the planet.
The spread of infectious disease
Warming is speeding up the breeding rates of
disease-bearing insects. It is also propelling them to
altitudes and latitudes which were only a few years ago too
cold to support their survival. Dr. Paul Epstein of Harvard
Medical School reports that mosquitoes that previously
could survive no higher than 1,000 meters are not being
found at sites as high as 2,200 and even 3,200 meters. And
they are spreading malaria, dengue and Yellow Fever to
populations which have never previously been exposed and
have no traditional immunity against them.[28]At current
rates of warming, scientists estimate that mosquito-borne
epidemics will double in the tropical regions and increase
100-fold in the temperate regions (where we live) -leading to as many as 80 million new cases a year of
malaria alone in the next century.[29]Globally, the
incidence of malaria has quadrupled in the last five
years.[30]
The cholera epidemic of the early 1990s that infected
400,000 people just in Peru was triggered in large part by
warming.[31]And changes in the climate have promoted the
emergence of frequently lethal pulmonary virus in the
4
southwest, the spread of a strain of Encephalitis and a
striking increase in the Northeastern U.S. of tick-borne
Lyme disease.[32]And when I was in Guatemala in March of
1998, the government declared a nationwide health alert in
the face of an epidemic of cholera and other intestinal
diseases. According to a full page article in the national
newspaper, the drought-driven evaporation of drinking water
was concentrating the amount of bacteria, and the warming
from the El Nino was accelerating their breeding rates. So
the government warned the public not only not to drink the
water, but not even to wash vegetables or bathe in it.[33]
Escalating insurance losses
The next body of evidence involves the extraordinary and
rapid escalation of damage claims from severe weather
events. It is sending shock waves though the insurance
industry. Those losses, which averaged $2 billion a year in
the 1980s, are averaging $12 billion a year in the
1990s.[34]A direct hit on Miami or New Orleans from a
warming-intensified hurricane could create $50 billion in
insured losses. Given the projected 2-3 foot rise in sea
levels during the next century, insurers are acutely aware
that half the population of the U.S. lives within 50 miles
of a vulnerable coastline. Franklin Nutter, head of the
Reinsurance Association of America, echoed a number of
insurance officials when he said that unless something is
done to stabilize the climate, it could "bankrupt the
industry."[35] As a recent report by the insurance giant,
Munich Re, concluded: "The general trend towards
ever-increasing numbers of catastrophes with
ever-increasing costs is continuing."[36]As if to prove the
point, a study released in November, 1998, concluded that
damages from extreme weather events simply in the first 10
months of 1998 surpassed the total of all such losses
during the entire decade of the 1980s.[37] 5
The scientific consensus
And then there is the official evidence of a consensus of
more than 2,000 of the world's leading climate researchers.
While the science is complex, the facts underlying the
science are simple. Carbon dioxide traps in heat. For
10,000 years, the amount of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere has remained the same -- 280 ppm -- until
5
roughly the turn of the century when we began burning more
coal and oil. That 280 will double in the next century. A
concentration of 450 ppm which most experts regard as
inevitable correlates with an increase in the global
temperature of 3* to 7* F. By contrast, the last Ice Age
was only 5* to 9* F colder than our current climate. Each
year, we are pumping six billion tons of heat-trapping
carbon into our atmosphere whose outer extent is only about
12 miles overhead.
In 1995, the IPCC reported to the United Nations that it
had discovered the scientific "fingerprint" of coal and oil
emissions which are contributing to the warming of the
planet. That "fingerprint" is graphically and distinctively
different from the natural variability of the climate.[38]
That same year, a team at the National Climatic Data Center
verified an increase in extreme precipitation events,
altered rainfall and drought patterns and temperature
extremes during the past several decades. The events they
identified are precisely what the current generation of
climate computer models project as the early manifestations
of global warming.[39]
Research results published last summer indicate that in
more of the world, the nighttime low temperatures are
rising almost twice as fast as the daytime high
temperatures. That also is a distinctive "signature" of
greenhouse warming.[40] If the warming were part of the
natural variability of the climate, the highs and lows
would rise and fall more or less in parallel.
Physical changes to the planet
The final body of evidence lies in scientific findings
about physical changes in the glaciers, forest, mountains
and oceans:
In 1995, researchers were astonished to discover that
warming surface waters had led to a 70 percent decline in
the population of zooplankton off the coast of Southern
California, creating an ocean wasteland and jeopardizing
the survival of several species of fish.[41]
In Monterey Bay, ocean warming caused a turnover in the
population of marine life, driving cold-water fish
6
northward while warm-water fish and sea animals moved in to
populate the area.[42]As ocean warming pushed fish
populations northwards, atmospheric warming has pushed a
whole population of butterflies from the mountains of
Mexico to the hills of Vancouver.[43]
High above the oceans, most of earth's glaciers are
retreating at accelerating rates. The biggest glacier in
the Peruvian Andes was retreating by 14 feet a year 20
years ago; today it is shrinking by 99 feet a year.[44]
Plants are migrating up the Alps to keep pace with the
changing climate.[45]
Warming has been detected in the deep oceans, causing the
break up of Antarctic ice shelves[46]-- and almost
certainly fueling more frequent and severe El Ninos. For at
least a century, El Ninos surfaced about every 4.2 years.
Since the mid-1970s, however, they have become more
frequent and long lasting. The El Nino which ended in late
1995 lasted a record 5 years and 8 months. That is a
1-in-2000 year event.[47]And we have yet to understand the
full extent of its biological impacts. The El Nino of
1997-98, which has promoted wildfires in Indonesia and
Mexico, record rainfalls in Chile and the beginnings of a
famine in New Guinea, is far more severe. And many
scientists now believe that the change in El Nino patterns
is due specifically to atmospheric heating.[48]
A new desert has recently formed in parts of Spain,
Portugal and Greece and scientists last year declared that
protracted droughts, punctuated by intense, soil-eroding
rains, have become the norm rather than the exception.[49]
The Alaskan Tundra, which for thousands of years absorbed
methane and CO2, is now thawing and releasing those gases
back into the atmosphere.[50]In Siberia and Alaska, the
ancient permafrost is turning to pea soup.51]
And in what for me is one of the most startling of these
physical changes, we have actually altered the timing of
the seasons. Because of the buildup of atmospheric CO2,
spring is now arriving a week earlier in the northern
hemisphere than it did 20 years ago.[52]
Industry's campaign of deception
7
But if much of the public is ignorant of the stakes, the
fossil fuel lobby is acutely aware of them. Over the last
seven years, the fossil fuel lobby has mounted a extremely
effective campaign of disinformation to persuade the public
and policy-makers that the issue of atmospheric warming is
still stuck in the limbo of scientific uncertainty. That
campaign for the longest time targeted the science. It then
misrepresented the economics. And most recently it attacked
the diplomatic foundations of the climate convention. And
it has been extraordinarily successful in creating a
relentless drumbeat of doubt in the public mind.
In 1991, Western Fuels, a $400-million coal consortium,
declared in its annual report it was launching a direct
attack on mainstream science and enlisting several
scientists who are skeptical about climate change -specifically Drs. Robert Balling, Pat Michaels and S. Fred
Singer.[53]
These self-proclaimed "greenhouse skeptics" would normally
not be worthy of much attention. There are only about a
dozen visible ones versus a consensus of more than 2,000 of
the world's leading climate scientists. But, with
extraordinary access to the media thanks to their corporate
sponsors, they have been able to create the general
perception that the issue is hopelessly stuck in
uncertainty.
Seven years ago, Western Fuels and several coal utilities
launched a half-million-dollar public relations campaign
which called for local press, radio and TV appearances by
Drs. Balling, Michaels and Singer. According to its
strategy papers, the purpose of the campaign was to
"reposition global warming as theory rather than fact." The
same document indicates the campaign was designed to target
"older, less-educated men...[and] young, low-income women"
in districts which receive their electricity from coal and,
preferably, have a representative on the House Energy
Committee.[54]
After the fraudulent ICE campaign was exposed in the media,
Western Fuels spent $250,000 on a propaganda video to
convince audiences that enhanced carbon dioxide is good for
us -- that it will benefit humanity by increasing crop
yields to help feed an expanding
8
population.[55]Unfortunately, the video overlooks two
factors. The first is the bugs. Of all natural systems, one
of the most sensitive to even the slightest temperature
change is insects; even a slight warming will trigger an
explosion of crop-destroying, disease-spreading insects.
Plant biologists point out an even more unconscionable
omission. While enhanced CO2 may temporarily increase
yields in the northern latitudes, it will decimate food
crop growth in the tropical latitudes where the majority of
the world's poorest and hungriest people live. A
half-degree increase in the average temperature will cause
a substantial decline in rice yields in Southeast Asia -and a drop-off of 20 percent of the wheat crop in India[56]
-- a country where a third of the population -- more than
300 million people -- live in extreme poverty.
For another example, a few months after a 1995 report by
the National Climatic Data Center that documented an
increase in severe weather events, the oil lobby
commissioned a study by a private weather forecasting firm
denying any such changes. It got quite a lot of coverage in
the press -- despite the fact that the latter study was a
laughingstock in the scientific community. It turns out
that the NCDC study was based on all the weather data in
the US collected since the beginning of instrumentation -enough to fill a half million 1995-vintage PCs. By
contrast, the industry study drew on data from three towns
-- Augusta, Ga., State College, Pa., and Des Moines,
Iowa.[57]
In a similar vein, in the summer of 1997 Fred Singer put
out a flurry of press announcements declaring the head of
the IPCC, Dr. Bert Bolin, had renounced his previous
statements and declared the science is too uncertain to
justify any policy changes and denying any connection
between atmospheric warming and extreme weather
events.[58]When Dr. Bolin heard about these allegations, he
emphatically denied them and said Singer basically made up
the whole thing.[59]
The latest such attack occurred when Fred Seitz, of the
ultra-conservative Marshall Institute, distributed a study
by a Oregon chemist, with no background in climate
research, dismissing the findings of the IPCC. The study
was printed so as to resemble an official document of the
National Academy of Science, leading the NAS to take the
9
highly unusual step of publicly dissociating itself from
the study and noting that, as early as 1992, the Academy's
own panel concluded "greenhouse warming poses a potential
threat sufficient to merit prompt responses...as insurance
against the great uncertainties and the possibility of
dramatic surprises."[60]
Misrepresenting the economics
Nor have the attacks focused solely on the science. The
industry has also misrepresented the economics and attacked
the diplomatic foundations of the climate convention.
Several economic studies released by industry groups
forecast dire economic disaster from even a modest level of
emissions reductions[61]-- despite a declaration by more
than 2,500 economists that we can cut emissions and create
more jobs at the same time.[62]
Last fall, in the months before Kyoto, the fossil fuel
lobby took aim at the United Nations climate convention by
demanding we renege on our diplomatic commitments and
impose first-round energy cutbacks on the developing
world.[63]
And as recently as April 26, a front page article in the
New York Times documented the next leg of the campaign -- a
new $5 million campaign by the American Petroleum
Institute, Exxon, Chevron and the Southern Company, to
attack the findings of the IPCC and propagate a new
generation of scientific falsehoods.[64]
Given the past success of the greenhouse skeptics -- and
the larger disinformation campaign -- this latest public
relations offensive should come as no surprise. The
effectiveness of the fossil fuel lobby's campaign of
deception has been extraordinary. When the chairman of the
House Science Committee drastically cut funding for global
research programs, he cited statements by the "greenhouse
skeptics" and ignored the testimony of four of the world's
most accomplished scientists.[65] The chairman of a House
subcommittee said the industry-sponsored skeptics persuaded
him that funding global warming research amounted to
"throwing money down a rathole." [66]
Funding the skeptics
10
The use of this tiny group of "skeptics" became clear in
the spring of 1995 when they were forced to disclose for
the first time under oath how much funding they had
received from industry sources.
From 1991 to 1995, Dr. Balling received about $300,000 from
Cyprus Minerals, the British Coal Corporation, the German
Coal Mining Association and OPEC. His book's publication in
Arabic was funded by the Kuwait Institute for Scientific
Research.[67]
Michaels received $165,000 in three years from Western
Fuels, the German Coal Mining Association and Cyprus
Minerals.[68] Cyprus Minerals also happens to be the
largest single funder of the militantly anti-environmental
Wise Use movement.
Another highly visible skeptic, Fred Singer, acknowledged
he has received funding from Exxon, Shell, Unocal and
ARCO.[69]
Two polls by Newsweek Magazine underscore the effectiveness
of this industry deception. In 1991, 35 percent of those
polled said global warming is a very serious problem. But
by 1996, that percentage had dropped to 22 percent.[70]
The "greenhouse skeptics" are fond of pointing out
uncertainties in the science. The science, they tell us,
can't specify particular impacts in specific regions. Nor
can it predict the future rates of warming -- or the
thresholds of carbon dioxide concentrations which will
propel the climate into abrupt shifts.
The real uncertainty
They have made a living off of scientific uncertainty. But
they have used it in a very selective and misleading way.
Dr. Michael McElroy, chairman of Harvard's Department of
Earth and Planetary Sciences, cites a lesson about
uncertainty he learned from the early days of the ozone
depletion issue. While early computer models yielded
estimates of the depletion, subsequent measurements by
balloons and satellites found the depletion to be far worse
than the worst-case computer scenario. "Just because there
is uncertainty," McElroy said, "does not imply the reality
is benign. It could easily be far worse." McElroy's bottom
11
line on the climate issue is this: "We have no right
tampering with an immense system we don't understand."[71]
I would go further. Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere
100 years.[72]If we could magically stop all our coal and
oil burning, we would still be subject to a long spell of
costly and traumatic weather extremes. Moreover new
research indicates that prehistoric climate changes have
happened as abrupt shifts rather than gradual transitions,
and that small changes have triggered catastrophic
outcomes.[73] Not only are we gambling with our collective
futures. We are gambling with our eyes blindfolded. We
can't even read the cards we've been dealt.
The risks to democracy
If you begin to think through the consequences of an
unstable climate to our political world, you will probably
arrive at the same conclusion as William Ruckelshaus.
Ruckelshaus, who was the first head of the EPA and is
currently CEO of Browning-Ferris Industries, said that
"long before the systems of the planet collapse, the
institutions of democracy will buckle under the pressure of
a series of ecological emergencies."[74] In fact, the
threat of totalitarianism is strongest in many of the
poorest countries whose ecosystems are as fragile as their
traditions of democracy. It is not hard to foresee
governments resorting to permanent states of martial law to
respond to droughts, floods, heat waves, incursions of
environmental refugees and epidemics of infectious disease.
As if to illustrate the point, in September, 1997, after
four months of unbroken drought and frost, 700,000 people
in Papua New Guinea left their homes in search of food and
water and government officials said they were unable to
deal with the situation.[75]
The consequences of climate change hold the same
anti-democratic potential for the United States as well.
Disruptions in other parts of the world would likely hurt
our own economy, shrinking markets and impairing the flow
of industrial commodities from abroad. This is not the kind
of climate in which democracy flourishes. This is the kind
of climate that could easily lead to food rationing, with
its associated black market crime. It could lead, as well,
to a military takeover of relief operations to maintain
12
order in the face of natural disruptions. It is a fact that
today the Central Intelligence Agency is assessing the
potentials for political destabilization from
climate-related disruptions.[76]
So the prospects for both our habitat and our institutions
are very depressing and very frightening.
Which brings me to the final -- and probably most
controversial -- section of this presentation.
Kyoto: a puny beginning
In December, 1997, the delegates to the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change hammered out a global
agreement to reduce coal and oil emissions. From a
political point of view, the conference was surprisingly
successful. Some 160 nations came together to sound an
alarm about our common future. At several points, the talks
nearly broke down over several major divisions -- between
the US and the European Union, between the developed and
developing nations and between the business and
environmental communities. It is to their great credit
that, at the last minute, delegates managed to resolve -or at least create the illusion of resolving -- those
divisions.
But if we judge Kyoto not by the obstacles of diplomacy but
by the requirements of nature, the Protocol is a hollow
shell. Its goals of 7 and 8 percent reductions are at least
an order of magnitude below what nature requires to
stabilize the global climate. It is moreover deeply flawed
by an emissions-trading mechanism which is unworkable and
unenforceable and which, together with a system of "joint
implementations" amounts to little more than a grab-bag
full of loopholes to be exploited by industrial
interests.[77]
Now contrast the Kyoto cuts averaging less than 7 percent
with the 60 to 70 percent reductions needed to stabilize
the global climate.
The critical role of inequity
Clearly there is a major disconnect between what nature
requires to keep this planet hospitable -- and what the
13
diplomats and business leaders say is politically
achievable and economically permissible.
And at the center of that disconnect is the monumental
issue of global economic inequality between the North and
South. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough: that
inequality is as critical to our planet's climate as the
burden of carbon is to the chemistry of our atmosphere. The
largest source of greenhouse gases in the coming decades
will not be the US, Western Europe and Japan, but the
developing economies of East Asia, Latin America and
Eastern Europe. The coming eruption of carbon emissions
from the poor world will dwarf any reductions in the North.
The fossil fuel lobby wants to address the problem by
increasing trade between wealthy and poor countries. Under
one proposed approach, for instance, a big emitter in the
US could pay for planting trees in India to absorb more
carbon dioxide and thus get credit for "emissions avoided."
Industry spokesmen tout as a "win-win" approach the sale of
new US-designed coal plants to China to reduce emissions
from its older, dirtier plants.[78] China might win.
Westinghouse or Bechtel might win. The rest of us would
lose.
Entrepreneurs in the field of alternative energy see the
issue as a windfall for their industry -- an opportunity to
sell millions of dollars of renewable technologies to the
developing world.
In fact, virtually every proposal on the table involves
some sort of market-based solution to the problem. As a
result, I believe, all of them will fail.
I believe the lure of the newly globalized economy in this
area is lethal. Most of the business community sees the
climate issue as yet another opportunity to sell yet
another category of goods to developing countries who can
barely afford to feed and educate their poverty-stressed
populations. They are in no position to finance energy
transitions.
The Senate's denial
In the summer of 1997, the US Senate voted 95 to 0 to
reject the treaty because it exempts the large developing
14
nations from the first round of emissions cuts.[79]And last
fall, the fossil fuel industry launched a $13 million ad
campaign to reinforce that resistance.[80] What the
industry lobby, as well as many Senators, must stop denying
is that most developing nations are too burdened by debt,
poverty and social instability to absorb energy
restrictions. India, for instance, sells electricity
through state electric boards. Those boards were breaking
even until the early 1980s, when the country decided on a
national policy of food self-sufficiency and began
subsidizing grants of electricity to small farmers. Today,
as a result, India's electric boards are in virtual
bankruptcy. All that stands between order and breakdown in
that country is her vast coal reserves. To impose
substantial emissions restrictions on India without
providing alternative sources of energy is to invite
economic and social chaos.
The fossil fuel lobby tells us repeatedly that the
exemption of the developing countries will cost us jobs in
our domestic coal and oil industries. But that argument
cuts both ways. If we do impose significant energy
restrictions on the developing countries, we will see lots
of job losses at Boeing, Gillette, Coca Cola and all those
companies that see their future earnings growth coming from
emerging markets.
The real truth is that if we in the North don't get this
right, we will suffer severe economic damage whether or not
we impose energy restrictions on the nations of the South.
Some hopeful signs
This is not to deny some recent and hopeful signs. In the
last few months, some important corporate players have
begun to acknowledge the climate crisis. Days after the
Kyoto Conference, Ford announced in would invest more than
$400 million in a joint venture with Daimler Benz and
Ballard Power Systems to begin producing fuel-cell driven
cars.[81]The chairman of British Petroleum announced his
company expects to be doing $1 billion in solar energy
commerce within the decade.[82]And Shell also announced its
intention to invest $500 million in renewable energy
technologies. [83]
(It is worth nothing here that a switch to renewables
15
implies no decline in our living standards. An economy
based on hydrogen, fuel cells, photovoltaics, solar,
biomass, wind and super-efficient gas-fired co-generation
technology could provide all the energy we require today
and more. All renewables need to become economically
competitive with fossil fuels are mass markets, mass
production and economies of scale.)
But for the initiatives of BP, Shell and others to work,
these companies need the protective regulatory leadership
of the world's governments to level the playing field to
help them decarbonize their energy services and position
their companies to play prominent roles in a new energy
economy.
Without a comprehensive system of mandatory and binding
enforcement it would be extraordinarily difficult for these
corporate leaders to sacrifice the competitive position of
their company or their industry. I believe it would be
impossible for them to keep their eye at the same time on
the bottom line of profitability and the upper reaches of
our carbon-burdened sky.
The law of supply and demand vs. the laws of nature
The fact that most shareholders and directors focus
exclusively on near-term cost reveals a basic short-out in
the logic of the marketplace. It denies the fundamental
fact that the global environment circumscribes and supports
the global economy. We can not negotiate emission levels
and rates of economic growth with the biosphere.
Unfortunately, the laws of supply and demand do not
supersede the laws of nature. And when those two sets of
laws collide, the physical planet is the court of highest
appeal. If you believe the costs of changing our energy
diet are too high, understand this: the costs of not
changing will be incalculably higher.
One pathway to a future
I believe we need a Manhattan-type Project to rewire the
world in a 10-15 year period to replace all our coal and
oil-fired energy sources with climate-friendly,
non-polluting technologies.
The oil lobby tells us that even a 15 percent reduction in
16
emissions would cost us more than 3 percent of our GDP.[84]
What they don't tell is us is that a global energy
transition would create millions and millions and millions
of jobs all over the world.
If every country were given the technology and the
resources to train workers to manufacture and install
climate-friendly energy sources, it would create an
unprecedented world-wide economic boom. It would begin to
reverse the economic gap between the North and South. And
in a very short time, the labor-intensive renewable energy
industry would absolutely eclipse high technology as the
central driving engine of growth of the global economy.
Last year, as I mentioned, more than 2,500 economists
declared that we can cut emissions -- up to 30 percent by
some estimates -- simply by implementing a series of
efficiency and conservation measures with a net gain in
jobs to the economy. To attain the next 40 percent,
however, requires a radical departure from the way we have
been doing business. An unregulated market approach is far
too gradual and uneven to address the challenge. And the
conventional political process, with its negotiated
comprises, will -- predictably and depressingly -- yield
nothing more than a new arena of perpetual economic warfare
in which industries and nations will devote their energies
to pushing the economic pain off themselves and onto their
neighbors and competitors. That is clearly the least
productive response to the challenge that faces us all.
A more productive response might involve the type of
international governance the Montreal Protocol provided for
the chemical industry. The primary reason that
public-private partnership was successful in eliminating
ozone-destroying chemicals was simple. As the economist
David L. Levy has pointed out, the same companies that made
the destructive chemicals were able to produce their
substitutes, with no negative impact on their competitive
standing within the industry.[85]
The job of the energy industry now is to configure itself
in the same way. It will be difficult. In producing CFC
substitutes, the chemical companies did not have to develop
new processes and technologies. But energy is a different
story. Renewable energy sources derive from very different
technologies than extractive techniques. Photovoltaics are
17
based on semiconductor technology; wind power draws on
turbine technology and electronics. And many renewable
sources are implicitly decentralized, off-grid, stand-alone
technologies. So it will call on a great deal of corporate
will and ingenuity.
The good news is that the renewable energy industry today
is young and fragmented. There is no Microsoft of
renewables. Given the emerging nature of the industry,
there is today a moment of opportunity and an abundance of
expertise for the energy giants majors to decarbonize their
energy supplies. To accomplish this, the next phase of the
Kyoto Protocol should establish an international agency to
determine -- in concert with the world's major oil and coal
companies -- an enforceable timetable of 10 to 15 years for
this transition.
Three strategies for survival
The elements for this transition seem available now.
First, I think we need to divert the approximately $21
billion the federal government (and the $300 billion spent
by governments all over the world) to subsidize fossil
fuels and divert those subsidies to the renewable energy
industry.
Second, I think we need to substitute a fossil fuel
efficiency standard for the mechanism of emissions trading.
(Currently, electrical production from gas-fired
cogeneration is attaining efficiencies of 90 percent -versus the 35 percent from oil and coal combustion.) Simply
by phasing in increasingly stringent efficiency standards
for each energy-use sector, we would create an instant
market for renewables and efficiencies without compromising
any of our energy needs. And were we to eliminate the
subsidies and regulations designed to protect inefficient
coal and oil use, we would create a true marketplace that
rewarded free energy competition according to the dual
standards of economy and efficiency.[86]
Finally, I think we need to use a variation of the Tobin
Tax to finance the transfer of climate-friendly
technologies to the developing world. Such a tax would
amass revenues from the commerce in international currency
transactions which, today, totals about $1.3 trillion every
18
day. A .025 percent tax on those transactions would
generate from $150 to $200 billion a year to finance
windmill plants in India, fuel cell factories in Russia,
vast photovoltaic, hydrogen-producing farms in the Middle
East, solar assemblies in El Salvador and super-efficient,
gas-fired cogeneration plants in South Africa.[87]
That is a vision I believe we should strive to realize in
the wake of Kyoto. But unfortunately there remains the
stumbling block of political stalemate.
Several senators have said that without an uprising of
popular support, they will not be able to counteract the
influence of the fossil fuel lobby in Congress and, as a
result, the Kyoto Protocol may never be ratified by the
Senate.
Unfortunately, there is a political conundrum here. While
the US is home to many, many very energetic and effective
grass-roots groups, virtually all of them have mobilized
around a local issue -- a toxic waste facility, a landfill,
an asphalt plant that threatens local air and water
quality. Unfortunately, the global environment is
everyone's second home. However, several NGO leaders
returned from Kyoto resolved to forge a national coalition
of all these local grassroots groups around the climate
issue. Conditions are changing quickly and I think the
timing for this kind of an initiative is at hand.
All over the country -- and, for that matter, the world -the public is extremely alarmed about our increasingly
unstable and violent weather. They are worried about their
futures -- and their children's futures. Given the
attention focused on the issue by the media in the run-up
to Kyoto, the issue of climate change is finally on the
public's radar screen. And despite the relentless campaign
of disinformation by the fossil fuel lobby, we are now
seeing companies like BP, Sunoco, Shell, Texaco and Ford
breaking ranks within the industry.[88]
So, given the emerging awareness of the public, the
fissures within the fossil fuel industry, and the media
backlash against the deceptions of the fossil fuel lobby, I
think there is a new climate of political possibility.
We have the technology. We have the institutional
19
mechanisms. What we need now is the will to think big and
make it happen.
I am not an economist. I am not wedded to any of the
details of my proposal -- save for the goal of virtual zero
emissions within fifteen years. What my reporting has
taught me, however, is that any solution must have the same
scope and sweep as this. Business-as-usual will most likely
mean the fracturing of civilization -- and the end of
democracy as a practicable form of government.
We have long since passed the point at which there is any
reasonable doubt as to whether or not there is a problem.
It is time to clear away the industry-generated smokescreen
of deception and decide together -- on the basis of
accurate and truthful information -- what to do about it.
Finally, in addition to our energy diet, I believe we must
tackle another change which may prove even more difficult.
I think we must change, in a very fundamental way, the
self-image we have shared since we first became a rational
species.
For most of our history, we have thought of ourselves as
helpless children of nature, dependent on her whims for our
shelter and survival.
Today, at the brink of the 21st Century, we are no longer
children. Somewhere in the recent past, with the growth of
our population and the power of our technology, we have
grown into a collective force as powerful as any force of
nature. We are no longer mere inhabitants of the planet. We
are also it shapers.[89] And as we continue to act like
adolescents by testing its physical limits and denying the
destructive consequences of our newfound, adult power, we
are putting our entire history at risk.
While we treasure our past, it is time to stop denying our
impact on the present. It is time, as well, to honor our
responsibilities to the children. I believe the time is
here for all of us all over the world to finally grow up.
Endnotes:
1 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report:
Summary for Policymakers: The Science of Climate Change,
20
IPCC Working Group I, November, 1995.
2 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report:
Summary for Policymakers: The Science of Climate Change,
IPCC Working Group I, November, 1995. "Global-scale
temperature patterns a climate forcing over the past six
centuries," Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm
K. Hughes, Nature, Vol. 392, April 23, 1998
3 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report:
Summary for Policymakers: The Science of Climate Change,
IPCC Working Group I, November, 1995.
4 The Boston Globe, May 29, 1995, "When Winters Go
Frost-Free, It's Bug Easy."
5 Reuters News Service, July 11, 1995
6 Reuters News Service, July 17, 1995
7 The New York Times, April 19, 1997, "This Dehydrated
Isle, Demi-Desert, This England."
8 Newsweek Magazine, Jan. 22, 1996 "THE HOT ZONE:
Blizzards, Floods Hurricanes: Blame Global Warming"
9 The New York Times, May 20, 1996, "Worst Drought Since
'30s Grips Plains."
10 The New York Times, "U.N. Says North Korea Will Face
Famine as Early as This Summer," May 14, 1996.
11 The Boston Globe, "Snow, used to fight fires, kills
cattle in Mongolia," May 12, 1996.
12 Scientific American, "The Coming Climate," by Thomas R.
Karl, Neville Nicholls and Jonathan Gregory, May, 1997.
13 The New York Times, July 20, 1996, "Rain of Biblical
Proportions Pours Out of Midwest Skies."
14 The New York Times, "Flash Floods in Spanish Pyrenees
Kills Scores," Aug. 9, 1996.
15 Reuters News Service, "Floods Kill Two in Bulgaria, More
Rain Coming," Dec. 2, 1996.
21
16 The Boston Globe, Dec. 5, 1996, "Muscovites wondering:
Will winter never end?"
17 The Boston Globe, "Helicopters assisting flooded West,"
Jan,. 4, 1997. The New York Times,"Sun Shines Over
Devastation As Northwest Floods Recede," Jan. 5, 1997.
18 The New York Times, "Bolivia Rains kill 16 and Wipe Out
Crops," March 5, 1997.
19 The Boston Globe, "Thousands flee flooding in four
states", March 9, 1997.
20 Reuters News Service, "Winter drought destroys
Portuguese cereal crops," April 29, 1997.
21 The Washington Post, "Flood Victims Cheer Clinton's
Pledge of Aid," April 23, 1997.
22 Reuters News Service, "Rain, floods force 120,000
Filipinos to flee," May 17, 1997.
23 The New York Times, "With Nearly 100 Dead, Floods Keep
Raging in Central Europe," July 21, 1997.
24 Reuters News Service, "Vietnam sends mayday for typhoon
'calamity,'" Nov. 10, 1997.
25 The New York Times, "Rain Is a New Agony for Somalia, As
Villages Are Suddenly Islands," Nov. 19, 1997.
26 The Boston Globe, "Moscow freeze hits 18 below," Dec.
16, 1997.
27 The Boston Globe, April 3, 1997.
28 "Climate, Ecology, and Human Health," Paul R. Epstein,
M.D.,M.P.H., Consequences, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1997.
29 "Potential impact of global climate change on malaria
risk," Martens, W.J.M., Niessen, L.W., Rotmans, J., Jetten,
T.H.,and McMichael, T.J. Environmental Health Perspectives,
vol. 103, 1995.
30 "Resurgence of a Deadly Disease," Ellen Ruppel Shell,
22
The Atlantic Monthly, August, 1997
31 "Global Climate and Infectious Disease: The Cholera
Paradigm," Rita R. Colwell, Science, Vol. 274, Dec. 20,
1996.
32 "Climate, Ecology, and Human Health," Consequences, Vol.
3, No. 2, 1997, Paul R. Epstein, M.D., M. P.H. The Boston
Globe, April 4, 1997, "The Greenhouse Effect: A Global
Experiment with Human Subjects," Eric Chivian, M.D. and
Paul R. Epstein. M.D., M.P.H., Center for Health and the
Global Environment, Harvard Medical School.
33 "Salud en alerta por temor a epidemias," Prensa Libre,
Guatemala, March 20, 1998.
34 Data from Munich Reinsurance, cited in "Climate of Hope:
New Strategies for Stabilizing the World's Atmosphere",
Christopher Flavin and Odil Tunali, Worldwatch Institute,
1996.
35 Author interview with Franklin Nutter, March 20, 1996.
36 "Annual Review of Natural Catastrophes -- 1996," Munich
Reinsurance.
37 "'98 storm damage cost $89b, study says," The Boston
Globe, Nov. 28, 1998
38 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report:
Summary for Policymakers: The Science of Climate Change,
IPCC Working Group I, November, 1995. Also: "A search for
human influences on the thermal structure of the
atmosphere," Nature, Vol. 382, July 4, 1996, B.D. Santer,
et al.
39 "Trends in U.S. Climate during the Twentieth Century,"
Consequences, Spring, 1995, Vol. 1, No. 1, Thomas Karl et
al.
40 "Temperature Range Narrows between Daytime Highs and
Nighttime Lows," Science, July 18, 1997, David Easterling
et al.
41 "Climatic Warming and the Decline of Zooplankton in the
California Current," Dean Roemmich and John McGowan,
23
Science, Vol. 267, March 3, 1995.
42 "Climate Related, Long-Term Faunal Changes in a
California Rocky Intertidal Community," J.P. Barry, Chuch
Baxter, et al., Science, Feb. 3, 1995. "Study Suggests Some
Sea Creatures Responding to Changing Climate," Associated
Press, March 2, 1995.
43 "Climate and species Range," Camille Parmesan, Nature,
Vol. 382, Aug. 29, 1996.
44 "Late Glacial Stage and Holocene Tropical Ice Core
Records from Huascaran, Peru," Lonnie G. Thompson and Ellen
Mosley-Thompson, Science, Vol. 169, July 7, 1995. Also:
"Glaciological Evidence for Recent Warming at High
Elevations," p. 209-210. Prepared by L. Thompson and E..
Mosley-Thompson for 76th American Meteorological Society
Annual Meeting: Symposium on Environmental Applications.
45 Second National Climate Report of the Austrian Federal
Government, Vienna, 1997. Also: "Recent changes in tropical
freezing heights and the role of sea surface temperatures,"
H.F. Diaz and N.E. Graham, Nature, Vol. 383, July 18, 1996.
Also: "Biological and Physical Signs of Climate Change:
Focus on Mosquito-borne Diseases," Bulletin of the American
Meteorological Society, Vol. 79, No. 3, March, 1998.
46 "Recent Atmospheric Warming And Retreat of Ice Shelves
on the Antarctic Peninsula," D.G. Vaughan and C.S.M. Doake,
Nature, Jan. 25, 1996. In January, 1995, a Rhode
Island-sized section of the Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica
broke off; in March, 1998, another section of the same
shelf, characterized as the size of Connecticut, also broke
off the ice shelf. Also: "Listen Up! The World's Oceans May
Be Starting to Warm," Antonio Regalado, Science, Vol. 268,
June 9, 1995.
47 "The 1990-1995 El Nino-Southern Oscillation Event:
Longest on Record," Kevin E. Trenberth and Timothy J. Hoar,
Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 23, no. 1, Jan. 1, 1996.
Also: "El Nino and Climate Change," Trenberth and Hoar,
Geophysical Research Letters, Aug. 15, 1997 (preprint).
48 "Is Global Warming Driving El Nino?" Patrick Mazza,
Sierra, Vol. 83, No. 3, May/June, 1998.
24
49 "Deserts on Our Doorsteps," New Scientist, July 6, 1996.
50 The Boston Globe, "In Alaska's northern tundra,
scientists find cause for concern," March 15, 1993.
Findings of George W. Kling, University of Michigan,
presented at meeting of American Geophysical Union, Dec.
15, 1996.
51 The Boston Globe, "Alaska is feeling the heat," Sept.
15, 1997
52 "Increased Activity of Northern Vegetation Inferred from
Atmospheric CO2 Measurements," Charles Keeling et al.,
Nature, Vol. 382, July 11, 1996.
53 1993 Annual Report, Western Fuels Association.
54 ICE public relations campaign documents in author's
possession.
55 Video titled "The Greening of Planet Earth" in author's
possession. See also: "Hearing on Global Change Research:
Global Warming and the Biosphere," of the Senate Committee
on Commerce, Science and Transportation, 102nd Congress.,
2nd session, April 9, 1992.
56 "Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Agriculture and
Food Supply," Cynthia Rosenzweig and Daniel Hillel,
Consequences, vol. 1, no. 2, Summer, 1995.
57 "Changing Weather? Facts and Fallacies About Climate
Change and Weather Extremes" Accu-Weather, 1995,
distributed by Global Climate Coalition.
58 E-Wire Press Release, S. Fred Singer, Science and
Environmental Policy Project, June 23, 1997
59 Open letter by Dr. Bert Bolin, Geneva, June 26, 1997 (in
author's possession).
60 Advocacy Mailing Draws Fire," Science, Vol. 280, April
10, 1998. The New York Times, "Science Academy Disputes
Attack On Global Warming," April 22, 1998.
61 "World Economic Impacts of US Commitments to Medium Term
Carbon Emissions Limits," Charles River Associates, Feb.
25
27, 1997, released by Global Climate Coalition.
62 The Economists' Statement on Climate Change, March 1,
1997.
63 Press release by Global Climate Information Project,
"New Ad Campaign Aims to Increase Awareness of Proposed
U.N. Climate Treaty," Sept. 9, 1997. Release describes new
$13 million campaign to reinforce opposition of U.S. Senate
to ratifying Kyoto Protocol.
64 The New York Times, "Industrial Group Plans to Battle
Climate Treaty," April 26, 1998.
65 Report of the Committee on Science, House of
Representatives, on H.R. 3322, Omnibus Civilian Science
Authorization Act of 1996, May 1, 1996.
66 Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Committee
on Science of the House of Representatives: Hearing n
Scientific Integrity and the Public Trust: Case Study 2 -Climate Models and Projections of Potential Impacts of
Global Climate Change, 104th Congress, Nov. 16, 1995.
Report No. 31.
67 Rebuttal Testimony of Dr. Robert C. Balling, Before the
Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, In the Matter of the
Quantification of Environmental Costs Pursuant to Laws of
Minn. 1993, Chapter 356, Section 3. March 15, 1995.
68 Rebuttal Testimony of Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, Before
the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, In the Matter of
the Quantification of Environmental Costs Pursuant to Laws
of Minn. 1993, Chapter 356, Section 3. March 15, 1995.
69 ABC News Nightine #3329, Feb. 24, 1994: "Is
Environmental Science for Sale?"
70 Newsweek Magazine, "Running on Fumes," Dec. 8, 1997.
71 Author interview with Dr. Michael McElroy, April, 1995.
72 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report:
Summary for Policymakers: The Science of Climate Change,
IPCC Working Group I, November, 1995.
26
73 Author's 1997 interview with Dr. Paul Mayewski, Dr. Paul
Mayewski, director, Glacier Research Group, Institute for
the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, University of New
Hampshire. Also: "Sudden Changes in North Atlantic
Circulation During the Last Deglaciation," Nature, Vol.
356, April 30, 1992, Scott J. Lehman and Lloyd D. Keigwin.
Also: "Chaotic Climate," Scientific American, November,
1995, Wallace S. Broecker. Also: "The Great Climate
Flip-Flop," by William H. Calvin, The Atlantic Monthly,
January, 1998.
74 Author interview with William Ruckelshaus, May 9, 1996.
75 Reuters News Service, "Death toll climbs as El Nino
grips Papua New Guinea," Sept. 11, 1997.
76 Environmental Flashpoints Workshop, Consequences of
Environmental Change -- Political, Economic, Social, Nov.
12 -14, 1997, sponsored by: Director of Central
Intelligence Environmental Center.
77 Among others who are skeptical about the usefulness of
emissions trading is John Henry, ceo of Power Navigator, a
Washington, D.C.-based company that profited substantially
by brokering sulfur dioxide trading allotments within the
U.S. In an interview, Henry said that international carbon
trading -- given the lack of ability to monitor so many
sourcepoints and the absence of a national regulatory
enforcement mechanism -- will "give the mechanism of
emissions trading a bad name."
78 Author's interview with John Schlaes, executive director
of the Global Climate Coalition, May 30, 1996.
79 The New York Times, "Senate Passes Resolution on Global
Warming," July 26, 1997.
80 Press release by Global Climate Information Project,
"New Ad Campaign Aims to Increase Awareness of Proposed
U.N. Climate Treaty," Sept. 9, 1997. Release describes new
$13 million campaign to reinforce opposition of U.S. Senate
to ratifying Kyoto Protocol.
81 Reuters News Service, "Ford to Invest in Effort to Power
Autos With Fuel Cells," Dec. 16, 1997.
27
82 The New York Times, "On Global Warming, Some in Industry
Are Now Yielding," August 5, 1997.
83 Reuters News Service, "Shell to invest $500 million in
renewable energy," Dec. 1997.
84 "World Economic Impacts of US Commitments to Medium Term
Carbon Emissions Limits," Charles River Associates, Feb.
27, 1997, released by Global Climate Coalition.
85 "Busines and International Environmental Treaties,"
David L. Levy, California Management Review, Vol. 39, No.
3, Spring 1997.
86 For more elaboration on the use of a fossil fuel
efficiency standard, see Turning Off the Heat, by Thomas
Casten, Prometheus Books, 1997.
87 The Tobin Tax: Coping with Financial Volatility, edited
by Mahbub ul Haq, Inge Kaul and Isabelle Grunberg, Oxford
University Press, 1996.
88 The Washington Post, "Oil Executives Are Shifting Their
Stance," March 3, 1998. Reuters News Service, "Sun Oil
Backs Clinton's Climate Change Plan," Dec. 4, 1997. The
Earth Times, "Good Corporate Citizenship," interview with
Peter I. Bijur, ceo of Texaco.
89 "Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems," by Peter M.
Vitousek, Harold A. Mooney, Jane Lubchenco and Jerry M.
Melillo, Science, Vol. 277, July 25, 1997.
28