Climate change: Everyone talks about it; what can be done about it?

By Mark Pattison Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- If, as the old saw suggests, everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it, what can anyone do about weather patterns that morph not only over seasons but generations? That phenomenon is known as climate change.
It used to be known as "global warming," but the term climate change takes not only temperature into account, but also rainfall, ocean currents, farming, forestry and a host of other conditions affected by the weather.
Perhaps not everybody is talking out loud about it, but climate change is on the minds of more and more people -- including those gathered for two Catholic-sponsored forums in Washington a day apart.
Speaking at The Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law Feb. 13, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, reported the anecdotal evidence of climate change as experienced by indigenous populations in the state's northernmost regions.
Village elders have told her "the ice pack is less stable, the snow pack is returning later and leaving earlier, changing the migratory patterns of animals," Murkowski said.
"You think Alaskans would welcome a little bit of warming," said Murkowski, who told of children who still go to school even when it's 40 below zero outside. "But there is so much at stake. ... Some have called Alaska 'the canary in the coal mine' when it comes to climate change."
To relocate the 250 residents of one threatened Alaskan village to higher land would cost $100 million -- a huge sum, Murkowski admitted, but it is worth the cost because the town's residents and their ancestors "have been living there for thousands of years."
One huge sum Murkowski was not willing to commit to was the price tag for the Kyoto Accord on climate change, which was rejected by the Bush administration. She said the White House was right not to sign the treaty. It mandates that governments reduce greenhouse gases to bring temperatures down by 0.6 degree Celsius -- about one-third of 1 degree Fahrenheit -- at what she considers an unacceptably high cost in jobs and dollars.
Michael McCracken, chief scientist for climate change programs for the Climate Institute and formerly executive director of the National Assessment Coordinator's Office, said the earth warmed by 0.8 degree Celsius over the 20th century, and that 2005 was the warmest year yet on record -- surpassing 1997, when temperatures were bolstered by a cyclical trend of Pacific Ocean warming.
McCracken, who spoke during a Feb. 14 forum at the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, estimated that 150 towns in the United States, Canada and Russia that are near the Arctic may need to be moved if warming trends continue. Warming, he added, is felt more acutely where the temperatures are most extreme.
In response to a question posed at the forum, McCracken said that, even if the world stopped burning oil today, the effects of greenhouse gases would be felt "for a few decades," and even widespread reductions would not show up on the thermometer until "the middle of the century."
In the absence of federal participation in international initiatives such as Kyoto, individual states and regions are combating warming on several fronts.
Also at the forum was Judi Greenwald, director of innovative solutions at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. She said eight East Coast states -- from Delaware to Maine, but not including Massachusetts or Rhode Island -- have entered into a pact that caps power-plant emissions at a certain level yet allows facilities exceeding pollution-control targets to trade their "surplus" emissions to plants within the region that haven't yet reached the cap. This is known as a "cap-and-trade" program, and one Senate proposal seeks to implement a cap-and-trade system nationwide.
Twenty-eight states have climate action plans, Greenwald said. Among them is California, which wants to return to its 2000 emissions levels by 2010, to its 1990s levels by 2020, and to cut emissions 80 percent by 2050. New Mexico seeks to return to its 2000 emissions levels by 2012 and be 10 percent below 2000 levels by 2020.
Ten states have a vehicle greenhouse gas emission standard. That standard could be in jeopardy, Greenwald noted, if California's law fails a court challenge; the other states have modeled their laws after California's.
Greenwald said 22 states and the District of Columbia have renewal portfolio standards, committing to either a percentage or an amount of electricity powered by renewable energy being produced in their areas. One of these is Texas, where a plan to create 10,000 megawatts of power through renewable sources was signed by then-Gov. George W. Bush. Another 22 states have public benefit funds to support energy efficiency and/or renewable energy.
As Murkowski said at Catholic University, "We can't afford to wait to take action."
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Copyright (c) 2006 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops