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The battle to prevent or at least slow global warming has intensified in the past year as scientists have learned more about the magnitude of the problem. One of the leading climate experts, Inez Y. Fung, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Center at the University of California, Berkeley, recently showed that the earth may soon lose its ability to absorb much of the greenhouse gas that is raising temperatures. The oceans and continents currently soak up about half the carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels. In the oceans, the gas combines with water to form carbonic acid; on land, plants take in more carbon dioxide and grow faster. But computer modeling done by Fung and her colleagues indicates that these carbon sinks will become less effective as the earth continues to warm. For example, as the tropics become hotter and drier in the summer, plants will curtail their respiration of carbon dioxide to avoid water loss. Atmospheric measurements over the past decade have confirmed this effect. If the oceans and land take in less carbon dioxide, more will remain in the atmosphere and global warming could accelerate catastrophically.
Despite these warning signs, the administration of President George W. Bush has opposed ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty mandating reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. (Signed by more than 150 nations, the treaty went into effect this past February.) But nine states in the northeastern U.S. are attempting to sidestep the federal government's opposition by taking action on their own. In 2003 the governors of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont created the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Last August the group reached a preliminary agreement to freeze power plant emissions of carbon dioxide by 2009 and then reduce them by 10 percent by 2020. The plan requires approval by the state legislatures, but environmentalists are already hoping that other regions of the U.S. will follow suit. If adopted nationwide, the proposal would lower greenhouse gas emissions by roughly as much as the Kyoto Protocol would have.
Steve Howard, chief executive of the Climate Group, is tackling the global-warming problem from a different angle. Founded in 2004, the Climate Group is a coalition of corporations and state and local governments that have voluntarily committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. Members include oil giant BP, drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, and Starbucks. Businesses in the Climate Group have discovered that improvements in energy efficiency can enhance profits as well as cut fossil-fuel emissions; BP, for instance, slashed its energy bills by $650 million over 10 years. “We have seen important evidence about successful emission reduction scattered here and there in the most surprising places all over the globe,” Howard says. “We are working to bring all of it together so that it forms a body of evidence.”