Getting the world's fractious nations to agree to a program of remedial measures sounds extremely difficult, but Stephen Schneider sees signs that it may not be impossible. Schneider was one of more than 300 delegates from 48 countries who attended the International Conference on the Changing Atmosphere, which took place in Toronto, coincidentally, just a week after Hansen's congressional testimony. It was, says Schneider, the "Woodstock of CO2" (an obvious reference to the "Woodstock of Physics" meeting held last year, during which news of the high-temperature superconductors exploded into the public consciousness).
The meeting was the first large-scale attempt to bridge the gap between scientists and policymakers on a wide range of atmospheric problems, including not just the greenhouse effect but also acid rain and the depletion of the protective layer of ozone in the stratosphere. Four days of floor debates, panel discussions, and closed-door sessions produced an ambitious manifesto calling for, among other things, the following:
• A 20
percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by industrialized nations by the
year 2005, using a combination of conservation efforts and reduced consumption
of fossil fuels. A 50 percent cut would eventually be needed to stabilize atmospheric
carbon dioxide.
• A switch
from coal or oil to other fuels. Burning natural gas, for example, produces
half as much carbon dioxide per unit of energy as burning coal.
• Much more
funding for development of solar power, wind power, geothermal power, and the
like, and efforts to develop safe nuclear power.
• Drastic
reductions in deforestation, and encouragement of forest replanting and restoration.<
• The
labeling of products whose manufacture does not harm the environment.
• Nearly
complete elimination of the use of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, by the year
2000.
Of all the anti-greenhouse measures, the last should prove easiest to achieve. Although CFCs are extremely persistent, remaining in the upper atmosphere for decades, and although they are 10,000 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat, the process of controlling them has been under way for years, for reasons having nothing to do with the greenhouse effect. Since the early 1970s atmospheric scientists have known that CFCs could have destructive effects on ozone. CFCs were banned from spray cans in the United States and Canada in the late 1970s, and the appearance of a "hole" in the ozone layer over Antarctica in the early 1980s created an international consensus that CFCs must go. Last year 53 nations crafted an agreement that will cut CFC production by 50 percent over the next decade; the chemicals may well be banned altogether by the turn of the century.
CFCs are a special case, however. Since they are entirely man-made, and since substitutes are available or under development, control is straightforward. "There are only thirty-eight companies worldwide that produce CFCs," says Pieter Winsemius, former minister of the environment of the Netherlands. "You can put them all in one room; you can talk to them. But you can't do that with the producers of carbon dioxide— all the world's utilities and industries."
Also, there is a lack of basic information on the flow of carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases into and out of the atmosphere and biosphere. Just as one example, there is no good estimate of how much carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are produced by fires, both man-made and naturally occurring. "We need to better assess global biomass burning as a source of greenhouse gases," says Joel Levine of the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. "We have to understand what we're actually doing when we burn tropical forests and when we burn agricultural stubble after harvest. We don't know on a global basis what the contribution is."
Remarkably, the conference spurred some specific promises from political leaders rather than just vague platitudes. Standing before a 40-foot-wide photorealist painting of a cloud-studded skyscape, prime ministers Brian Mulroney of Canada and Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway pledged that their countries will slow fossil fuel use and forgive some Third World debt, allowing developing countries to grow in a sustainable way. Says Schneider, "In the fifteen years that I've been trying to convince people of the seriousness of the greenhouse effect, this is the first time I've seen a broad consensus: First, there is a consensus that action is not premature. Second, that solutions have to occur on a global as well as a national scale."
In the end, the greatest obstacle facing those who are trying to slow the output of greenhouse gases is the fundamental and pervasive nature of the human activities that are causing the problem: deforestation, industrialization, energy production. As populations boom, productivity must keep up. And even as the developed nations of the world cut back on fossil fuel use, there will be no justifiable way to prevent the Third World from expanding its use of coal and oil. How can the developed countries expect that China, for example, which has plans to double its coal production in the next 15 years in order to spur development, will be willing or even able to change course?
And then there is poverty, which contributes to the greenhouse effect by encouraging destruction of forests. "Approximately seventy-five percent of the deforestation occurring in the world today is accounted for by landless people in a desperate search for food," says Jose Lutzenberger, director of the Gala Foundation, an influential Brazilian environmental group. Commercial logging accounts for just 15 percent of tropical forest loss worldwide. Unfortunately for the atmosphere and the forests themselves, working out an agreement with the tropical timber industry will be far easier than eliminating rural poverty.
Industrialized nations, which created most of the greenhouse problem, should lead the way to finding solutions, says State Department official Richard Benedick, who represented the United States during negotiations for cuts in CFCs and who was a conference attendee. The first priority, he says, should be strong conservation efforts—an area in which the United States lags far behind such countries as Japan. The effect of such measures, Benedick feels, can only be positive and the cost is not great. "Certain things make sense on their own merits," he says. Technology can be transferred to developing countries. In some Third World nations a partial solution can be as simple as modernizing energy production and distribution. Upgrading India's electric-power distribution system, Benedick says, could double the effective energy output of existing coal-fired power plants.
Addressing the conference, Canadian minister of energy Marcel Masse noted that there is cause for optimism. One need look no further than the energy crisis of a decade ago. From 1979 to 1985, thanks primarily to conservation, substantial cuts were made in the use of fossil fuels by industrialized nations. Only since 1986 and the current oil glut, said Masse, has there been a resurgence in oil use and coal burning.
Michael McElroy concluded, "If we choose to take on this challenge, it appears that we can slow the rate of change substantially, giving us time to develop mechanisms so that the cost to society and the damage to ecosystems can be minimized. We could alternatively close our eyes, hope for the best, and pay the cost when the bill comes due."
