Scientists Warn, Politicians Scorn
The world’s leading scientists this week issued yet another statement urging immediate action on climate change. The latest call to action was authored by the Science Academies of all the G8 nations, as well as China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa. While all this has been said before, the world’s political leaders appear to have a hearing problem. Last week, US Senate killed the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act after Republican members forced the clerks to read the entire 492-page bill.
This ate up nine hours set aside for debate and led to an inevitable and ignoble defeat of the best effort yet by the US government to get serious about climate change. To add insult to injury, the Republicans’ claimed they were only protesting Democratic foot-dragging around Bush’s court nominations.
On the Canadian side of the border, Parliament passed a remarkable bill last week committing Canada to reducing greenhouse gases by 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. This is what scientists are saying is required to deal meaningfully with this crisis. The only problem? The bill is meaningless because the ruling conservative party can ignore it since they not required to spend money on such “private members bills”.
The gulf between truth and action is closing – slowly. With a new president in the Whitehouse, hopefully some meaningful progress can be made to deal with climate change. The Conservative government in Canada is also badly out of step with public opinion on global warming. Last week, the two biggest provinces in Canada grew so fed up with perpetual inaction from Ottawa, they signed their own cap and trade deal.
Change is coming, but it seems to happening from the bottom up. Some day, national politicians may actually listen when the world’s leading scientists tell them it is reckless not to act. In the meantime, the fight continues.
letter to the editor
Chapel Hill (NC) Newspaper
June 11, 2008
Solutions exist if we apply the science.
Humankind is surely experiencing the fulfillment of a Chinese proverb: "We live in interesting times." Many of our brilliant scientists report that God is a delusion. On the other hand, intuitive and gifted believers regularly tell us that these scientists themselves suffer from a form of delusional atheism. No one knows, I suppose, which of these groups is correct.
I am one of those people who believes the family of humanity can use God's gift of science to take the measure of any global challenge and find solutions that are consonant with universal values. But, before we can move forward to reasonably address and sensibly overcome a challenge to human wellbeing and environmental health such as global warming, that challenge needs to be openly acknowledged and widely discussed. I suppose it is a function of my life experience to suggest that we accurately "diagnose" whatever the challenge is before proceeding to implement "treatment" options.
If great spiritual and scientific leaders are somehow on the right track when realizing, "The Earth has a human-induced fever and could overheat," then at least one available treatment option is to carefully and skillfully examine the extant scientific evidence related to global warming and to make necessary changes in human behavior, both individually and collectively.
All of the above serves to set the stage for our consideration of a question. How can politicians and economic powerbrokers in the human community be empowered to muster the "political will" necessary for addressing human-driven climate change as well as for providing the substantial economic incentives and financial capital necessary to overcome this potential global threat to life as we know it and the integrity of Earth?
-- Steven Earl Salmony, Chapel Hill
Why don't you go to Burma and China and explain to the people the glory of God'd recent gifts to them?
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