Another Tragically Beautiful Day

An interview with Ross Gelbspan - part two

interview by David Ross

Pulitzer PrizewinnerRoss Gelbspan is the author of one of the most popular books on climatechange, The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle Over Earth's ThreatenedClimate. His website, www.heatisonline.org, was recently rated the bestclimate-related site by the Pacific Institute. The following interviewhas been transcribed from a radio interview which was conducted by DavidRoss.

Dave Ross: What are the politics of climatechange? We hear little about it in the corporate media. Our governmentdoesn't appear to be doing anything about it, so how come nothing'sbeing done about it?

Ross Gelbspan: What's reallystriking--and this is really important to understand--is that nothing isbeing done about it in the United States, but in other countries they'reextremely aware of it. The science is unambiguous. Humanity needs to cutits emissions by at least 70 percent to allow the climate to stabilize.

So, in Europe for example, Holland has just finished a plan tocut her emissions by 80 percent in 4 years. The Germans have committedto cutting emissions by 50 percent in 50 years. The British are talkingabout cuts of 60 percent in 50 years.

It's only in the U.Swhere nothing is being done and the issue is not being discussed simplybecause of the lock that the oil and coal industry have on our Congressand especially on the Bush Administration, but even before that, duringthe Clinton Administration, nothing was done.

The oil and coalindustry is one of the most powerful lobbies in the world.

Oneof the things that they have done is to finance a very effectivecampaign of disinformation to keep everybody confused about the issue.

Every time there's a new scientific finding or a new storyabout climate change, the public relations people from the fossil fuelindustry are on the telephone with the newspaper reporters, tellingthem, "Oh, there are many sides to this story." What got me into this iswhen I learned that the coal industry was paying several scientistsunder the table to say that climate change wasn't happening. A poorreporter who's doing his story on deadline has no way of knowing thatthere's this kind of corruption going on.

Basically, the BushAdministration policies are really being called by ExxonMobil right now,which is probably the most intransigent of the oil companies, and alsoby the coal industry, because if you stop and think about it, 70 percentreductions means the end of the coal industry.

There's no waywe can continue to burn coal, and it means a total transformation of theoil companies who have to become renewable energy companies.

They're fighting for their survival.

That yielded a very specific pattern, which isgraphically different than the pattern of natural warming. It'sgreenhouse warming, very specifically.

Let me give you oneother experiment that's really simple. As the temperature has beenrising, the nighttime low and the wintertime low temperatures have beengoing up twice as fast as the daytime high and summertime hightemperatures. The reason for that is the greenhouse gasses are trappingin the nighttime and wintertime warmth that would naturally radiate backinto space. In other words, if it were natural warming, the high and lowtemperatures would sort of rise and fall in parallel, but that's nothappening.

I'll give you one other experiment. There are anumber of researchers who reconstructed the global climate for the last1000 years. They went back a couple of hundred years using instruments,tree rings, coral, ice cores and various ways they can tell what thetemperatures have been. They found that from the year 1000 until about1865, the planet was actually cooling very slightly, and all of asudden, after 1865, the temperature begins to skyrocket. It goes upfaster than it has in 10,000 years, and that change corresponds exactlywith humanity's beginning to industrialize using fossil fuels--theindustrial revolution. There really is no question among scientistsworking on global warming as to what is causing it--we are.

Thatleads into the caller's second question, which I think is the importantquestion: What should we be doing about it and what are the costsinvolved? Clearly the costs of inaction are not bearable. This isn't mesaying it.

This is the insurance industry saying it. Thebiggest insurer in Britain last year said that, unchecked, climatechange could bankrupt the global economy by 2065. The biggest insurancecompany in the world, a German company called Munich Re Insurance, hassaid that in the next couple of decades, the cost of these climateimpacts will cost us all about $300 billion dollars a year. That's thecost of not doing it.

The cost of meeting the Kyoto targets isminimal. The problem is, the Kyoto targets are very low. They call oncountries to cut emissions by 6-7 percent while the science says we haveto cut them by 70 percent. So, Kyoto wouldn't be expensive. We could doit mostly through efficiencies, mostly just by cleaning up a lot ofwaste in our energy systems, but that wouldn't get us very far.

We really need to cut our emissions by 70 percent. What that implies isa rapid global transition to wind energy, hydrogen fuels, solar panelsand so forth. Then you get into the question of what the cost of thoseare, and to think about that question, you have to realize that this isnot just a United States' problem, this is a global problem. Even if wein the United States, Europe and Japan cut our emissions dramatically,we would still be still be overwhelmed by the carbon dioxide coming fromIndia, China, Nigeria and so forth.

If the world wants tosurvive with a coherent civilization, it has to make the kind ofinvestment in a new energy economy that will be global.

Whatthat will do is create so many jobs, especially in poor countries, thatit will turn impoverished countries into robust trading partners. Itwill expand the amount of wealth in the entire global economy. In fact,we would end up with a much more wealthier and peaceful world by doingit.

We would definitely have to take the $20 billion dollars insubsidies that the federal government spends on coal and oil and putthem into renewable energy, and let the oil companies use that money toretrain and retool their workers so they become aggressive developers offuel cells, wind farms, solar panels and so forth.

I thinkthere are ways for this to happen that could really increase livingstandards, purchasing power and everything else, especially indeveloping countries, but I think you need to see this as a project ofat least several decades. If you look at it that way, I think it wouldprobably be the most profitable investment we could make in ourcollective future.

Same caller: It's just not true thatthere's agreement among scientists on global warming. Sure we need totransition to renewable energy sources and we will do that. It's just aquestion of how we do that and the rate at which we do that. I wouldlike to refer listeners to a book called, Skeptical Environmentalists.

What the gentleman said about how we do this is really whatthe question is, but in terms of his not accepting the science, I cantell you two things categorically. One, the head of the IPCC has said,definitively, there is no dispute among scientists working on this issueabout the larger trends of what's happening to the planet. There are alot of disputes about second level scientific issues, but there's nodispute about the larger trend toward human-induced global warming.

The other thing that I would like to point out, as I said, countrieslike Holland, Britain and Germany are preparing to make huge cuts, andreally change their whole energy systems, and I doubt these countrieswould make these commitments if they had any real doubts about thevalidity of the science.

Dave Ross: What can we doindividually or collectively to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions andthereby slow down or stop global warming?

I really thinkthis is more of a political question, than a lifestyle question. Firstof all, I'm not advocating that we all sit in the dark and ridebicycles. We're use to a certain amount of energy, and I think we needthat kind of energy to have a productive society, and a productiveeconomy.

Even if all of us turned off all the lights, all thetime, and only drove when we had to, that would not solve the problem.

I think what really needs to happen is political action toempower governments to change energy subsidies, and to regulate the oilcompanies into this transition. I've talked to several oil companypresidents, and they say, "We can do this. We can become renewableenergy companies, but we have to be regulated by the government so we doit all together without losing any competitive standing within theindustry." I would think that political action, such as asking yourcandidates about it, asking your press about it, is really the best wayto go.

I'd like to make one other point. There are some realserious splits within the oil industry already. British Petroleum, whichbelieves very strongly in global warming, is the world's biggest sellerof solar systems. Shell Oil has just put a billion dollars into a newrenewable energy company. So there are huge oil companies that know thatthis is happening and know it has to happen, and they're sort of havingan internal industry war against companies like ExxonMobil that aretrying to burn the last drop of oil they can get there hands on. I thinkthere are opportunities for political action knowing that thesedifferent interests lie in different directions. I think that knowledgecan also be used.

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