Turning up the Heat
A surprising consensus is transforming the complex politics of global warming
The politics. The changing dynamic of the issue has cracked open an unexpected fissure in the Republican Party. Some prominent GOP players, like Tucker Eskew, a former deputy communications director for President Bush, is supervising a joint campaign with the Ad Council and the group Environmental Defense to educate the public on the global warming threat. But getting any sort of reaction out of Congress may take a while. A conservative House of Representatives has been loath to deal with the issue, and President Bush's Clear Skies Act has been deadlocked in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee since 2002. Moderate Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island is siding with Democrats who are pushing to add carbon dioxide to the bill's list of restricted emissions, but the committee chairman is Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a steadfast skeptic who has called the idea of catastrophic global warming a "hoax." Inhofe isn't budging, and neither--so far--is Bush, who favors voluntary reductions. Sen. John McCain and Sen. Joe Lieberman have twice tried to pass legislation that would establish tough mandatory federal caps on greenhouse gases. After the first one failed in 2003 by a 12-vote margin, they actually lost Democratic support when they reintroduced it last year with the addition of a provision supporting nuclear power.
Amid the bickering over what a climate-change bill might look like, 53 senators passed a nonbinding sense of the Senate resolution last summer, stating that, at the very least, climate change is real and mandatory restrictions on greenhouse gases are needed. The resolution has bolstered hope that action is on the horizon, but there'll be no legislation until Congress agrees on a climate-change bill that limits harm to the economy. Sparking a turf battle with Inhofe, Domenici has taken up the question in his own committee. "Frankly, I don't know how to write [the bill]," he told reporters in March. "And I don't think anybody does." He'll be looking for answers in this week's conference; 160 organizations, individuals, and businesses have submitted proposals that range from straight caps on emissions to a program in which large polluters could buy credits from low polluters.
The future. Despite the ongoing ferment, not even Domenici believes legislation is likely this year. And that's alarming to the growing portion of the scientific community that believes the clock is ticking. NASA scientist James Hansen, who made headlines after saying the White House was censoring his comments, argues that if greenhouse gases aren't reduced within 10 years, the warming process may be irreversible. Plenty of scientists, including Mann, also believe that even if emissions were immediately halted, existing greenhouse gases would continue to warm the Earth for decades.
The forecast may be grim, but supporters of legislation to curb greenhouse gases see a potential silver lining. "We know how to pass bills, and we've shown we can do it," says Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals. "The end result here is that Washington will change."
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