{"id":733,"date":"2011-10-16T13:17:07","date_gmt":"2011-10-16T17:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/?p=733"},"modified":"2023-10-07T11:34:17","modified_gmt":"2023-10-07T15:34:17","slug":"where-did-global-warming-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/2011\/10\/where-did-global-warming-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Did Global Warming Go?"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting article in the New York Times written by ELISABETH ROSENTHAL<\/a> …<\/p>\n

\"Mark<\/a>

Mark Pernice and Scott Altmann<\/p><\/div>\n

IN 2008, both the Democratic and Republican candidates for president, Barack Obama and John McCain, warned about man-made global warming and supported legislation to curb emissions. After he was elected, President Obama promised \u201ca new chapter in America\u2019s leadership on climate change,\u201d and arrived cavalry-like at the 2009 United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen to broker a global pact.<\/p>\n

But two years later, now that nearly every other nation accepts climate change as a pressing problem, America has turned agnostic on the issue.<\/p>\n

In the crowded Republican presidential field, most seem to agree with Gov. Rick Perry of Texas that \u201cthe science is not settled\u201d on man-made global warming, as he said in a debate last month. Alone among Republicans onstage that night, Jon M. Huntsman Jr. said that he trusted scientists\u2019 view that the problem was real. At the moment, he has the backing of about 2 percent of likely Republican voters.<\/p>\n

Though the evidence of climate change has, if anything, solidified, Mr. Obama now talks about \u201cgreen jobs\u201d mostly as a strategy for improving the economy, not the planet. He did not mention climate in his last State of the Union address. Meanwhile, the administration is fighting to exempt United States airlines from Europe\u2019s new plan to charge them for CO2 emissions when they land on the continent. It also seems poised to approve a nearly 2,000-mile-long pipeline, from Canada down through the United States, that will carry a kind of oil. Extracting it will put relatively high levels of emissions into the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Washington, \u2018climate change\u2019 has become a lightning rod, it\u2019s a four-letter word,\u201d said Andrew J. Hoffman, director of the University of Michigan\u2019s Erb Institute for Sustainable Development.<\/p>\n

Across the nation, too, belief in man-made global warming, and passion about doing something to arrest climate change, is not what it was five years or so ago, when Al Gore\u2019s movie had buzz and Elizabeth Kolbert\u2019s book about climate change, \u201cField Notes From a Catastrophe,\u201d was a best seller. The number of Americans who believe the earth is warming dropped to 59 percent last year from 79 percent in 2006, according to polling by the Pew Research Group. When the British polling firm Ipsos Mori asked Americans this past summer to list their three most pressing environmental worries, \u201cglobal warming\/climate change\u201d garnered only 27 percent, behind even \u201coverpopulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

This fading of global warming from the political agenda is a mostly American phenomenon. True, public enthusiasm for legislation to tackle climate change has flagged somewhat throughout the developed world since the recession of 2008. Nonetheless, in many other countries, legislation to control emissions has rolled out apace. Just last Wednesday, Australia\u2019s House of Representatives passed a carbon tax, which is expected to easily clear the country\u2019s Senate. Europe\u2019s six-year-old carbon emissions trading system continues its yearly expansion. In 2010, India passed a carbon tax on coal. Even China\u2019s newest five-year plan contains a limited pilot cap-and-trade system, under which polluters pay for excess pollution.<\/p>\n

The United States is the \u201cone significant outlier\u201d on responding to climate change, according to a recent global research report produced by HSBC, the London-based bank. John Ashton, Britain\u2019s special representative for climate change, said in an interview that \u201cin the U.K., in Europe, in most places I travel to\u201d \u2014 but not in the United States \u2014 \u201cthe starting point for conversation is that this is real, there are clear and present dangers, so let\u2019s get a move on and respond.\u201d After watching the Republican candidates express skepticism about global warming in early September, former President Bill Clinton put it more bluntly, \u201cI mean, it makes us \u2014 we look like a joke, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Americans \u2014 who produce twice the emissions per capita that Europeans do \u2014 are in many ways wired to be holdouts. We prefer bigger cars and bigger homes. We value personal freedom, are suspicious of scientists, and tend to distrust the kind of sweeping government intervention required to confront rising greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n

\u201cClimate change presents numerous ideological challenges to our culture and our beliefs,\u201d Professor Hoffman of the Erb Institute says. \u201cPeople say, \u2018Wait a second, this is really going to affect how we live!\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

There are, of course, other factors that hardened resistance: America\u2019s powerful fossil-fuel industry, whose profits are bound to be affected by any greater control of carbon emissions; a cold American winter in 2010 that made global warming seem less imminent; and a deep recession that made taxes on energy harder to talk about, and job creation a more pressing issue than the environment \u2014 as can be seen in the debate over the pipeline from Canada.<\/p>\n

But it is also true that Europe has endured a deep recession and has had mild winters. What\u2019s more, some of the loudest climate deniers are English. Yet the European Union is largely on target to meet its goal of reducing emissions by at least 20 percent over 1990 levels by 2020.<\/p>\n

Connie Hedegaard, the European Union\u2019s commissioner on climate action, told me recently: \u201cLook, it was not a piece of cake here either.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, many countries in Europe have come to see combating climate change and the move to a \u201cgreener\u201d economy as about \u201copportunities rather than costs,\u201d Mr. Ashton said. In Britain, the low-carbon manufacturing sector has been one of the few to grow through the economic slump.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I\u2019ve been pleasantly surprised about in the E.U. is that despite the economic and financial crisis, the momentum on climate change has more or less continued,\u201d Mr. Ashton said.<\/p>\n

And Conservatives, rather than posing an obstacle, are directing aggressive climate policies in much of the world. Before becoming the European Union\u2019s commissioner for climate action, Ms. Hedegaard was a well-known Conservative politician in her native Denmark. In Britain, where a 2008 law required deep cuts in emissions, a coalition Conservative government is now championing a Green Deal.<\/p>\n

In the United States, the right wing of the Republican Party has managed to turn skepticism about man-made global warming into a requirement for electability, forming an unlikely triad with antiabortion and gun-rights beliefs. In findings from a Pew poll this spring, 75 percent of staunch conservatives, 63 percent of libertarians and 55 percent of Main Street Republicans said there was no solid evidence of global warming.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has become a partisan political issue here in a way it has not elsewhere,\u201d said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. \u201cWe are seeing doubts in the U.S. largely because the issue has become a partisan one, with Democrats\u201d \u2014 75 percent of whom say they believe there is strong evidence of climate change \u2014 \u201cseeing one thing and Republicans another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Europeans understand the challenges in the United States, though they sound increasingly impatient. \u201cWe are very much aware of the political situation in the United States and we don\u2019t say \u2018do this,\u2019 when we know it can\u2019t get through Congress,\u201d said Ms. Hedegaard, when she was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly last month. But she added:<\/p>\n

\u201cO.K. if you can\u2019t commit today, when can you? When are you willing to join in? Australia is making a cap-and-trade system. South Korea is introducing one. New Zealand and the E.U. have it already. So when is the time? That\u2019s the question for the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n

MEANWHILE, in the developing world, emerging economies like India and China are now pursuing aggressive climate policies. \u201cTwo years ago the assumption was that the developed world would have to lead, but now China, India and Brazil have jumped in with enthusiasm, and are moving ahead,\u201d said Nick Robins of HSBC Global Research.<\/p>\n

Buffeted by two years of treacherous weather that they are less able to handle than richer nations \u2014 from floods in India to water shortages in China \u2014 developing countries are feeling vulnerable. Scientists agree that extreme weather events will be more severe and frequent on a warming planet, and insurance companies have already documented an increase.<\/p>\n

So perhaps it is no surprise that regard for climate change as \u201ca very serious problem\u201d has risen significantly in many developing nations over the past two years. A 2010 Pew survey showed that more than 70 percent of people in China, India and South Korea were willing to pay more for energy in order to address climate change. The number in the United States was 38 percent. China\u2019s 12th five-year plan, for 2011-2015, directs intensive investment to low carbon industries. In contrast, in the United States, there is \u201cno prospect of moving ahead\u201d at a national legislative level, Mr. Robins said, although some state governments are addressing the issue.<\/p>\n

In private, scientific advisers to Mr. Obama say he and his administration remain committed to confronting climate change and global warming. But Robert E. O\u2019Connor, program director for decision, risk and management sciences at the National Science Foundation in Washington, said a bolder leader would emphasize real risks that, apparently, now feel distant to many Americans. \u201cIf it\u2019s such an important issue, why isn\u2019t he talking about it?\u201d<\/p>\n

The full article can be viewed on the New York Times Website.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting article in the New York Times written by ELISABETH ROSENTHAL … IN 2008, both the Democratic and Republican candidates for president, Barack Obama and John McCain, warned about man-made global warming and supported legislation to curb emissions. After he was elected, President Obama promised \u201ca new chapter in America\u2019s leadership on climate change,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[178,383],"tags":[310,309,8,307,308],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1353,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions\/1353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lifeofbrian.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}