How the Government Got in Your Backyard

by Jeff Gillman

  Scientific investigations of the soil, ice buildup at the poles and on tall mountains, fossils, and living plant material allow us to infer how climates have changed over the years. Through this research, we have established that climates do change naturally. Minnesota, for example, was once tropical. In fact, it seems as though it is more common for the climate of Earth to change than to stay the same. But many scientists find it more than coincidental that the recent warming trends correlate so well with an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, which seems to be caused primarily by humans burning fossil fuels.

  There isn’t much argument about these facts, though different groups argue their relative importance. Disagreements occur regarding how much humans have contributed to this warming trend, and how much work we should do to control the activities that are apparently causing this warming.

  The (Simplified) Science of Warming

  As the earth heated up during the last part of the twentieth century, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased. One of the most famous charts from this period is Dr. David Keeling’s measurements of the amount of carbon dioxide in the air in Mauna Loa, Hawaii, from 1958 to today. These measurements demonstrate that over the past fifty years the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has risen from less than 320 parts per million in 1958 to about 390 parts per million in 2009.

  The theory that humans can influence the climate by putting carbon dioxide into it is not new. Svante Arrhenius, a scientist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, theorized that the carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere would slowly warm up the globe. Infrared radiation, which comes from the sun, is absorbed by carbon dioxide here on earth, and this absorption causes the earth to warm. The higher the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere, the more infrared radiation captured, which results in greater heat. While carbon dioxide is the chemical that we’re most concerned about when we talk about global warming, there are actually many chemicals, such as methane, that can intercept infrared radiation even more efficiently than carbon dioxide. Chemicals like methane and carbon dioxide are called greenhouse gases. Because there’s less methane and other greenhouse gases in the air than carbon dioxide, these other chemicals are usually considered a significant, but secondary, concern. When scientists discuss controlling global warming, lowering the levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is usually the goal. For a full rundown of the supposed interactions between carbon dioxide and global warming, check out David Archer’s book Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast.

  Humans have developed two activities that increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The first is the consumption of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are basically energy stored as carbon. Over millions of years, as living things (mostly plants) have died, the energy that was stored in them has been converted through natural processes into various types of carbon, such as coal, natural gas, and oil. These carbon-containing fuels can be burned to create energy. The problem is that the carbon in these fuels doesn’t just disappear with burning. Instead, burning releases water and carbon dioxide. Even the “cleanest” engine will still emit carbon dioxide because it has to. The carbon has nowhere else to go. (Though it’s not directly related to fossil fuels, an underappreciated source of carbon dioxide is concrete. During the production of concrete chemical reactions occur that contribute an estimated 5 percent of the carbon dioxide that humans release into the atmosphere).

  The second major way that humans increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is through the destruction of the places where atmospheric carbon dioxide would normally go. Trees and other plants absorb carbon dioxide while they grow and use it to create sugars from which the plant is built. Sunlight drives this process, which is more commonly known as photosynthesis. Trees are particularly important because they store carbon over long periods of time. Bodies of water are also capable of holding carbon, as are sedimentary rocks. Limestone, for example, is composed largely of calcium carbonate. Rocks currently store more carbon than the air, the ocean, or plants and animals. But the carbon that man has the most control over is that carbon contained in living organisms, especially plants.

  Over the years humans have seen fit to destroy forests and replace them with agricultural land, which does not hold as much carbon as a forest. In a forest, large trees hold carbon for many years in their trunks, roots, stems, and leaves, which are mainly composed of this element. Even after they die the dead trees will continue to hold carbon for quite a while. The wood frame of your house, the furniture in it, and even this book in your hands all serve as storage places for carbon. Contrast this with today’s agriculture, where plants like corn and soybeans are removed from the field and used rapidly. The carbon within them is not stored for a significant period of time but instead finds its way quickly back into the environment, and usually into the air as carbon dioxide.

  What all of this means is that with the advent of modern industry and transportation, we have been releasing lots of carbon dioxide into the environment, and we have been destroying the things that do the best job of sucking this carbon out of the air and holding onto it. We know that, in our atmosphere, carbon dioxide absorbs light and converts it into heat instead of letting it escape back into space. It all fits together nicely. We are slowly causing our world to heat, and this heating will cause some very damaging things to happen over time: rising oceans, the movement of species across continents, and an increase in tornadoes, hurricanes, and other extreme weather. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of very prominent scientists who study this phenomenon, confirms that all of this is happening and that trouble is coming. It seems like an open-and-shut case—so why can’t everyone just agree and do something?

  But the case against carbon dioxide is not ironclad.

  The Dissenters

  All of the facts just discussed do not necessarily make the case for controlling carbon dioxide emissions. There are significant weaknesses in these arguments. Since the world does not have an absolutely predictable climate, and since climates change over time, there is the possibility that what we are seeing is a natural warming that would happen with or without humans. Indeed, respected scientists have theorized that solar activity, volcanic eruptions, or El Niño patterns in the Pacific Ocean could play an important part in global warming. If we look at the history of the earth, we find that global warming seems to predate an increase in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, which wouldn’t make any sense at all if carbon dioxide is supposed to be driving the change! In 2009, an article published by Kyle Swanson and Anastasios Tsonis pointed out that from 2001 until 2009, the earth’s climate was stabilizing, and warming was not taking place. While the authors themselves seem to believe that global warming is a reality, others have used their data as an indication that the IPCC has no idea what it’s talking about. These skeptics believe that the earth is simply going through a natural cycle and that there’s nothing significant that can be done about it. They believe that if we did try to do something we might, in a worst-case scenario, damage civilization by destroying our economy, which is in many ways dependent upon fossil fuels.

  Since the world does not have an absolutely predictable climate, and since climates change over time, there is the possibility that what we are seeing is a natural warming that would happen with or without humans.

  Some scientists believe that the amount of radiation coming from our sun, which varies over time, has a significant effect on the earth’s climate and could account for anywhere from as little as 14 percent to an overwhelming majority of the warming that we’ve already seen. A recent decrease in the size of the ice caps on Mars (which are actually made of carbon dioxide) seems to support this theory, at least to some degree.

  From the public’s perspective, the more important climate change dissenters may not be the climate scientists but local television weather forecasters, from whom the public gets much of their weather-re
lated information. A 2010 survey of TV forecasters found that about half thought that global warming was occurring, and only one-third thought that climate change was “caused mostly by human activities.” Further, half said they had discussed climate change issues on air, while 90 percent had done so in talks to community groups.

  One reason that local forecasters are more likely to end up in the dissenter camp than climate scientists is that they use different forecasting models. Meteorologists, such as television forecasters, are concerned with predicting the weather in a particular location at a particular moment in time. They use weather prediction models that are intensely sensitive to small changes in the atmosphere but have little accuracy beyond a week. Because they are used to predictions with a short shelf life, they are skeptical about the accuracy of long-term climate predictions. Climate scientists, by contrast, use complex models of global weather and weather patterns to estimate the effects of climate trends decades into the future. Variations in local weather patterns cancel out when observing and predicting long-term trends, so despite the inaccuracy of meteorological predictions of next week’s weather, climatologists remain confident in their ability to see unfolding trends.

  There are also arguments that increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would actually be a good thing, because plants would be able to carry out more photosynthesis, allowing our crops to grow faster. Carbon dioxide is frequently pumped into greenhouses to speed the growth of crops, and short-term studies in which carbon dioxide is pumped onto fields generally show that most plants grow more quickly.

  Carbon Dioxide’s Other Impacts

  Whether or not it has a role in global warming, carbon dioxide affects the environment in other significant ways. All plants take up carbon dioxide and convert it into the building blocks that make up their bodies, but not all plants respond in the same way to carbon dioxide enrichment. Some plants respond very well, and some plants not so well. Much of this difference is dependent upon how the plant collects carbon dioxide from the air. Most trees (as well as many other plants) utilize what is called a C3 pathway, while other plants, like corn and many other grasses, use a C4 pathway. Plants that use the C3 pathway keep their leaf pores open so that carbon dioxide flows into them much of the time. This leads to a rapid loss of moisture through the pores, but it also means that the plants can take up and use quite a bit of carbon dioxide. Plants that use the C4 pathway are much more efficient. They take up a certain amount of carbon dioxide and are quickly satiated, so they only need to keep their pores open for a shorter time. Plants in desert situations often use the C4 pathway (or the similar CAM pathway).

  When carbon dioxide levels are increasing, C3 plants may have an advantage over C4 plants, which could create changing weed dynamics that might profoundly influence our crops. This is because C3 plants (including weeds such as Canadian thistle) are able to take up and utilize more carbon dioxide than their C4 relatives (including important crops such as corn).

  An increase in carbon dioxide may also cause problems because it could result in a more rapid depletion of nutrients from the soil. Such an increase might stimulate plant growth at first, but it would also lead the plants to absorb more nutrients, such as nitrogen, from the earth than they normally would. This would lead to a decline in how quickly the plants grow after a few years because of the limited amount of nitrogen left in the ground. Some plants will tolerate higher carbon dioxide and lower nitrogen levels more readily than others, and in some cases, weeds may be able to handle these conditions better than our crops. Such is the case with barnyard grass, a weed that competes with rice crops and that could, eventually, cause a significant problem.

  The problems caused by atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration go beyond the terrestrial. The oceans are affected as well. As carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere increase, the oceans absorb more of this gas, which ultimately leads to a decrease in pH, meaning the oceans are more acidic. Under these conditions, the ability of the sea creatures that use calcium carbonate to make their homes—coral, oysters, clams, and mussels, among others—decreases and they grow more slowly. Seashells are composed of calcium carbonate and are formed more readily in alkaline seas. Although the full impact of a decrease in ocean pH is not yet fully understood, rest assured that it has the potential to significantly change the status quo of our ocean ecology.

  Government Policy

  Though policy options to deal with climate change have been under discussion in Washington since the late 1980s, it is fair to say that the U.S. government does not have a climate change policy. George H. W. Bush’s administration signed the Rio de Janeiro “framework” in 1992, in which industrialized countries agreed to the goal of reducing greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. These objectives were nearly impossible to achieve, and there were no consequences for failing to achieve them, so no country took the goals seriously. The Clinton administration agreed to the Kyoto Protocol in 1998, which set targets for industrialized nations to decrease their emissions of greenhouse gases. But it was never submitted for approval to the U.S. Senate because the Senate had voted 99–0 the previous year to urge the president not to sign any climate change agreements that did not include emissions standards for developing countries. Since Kyoto exempted developing countries (in order to get any agreement at all), the protocol would have faced certain defeat in the Senate.

  George W. Bush’s administration withdrew the United States from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 because the administration’s energy proposals, which emphasized increased exploration and development of fossil fuels, were incompatible with the agreement. The Bush administration’s EPA also refused to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Doing so would have allowed the EPA to regulate emissions of this gas under the Clean Air Act. The attorney generals of Connecticut, Maine, and Vermont challenged the EPA’s decision in court in 2003, suing to force the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide and address climate change. The EPA also denied California’s request for a waiver from federal air pollution laws so that the state could regulate greenhouse gases on its own.

  In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide was a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, and that the EPA had the authority to regulate it. The court also ruled that the agency had the authority to grant California’s waiver. In 2009, the EPA of the Obama administration started the process of developing regulations for carbon dioxide and the president made climate change one of his major priorities in terms of congressional legislation.

  The EPA has the authority to move forward and regulate carbon dioxide emissions whether or not Congress enacts climate change legislation. To the extent that Congress might disagree with the EPA’s approach, it would be pressured to pass climate change legislation that would then instruct the EPA on what policies Congress preferred it to implement. If the EPA’s actions are not acceptable to Congress, the EPA risks a backlash. Congress could repeal the EPA’s regulations and severely restrict the EPA’s future authority on climate change (and even other environmental issues).

  President Obama’s economic stimulus package of 2009 allocated funds to develop renewable energy, promote hybrid cars, and make government buildings and private homes more energy efficient. Later that year, at the United Nations summit on climate change in Copenhagen, the leading industrial nations (the United States, China, India, the European Union, Brazil, South Africa, and Japan) set emissions reductions goals, established a system for reporting progress toward meeting those goals, and pledged to fund $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries cope with the effects of climate change. The agreement did not set legally binding emissions limits nor did it include a way to sanction those countries that did not meet their goals. Because it was not a legally binding agreement, it also did not risk rejection by any of the countries’ legislatures.

  THE MAJOR congressional debates over climate change policy in the 2000s occurred in the U.S. Senate over proposals to institute a cap-and-trade system for carbon dio
xide and greenhouse gases. Cap-and-trade systems were first used for sulfur dioxide in the Clean Air Act of 1990. They allow the government to sell (or give) permits to generators of pollution. Companies that are polluting more than their permits allow must buy more permits from the government or from other companies that have permits. This gives companies an economic incentive to decrease their emissions to avoid paying for more permits. And companies with low emissions can make money by selling their unused permits to the highest bidder.

  Some state governments have stepped into the void created by the lack of a federal climate change policy. For the most part, states have not made a frontal assault on greenhouse gases, but they have passed energy policies to assist their own economic development, with climate change being a secondary benefit. The 1992 Energy Policy Act gave states the ability to create more competition in their electricity markets and to promote alternatives to fossil fuels. By 2009, thirty states had responded by establishing mandatory Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), which require utilities to offer certain percentages of power from renewable sources. Five other states had set goals for increases in renewable energy consumption. Likewise, the federal 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act gave money to states to develop long-term transportation plans that would include alternative transportation options that would reduce pollution and energy consumption.

  While state politicians might be uncertain about or even downright hostile to the science of climate change and the cost it might impose on existing industry, many want to take advantage of opportunities to develop new “green” technologies. We would not expect Texas, for example, to be a leader in alternative energy, given its longstanding association with the oil industry—but it is, in part because it is one of the best places to generate wind power. Other states see alternative energy and green technologies as ways to emphasize quality of life considerations in their marketing to potential residents and “new economy” investors.