WASHINGTON — Declaring the global warming debate over, an
international team of scientists urged the world’s nations on Tuesday to act now
to keep climate change from becoming a catastrophe.
The international community needs to take stronger steps to
cut the pace of global warming, adapt to the climate changes that have already
taken place and ensure development can be sustained throughout the process, the
scientists said in a report released at the United Nations.
"We make the argument that it is essential that we get
started now: not next year, not next decade, but now," said John Holdren, a
professor of environmental policy at Harvard University and member of the
scientific panel that crafted the report.
This report is a logical next step after the February 2
release of a much-heralded document by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change in Paris, which stated that global warming is real and human activities
caused much of it over the past half-century.
The earlier report was prohibited from making policy
recommendations; the current one, funded by the non-profit UN Foundation and
Sigma Xi scientific society, centers on just such recommendations.
And while the recommendations are global, certain specific
items are sure to affect the United States, Holdren said in a telephone
interview before the report’s formal release.
For example, scientists said no country should build any
traditional coal-burning power plants — big emitters of the greenhouse gas
carbon dioxide — unless they are designed to be able to capture and bury the
carbon dioxide they emit.
The United States, which emits about 25 percent of the
world’s carbon dioxide, relies heavily on coal-fired power plants.
One recommendation urges improved energy efficiency for
vehicles, homes, commercial buildings and in industry, to save money, cut
dependence on oil and reduces the balance of payments to pay for oil imports.
Biofuels, such as the ethanol advocated by the Bush
administration, should increasingly replace oil in transport, the report said.
In the tropics, the international community should aim to
slow and eventually reverse deforestation, a major source of greenhouse gas
emissions, Holdren said.
Global investment in advanced energy technology should be
tripled or quadrupled, the report said. This and the other recommendations are
aimed at cutting global warming but also providing economic opportunity and new
jobs, he said.
The report stressed the reality of the global warming problem
now, and noted the inadequate response to the stronger storms, worse droughts
and heat waves and more severe wildfires that are a consequence of higher world
temperatures.
"We need to make greater investment in the capacity of the
world to deal with those sorts of extreme events, not only because climate is
changing, making those events ever more frequent, but because the suffering
already associated with our inadequate responses to those needs to be
corrected," Holdren said.
The scientists considered nuclear power as a carbon-free
option, but said this energy source must address the problem of disposal of
radioactive waste and break the link between nuclear technology and weapons
proliferation.
On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said late on Monday she hoped to
see a "substantial package" of global warming legislation by June 1.
