Washington wakes up to global warming

Maybe it's the weird winter weather, or the newly Democratic Congress. Maybe it's the news reports about starving polar bears, or the Oscar nomination for Al Gore's global warming cri de coeur, "An Inconvenient Truth." Whatever the reason, years of resistance to the reality of climate change are suddenly melting away like the soon-to-be-history snows of Kilimanjaro.

Now even George W. Bush says it's a problem. For years, the president and his supporters argued that not enough was known about global warming to do anything about it. But during last week's State of the Union address Bush finally referred to global warming as an established fact. "These technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change," Bush said in proposing a series of measures to reduce gasoline consumption by 20% in 10 years.

Environmentalists favor imposing a mandatory cap on greenhouse gas emissions tied to a market-based emissions trading system. Several of the global warming bills that have been introduced to the new Democrat-controlled Congress would do exactly that. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has proposed creating a new global warming committee to consider the legislation. Many industry leaders have come to realize that such measures may be more an opportunity than a hindrance. The day before Bush's speech the chief executives of 10 corporations, including Alcoa Inc., BP America Inc., DuPont Co., Caterpillar Inc., General Electric Co. and Duke Energy Corp., called for mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions. "It must be mandatory, so there is no doubt about our actions," said Jim Rogers, chairman of Duke Energy. "The science of global warming is clear. We know enough to act now. We must act now."

Scientists have accumulated abundant evidence that global warming is upon us. They have documented a dramatic retreat of the Arctic sea in recent summers, accelerated melting on the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps and the virtual collapse in mountain glaciers around the globe. They have found plants and animals well poleward of their normal ranges. They have recorded temperature records in many locations and shifts in atmospheric and oceanic circulation. Globally, the planet is the warmest it has been in thousands of years, if not more.

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