Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 15 February 2001 — Page 32

The Muncie Times, February 15, 2001, page 32

TO BE EQUAL

Like it or not, global warming is on the way

Remember that line made famous by a commercial: "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature?" Well, the evidence is accumulating that it's not wise to ignore Mother Nature, either. Specifically, it's not going to be nice for us, and especially our descendants, if those of us alive today adopt an ostrich-like pose toward the danger of global warming. In the midst of a bonechilling winter for most Am ericans--and staggering home heating bills-it may seem, to put it frankly, weird to talk about global warming and perhaps, premature too. After all, the calamitous effects of greenhouse emissions from industry, power plants and vehicles that cause the atmosphere to trap more of the sun's energy aren't expected to be upon us for decades and decades. But the truth of it is that global warming is a subject we ignore at our peril-that is, at the earth's peril. For years, scientists and environmental activists have been warning us, even begging us to pay attention. But by and large people have given them the cold shoulder.

Well, it's now time to wake up and watch the ozone layer. In mid-January scientists from 150 nations met in Shanghai, China, to take stock of where things stand. The group is the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was established by the United Nations. They've scanned the latest data on global temperature--and the news is not good. In fact, it's getting worse. The earth is heating up at a faster rate than they predicted earlier. The scientist calculated that the 20th century was the warmest century in the last thousand years. The 1990s was the warmest decade of the last millennium. The rate of climate change this century will be the greatest in 10,000 years. Global temperatures could rise as much as 10.5 degrees by 2100, compared with a rise in temperature of about 9 degrees since the last Ice Age. Rising temperatures could lead to sudden, drastic changes in weather, such as severe droughts in some places and flooding, brought on by the melting of the glaciers at the poles, in the

densely populatedl coastal areas of China,* Egypt and other countries. Such drastic climate disturbances would undoubtedly provoke an almost unimaginable floodtide of refugeesand worldwide political instability. The Shanghai study, the most comprehensive on global warning to date on global warming, ■ emphasizes that the temperature increases are caused mostly by pollution, not by changes in the sun or other natural factors. The scientist clearly hope that the report's dire warning compels government to re-start the stalled world negotiations on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Those talks ended last November without a plan to carry out a 1997 agreement by industrialized countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels during the next decade. Of course, trying to reduce emissions is and will continue to be a goal of the greatest complexity. The social and political need of countries to go all out to be able to compete effectively on the worlds market and the need of individual companies,

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Hugh B. Price

large and small, to go all out in pursuit of profits makes this task appear daunting even beyond imagination. It should come as no surprise that the 1997 agreement has yet to be ratified by a single industrialized country. But we, the earth's inhabitants, cannot accept that the solutions to this crisis in fact are beyond imagination-because the catastrophes that continued global warming can cause are not beyond imagination. Indeed, we're likely to get a clear picture of the latter when upcoming meetings of the U.N. panel on climate change issues reports on the social and economic cost of global warming and how to reduce them. The Shanghai Report makes it clear that the

whole earth is living under a death sentence. It won't strike in our lifetime, although given the everincreasing intensity of development, it's likely that some serious consequences will begin to show up relatively soon. But the governments need to act now to find the ways to compel manufacturers, energy companies, automakers-and consumers, too- to sharply curb the emissions of greenhouse gasses. The pressure to change behavior must heat up- so the earth we inhabit can begin to chill out a little. Hugh B. Price is president of the National Urban League, headquartered in New YorkCity.

February is National ! Black History Month