Today, few people doubt that fossil fuel use adds CO2 to the atmosphere, that CO2 levels are increasing in the atmosphere, or that increases in CO2 levels lead to increases in global temperatures. However, it's not clear to most people exactly how an increase in temperatures endangers our health, our environment and our economies and few understand what steps we need to take to control the problem.
Although Global Warming, the Greenpeace Report is ten years old, it's still one of the most readable technical books on the subject. Although a great deal of work has been done refining climate models, taking better measurements, and understanding the effects of global warming, the Greenpeace Report's blueprint for solving the problem is still up-to-the minute.
Title: Global Warming, the Greenpeace Report
Editor: Jeremy Leggett
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0-19-217781-8
Year: 1990
Pages: 554
Libraries: Mann
Combining 20 papers by scientists from Norman Meyers and Anne Ehrlich, the Greenpeace Report paints a complete picture of the causes and the impact of global warming, as well as the policy responses that we must take to control it. Although our scientific knowledge has been refined in the past decade, little has changed in the fundamental science, or in the need to stop deforestation and reduce CO2 emissions by 50% or more by 2030.
Even today, it's still difficult to explain the dangers of global warming because we can't point to a single large disaster which is certain to happen. Rather, climate change will cause thousands of disasters, mostly small, as changes in temperature and CO2 change environments enough to cause extinctions, and crop failures. Even a small change in sea level could force millions to migrate, and the risk that certain areas, such as Europe, could experience a catastrophic effect, could even plunge the world into war. There's no one apocalyptic disaster which is certain, or even terribly likely, but when we consider all of the possible effects, the uncertainty is terrifying. At the very least, global warming is going to put stress on a world system that is already under seige from deforestation, acid rain, overpopulation and a shortage of water.
About two thirds of The Greenpeace Report is devoted to practical solutions of the problem, a subject that's particularly interesting now that the depletion of world oil and gas supplies and insufficient capital spending in the 1990's will be forcing us to make major changes in our energy infrastructure over the next two decades. Although people in our culture often feel that we need a single new technology to solve a problem, the greatest factor in our favor is that we can use several solutions in parallel. For instance, to comply with the Kyoto protocol's demand to reduce CO2 emissions by 30% by 2007, we could reduce automobile trips by 10%, increase the efficiency of automobiles by 10%, and derive 10% of our fuel from sources that don't contribute to global warming.
The Greenpeace Report points out that energy efficiency is the most effective step we can take toward reducing CO2 emissions because these measures often save money. In a time where people are concerned with rising oil prices and electricity shortages, improvements in energy efficiency buy us cheaper and faster relief of our suffering that other measures such as expanding oil drilling in Alaska or building new power plants.
Renewable energy sources, such as electricity from the wind and solar heat, will also play a useful role in our future energy infrastructure because these technologies don't contribute CO2 and don't deplete our limited supply of fuels. Nuclear power, on the other hand, is an unattractive alternative. A serious effort to use nuclear energy to combat global warming would require us to build over 5000 nuclear power plants, mostly in the the third world, by 2025. This would not only deplete our limited supply of uranium, forcing us to switch to unproven, unsafe and expensive breeder reactors, but would make it almost inevitable that plutonium and nuclear weapons would fall into the hands of terrorists.
Finally, it's important to note that fossil fuel emissions aren't the only contributor to global warming. Minor gases such as chloroflorocarbons (CFCs) make a contribution. Agricultural operations produce methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and deforestation (mostly in the tropics) releases a significant amount of CO2 while destroying some of the richest habitat for plants and wildlife in the world. An effective answer to global warming is going to require changes in both the rich core and the impoverished periphery, and measures to promote equality so that the poor aren't crushed by the costs.
