February - April 2000

Everyone Talkes About the Weather. It's Time we Did Something About It!

Can Clean, Green Energy Help Avert Global Climate Change?

For those who live in cold climates, global warming sounds like the ultimate home improvement. Boston, welcome to Bermuda! But climate change is serious business. The world's leading climate scientists estimate that a predicted rise in global temperatures of just 1 to 3.5 degrees over the next century could produce a host of unwelcome effects, including:

• flooding of coastal regions from sea level rise droughts and expanding deserts due to disrupted water cycles
  
  
• more extreme weather of all kinds; hurricanes, tornadoes, snowstorms
  
  
• epidemics of tropical diseases from insects that thrive in warmer climates
  
  
• reduced crop yields in global breadbaskets like the mid-west

But aren't these effects still far in the future? Not so, say climate scientists. The nineties were the hottest decade of the millennium. The planet is heating faster than at any time in the past 10,000 years. The five costliest years for hurricanes and storms occurred in the 1990s.

Industrial and auto pollution play a key role in warming the atmosphere. In 1997, 160 countries met in Kyoto, where 38 industrialized nations agreed to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. pledged a reduction to 7% below 1990 levels by the year 2012. But since that time the U.S. has made little progress towards this goal. President Clinton's new budget includes $1.4 billion for scientific research and $2.7 billion to combat global warming, 43% more than 1999. But Congress may well slash that figure. And despite our advanced technology, we remain the world's biggest polluter.

What can be done to slow global warming and forestall its most destructive impacts? Many energy experts urge a two-pronged strategy:

• save energy, save money - adopt higher fuel efficiency standards, energy-saving industrial processes, reduce consumption, drive less, breathe more
  
  
• use more renewable sources of energy - solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, et al

There are ways, say many experts, but there is not yet the political will to make the change. What will it cost? How soon can renewables be brought on-line? Will the market support the shift or must it first be subsidized? How can we cut our personal energy use?

Between mid-February and late April 2000, MMP mounted a major public education effort to raise public awareness about the nature of global climate change and practical energy alternatives that would dramatically reduce the carbon dioxide buildup that is a chief source of the worldwide warming trend. The campaign was pegged in part to the April 22 Earth Day 2000, which shared our concern with climate change and renewable energy. Altogether we scheduled and completed some 253 interviews, of which 47 were nationally, globally, or regionally syndicated. More than two-thirds were broadcast on commercial radio, where such issues are seldom given an informed airing. Some 49 nationally known authorities on climate change and energy issues representing dozens of organizations participated in the campaign along with dozens of local experts. Collectively they addressed a full spectrum of issues ranging from impacts of the climate on the environment, the economy and human health to alternative transportation systems and the costs and benefits of a renewable energy economy.