Coming Soon to a Planet Near You -- Climate Wars!

It’s a bigger problem than Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction,” gay marriage or Osama bin Laden. Yet it’s rarely on the front pages, the leading Presidential candidates never mention it, and most of ignore it in hopes it will go away.

But now a secret US government report, obtained by the British newspaper The Observer, predicts that within 20 years, climate change may lead to mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting across the world. Deaths from wars and natural disasters could run into the millions as internal conflicts tear apart India, South Africa and Indonesia. And that’s just for starters.

Before you write this off as more environmentalist whacko hysteria, consider: the report was commissioned by senior Pentagon defense adviser Andrew Marshall, head of the Office of Net Assessment, a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to US national security. The report predicts abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. Rich areas like the US and Europe could become 'virtual fortresses' to keep out waves of boatpeople fleeing lands drowned by sea-level rise or no longer able to grow crops. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, the report concludes.

Some of the world’s leading climate scientists are right here in northern Colorado – at places like CSU’s Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory and Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research. They’ve been warning us for years about human-induced climate change – as if melting Alaskan permafrost, retreating glaciers in Glacier National Park and killer heat waves, floods and hurricanes weren’t obvious enough. So why isn’t anybody in Washington listening?

The Bush administration is closely linked to high-powered energy and oil companies –Bush and Cheney themselves are oil men – and so refuses to say or do anything that might perturb its powerful patrons. Recently, the White House came under fire from a large body of respected scientists for cherry-picking scientific studies to suit its policy agenda. In short, Bush Inc. has been cooking the books on everything from Weapons of Mass Destruction to Global Warming.

By the time this administration took office, the scientific consensus on global warming was pretty much settled. Heck, Swedish chemist Arrhenius had the basic mechanism figured out by 1896! Yes, there are still some doubters, some dissenters, some outright deniers, but scientists NEVER agree 100% about anything. It’s part of their job description. Nevertheless, when he took office, President Bush commissioned yet another study, this time by our National Academies of Science. Even that report confirmed the obvious. Put officially on notice that our ravenous economic appetite and wasteful energy use threatens dire consequences for our children and grandchildren, GW boldly leapt into action – commissioning more studies leading to more reports. In short, our official policy is to fiddle while Rome burns.

The excuse for inaction is that it will cost too much to avoid climate change. But what will it cost to do nothing? How much are we already paying?

It’s not too late (hopefully), and it won’t kill us to change course. Actually, it will help. We just need to stop subsidizing oil, coal and natural gas, and invest those billions in wind power, solar and renewable energy instead. We should offer tax breaks for clean-burning, hybrid cars, instead of for Hummers. We have to total up the true costs of our love affair with cars, and invest in smart growth and transit alternatives. New jobs in new technologies plus increases in public health and security will outweigh jobs lost in declining technologies.

A bill to promote renewable energy (HB 1273) is progressing through the Colorado Legislature. Back in DC, Bush’s wrongheaded “more of the same” energy bill is still alive in Congress, which recently defeated the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act. Call your state and federal representatives to let them know that your “family values” don’t include leaving future generations a degraded planet.

Now that we know what we’re doing to ourselves, change isn’t something to fear, or an option to consider, but our only hope to leave our children a decent, peaceful world in which to grow up and have children of their own.

Eric Fried can be reached at eric@pvgreens.org.