Fossil Fuel Independence Now!

• By Ted Glick
  October 5, 2008
  Straight to the Source
  http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_14999.cfm
  

It was encouraging to see, as I was literally sitting at my computer getting ready to start this column, an email from 1Sky urging people to write to the Democratic and Republican Presidential campaigns expressing concern about recent problematic statements both have made "about the role coal plays in the climate crisis. There is no such thing as 'clean coal.'"

Please check this out and take action by going to:

http://action.1sky.org/t/1981/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=713

It has been disturbing to see the turn that the Presidential debate has taken in the last couple of months regarding the urgent issue of the climate crisis. The sad reality is that with both Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin, the rhetoric has become very similar. Both campaigns are advocating an "energy independence, all of the above" approach in which little is said about the climate crisis.

What's the difference? Aren't "energy independence" and "addressing global warming" the same thing? No, they are not. What we really need is independence from fossil fuels, drastically reducing our use of carbon-emitting coal, oil and natural gas.

You can support "energy independence" and support drilling for all the oil and natural gas that can be found in the USA, on land, in the sea, in shale and in tar sands. Shale and tar sands energy extraction, in particular, are highly energy- and water-intensive. You can support "energy independence" and be a strong advocate for coal mining in the U.S. and for coal-to-liquids fuel, a process which emits twice as many greenhouse gases as the refining of oil into gasoline.

And you can support "energy independence" and advocate for more and more fertile U.S. farm land being used to grow crops for the agro-fuel market. Such policies will drive up food prices, increase hunger worldwide and, depending upon the specific food crop, may do little to reduce carbon emissions while costing many billions of dollars in government subsidies.

In the meantime, our climate crisis continues to deepen.

An article a week ago in The Independent newspaper in England reported on scientists finding "the first evidence that millions of tons of [methane,] a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic sea bed. The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats."

And an article a few days ago in Britain's The Guardian newspaper reported that, "weeks before world leaders meet to discuss the next big international treaty on cutting emissions, the scale of risk posed by failing to act rapidly is spelt out today by the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre." The Hadley Centre is one of the most prominent and respected climate research centers in the world.

"The study shows that cutting global emissions by 3% a year from 2010 offers the only possible hope of avoiding a global temperature rise of more than 2C--widely recognized as the threshold beyond which the worst impacts of sea level rise and drought become a significant risk."

What are Obama's and McCain's targets for reducing emissions? Over the next 12 years, by 2020, both support exactly the same objective for how much greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced: 15% below current levels, back to where they were in 1990. This is their position even though most of the scientists and world leaders who have taken this issue seriously are calling for industrialized countries to reduce their emissions 25-40% BELOW 1990 levels by 2020 if we are to have any real chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

In other words, they are both calling for not 3% per year reductions but a little more than a 1% reduction.

What else is wrong with the "debate" between Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin over what we do about the climate crisis?

Both support nuclear power. Both support non-existent "clean coal." Both support drilling for oil and natural gas on land and in the sea. Both support going after oil and natural gas in shale.