 "It is a national security issue, it is an economic issue, it is an environmental and therefore a health issue, and above all, it is a moral issue," U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed her heartiest moral obligation while she and her fellow members of Congress and religious leaders were marking the Earth Day 2008 by helping plant an elm tree outside the U.S. Capitol on April 22, 2008.
President George W. Bush, whose administration has weathered criticism for its stand on environmental issues, also planted a tree to mark Earth Day 2008, an environmental event that has now become increasingly political and corporate in the United States. In addition, his administration offered a plan to boost fuel economy for cars and trucks to cut U.S. dependence on foreign oil and curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The plan would require the U.S. and international fleet to average 32 miles per gallon (13.6 km per litre) by 2015. The energy bill Bush signed in December requires that autos average 35 miles per gallon (14.9 km per litre) by 2020, a 40 per cent increase over the current standard.
Each year on April 22, Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement. Starting its journey since 1970, Earth Day promotes environmental awareness around the world. It is the only event celebrated simultaneously around the globe by people of all backgrounds, faiths, and nationalities. Its mission is to grow and diversify the environmental movement worldwide to promote a healthy and sustainable planet. Earth Day on April 22, 1990, gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
But according to the scientists, critics, environmental activists, and general people, nothing has been changed in the celebration from previous years. However, last December in Bali, Indonesia, a breakthrough deal forged by delegates from 190 countries has revived world efforts to fight global warming which may help push the debate to the front and centre of the U.S. political debate.
Even back then, of course, the leaders in US understood that their interests aligned more closely with Al Gore, who would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign against global warming. But very few of them came forward to control global warming.
U.S. policymakers predict there will be no law on climate change under a reluctant Bush but presidential hopefuls --- including those from his own Republican Party --- already are laying the groundwork for his exit in January 2009. Americans are relying on policymakers, including the next president, to tackle climate change.
Driven by public concern, all the candidates agree that action is needed to slow global warming. It's clear that the American people are looking for a presidential candidate who will take climate change very seriously. Last year more than three voters in 10 said they would take a candidate's green credentials into account, according to pollster John Zogby, up from just 11 percent in 2005.
On the presidential campaign trail, Democrats Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and Republican Sen. John McCain offered statements urging a focused U.S. environmental and energy policy. "Our leaders in Washington have to put what's right for our planet ahead of what's good for their friends in the energy industry," Obama (ILL) said in a statement on the day of the presidential primary in Pennsylvania while his fellow rival Clinton (NY) had harsh words against Bush. "I will end the Bush administration's assault on environmental protections and standards." McCain (AZ), who openly disagrees with the Bush administration on the need for capping carbon emissions, warned that the climate issue would be one of the greatest challenges confronting the next president. "We must have the courage to realistically confront the spectre of climate change," he said.
While US is facing strict criticism due to carbon emissions and hundreds of its new coal plants have been blocked by state government or stuck in court challenges, Italy's major electricity producer, Enel, is converting its massive power plant from oil to coal, generally the dirtiest fuel on earth. The return now to coal even in eco-conscious Europe is sowing real alarm among environmentalists who warn that it is setting the world on a disastrous trajectory that will make controlling global warming impossible. People from different parts of the world including Americans, are expecting a rapid action from the upcoming new US president to adopt a goal of halving world emissions by 2050 and that new technologies such as clean coal or new biofuels could cut emissions in coming decades.
"President McCain, President Obama, or President Clinton would all shift this country to a much higher level on climate change," California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, told a meeting of 18 state leaders at Yale University on April 10, 2008. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said a deadlock between the United States, by many counts the world's top greenhouse gas emitter, and rapidly developing countries, like China and India, on working together to cut emissions would loosen if a new U.S. administration takes the lead on climate change.
Although major economies made progress in defining the building blocks of a new U.N. deal to fight climate change on Friday, April 18, 2008, but ended split over whether to set a goal of halving world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The UN sponsored meeting in Paris, France, left deep divisions about whether to set a goal of halving global emissions by 2050, favoured by the European Union, Japan and Canada as part of a fight against warming that may bring more floods, droughts, heat waves, and rising seas. Developing nations said they would not sign up to such a goal at a planned summit of leaders of the 17 major economies on next July 9 in Japan unless Washington did far more to curb emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels. According to data submitted to the United Nations, in 2006, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell by 1.3 percent and EU emissions by 0.3. The Bush administration has opposed specific targets to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide --- spewed by coal-fired power plants and petroleum-fueled vehicles --- arguing that this would hurt the U.S. economy.
Industrialized nations apart from the United States have agreed to consider cuts in emissions of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 as part of a new U.N. climate treaty to succeed the existing Kyoto Protocol. World is now starting to look to the presidential hopefuls Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or John McCain who will take office in January 2009.
To repair U.S. relations with countries those have urged the United States to do more on climate to cut planet-warming gases and as well as to gift a green America to American Voters, the new President may need to endorse effective climate-change law to reduce emissions to avoid dangerous global warming, to shift the United States to clean energy, and to minimize the law's economic impacts on aid communities and ecosystems.
(The writer is a New York based freelancer) |