Kyoto Can't Save Us

At the core of the global warming dilemma is a fact neither side of the debate likes to talk about: it is already too late to prevent global warming and the climate change it triggers.

Environmentalists won't say this for fear of sounding alarmist or defeatist. Politicians won't say it because then they'd have to do something about it. But the world's top climate scientists have been sending this message, with increasing urgency, for years now.

Since 1988, the UNEP-associated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, comprised of more than 2,000 scientific and technical experts from around the world, has conducted the most extensive peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history.

In its 2001 report, the IPCC announced that human-caused global warming had already begun, and much sooner than expected. What's more, it is bound to get worse, perhaps a lot worse, before it gets better.

Last month, the IPCC's chairman, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, upped the ante. Though Pachauri was installed after the Bush administration forced out his predecessor, Dr. Robert Watson, for pushing too hard for action, the accumulation of evidence led Pachauri to embrace apocalyptic language: 'We are risking the ability of the human race to survive,' he said.

Until now, most public discussion about global warming has focused on how to prevent it – for example, by implementing the Kyoto Protocol, which comes into force internationally (but without U.S. participation) on Feb. 16.

But prevention is no longer a sufficient option. No matter how many 'green' cars and solar panels Kyoto eventually calls into existence, the hard fact is that a certain amount of global warming is inevitable.

The world community therefore must make a strategic shift: it must expand its response to global warming to emphasize not only long-term but also short-term protection. Rising sea levels and more weather-related disasters will be a fact of life on this planet for decades to come, and we have to get ready for them.

Among the steps needed to defend ourselves, we must act quickly to fortify emergency response capabilities worldwide, to shield or relocate vulnerable coastal communities and to prepare for increased migration flows by environmental refugees.

We must also play offense. We must retroactively shrink the amount of warming facing us by redoubling efforts to remove existing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and 'sequester' them where they are no longer dangerous. One way is to plant trees, which absorb carbon dioxide via photosynthesis.

But researchers are exploring many other methods as well, some of them supported by the Bush administration. For instance, Norway is burying carbon dioxide in old oil wells beneath the North Sea.

The problem with the Kyoto protocol is not that the 5 percent greenhouse gas emission reductions it mandates don't go far enough, though they don't – the IPCC urges 50 to 70 percent reductions. The problem is that Kyoto governs only future emissions. No matter how well the protocol works, it will have no effect on past emissions, and it is these past emissions that have made global warming unavoidable.

Contrary to the impression left by some news reports, global warming is not like a light switch that can be turned off if we simply stop burning so much oil, coal and gas. There is a lag effect of approximately 50 to 100 years. That's how long carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, remains in the atmosphere after it is emitted from auto tailpipes, home furnaces and industrial smokestacks. So even if humanity stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, the earth would continue warming for decades.

So far, the greenhouse gases released during two-plus centuries of industrialization have increased global temperatures by about one degree Fahrenheit and raised sea levels by 4 to 7 inches. They have also given rise to the larger phenomenon of climate change.