1

CLIMATE OF NEGLIGENCE: CLIMATE DESTABILIZATION AND THE US POLITICAL AGENDA BY Jared Duval A Study Presented to the Faculty Of Wheaton College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation with Departmental Honors in Political Science Norton, Massachusetts May 20, 2005

Acknowledgement: The major truth that guides this work and my life generally is that thinking of oneself as isolated from ones peers and the surrounding world is a very deceiving and destructive practice. In truth, we are all interdependent, at the same time relying upon and supporting one another, like an incredibly elaborate ujama1 carving. Realistically, no one could grow and succeed without such interdependence. The process of developing this thesis has been a prime example of that truth. First I must thank my advisor, Jay Goodman. His critical insights, pragmatic advice, and patient encouragement served as invaluable sources of motivation in developing and completing this work. Also, discussions with Professor Gerry Huiskamp expanded my knowledge on a range of subjects, forced me to challenge assumptions, and strengthened my arguments. I am greatly indebted to these two professors, not only for their advice and guidance pertaining to this work but also for their unsurpassed contributions to my academic development throughout my time at Wheaton. Although I have never met her, I would also like to thank Aimee Bosee. Her 1985 honors thesis in political science analyzed the national media coverage of Geraldine Ferraro in the 84 US Presidential campaign and served as an encouraging example of how to construct a thesis project focused on content analysis. I must also acknowledge my father William Duval who, more than anyone else, ensured that I came to Wheaton and who developed in me the work ethic that helped carry me through the arduous task of researching and writing this project. Last, but certainly not
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Ujama carvings are usually crafted in the Makonde region of Tanzania. Each piece is a single and unbroken piece of wood, representing a family tree of figures all connected to and reliant upon each other in some way.

3 least, I have to thank my mother Alice Blackmer. She directed my attention to new international studies on global warming (no small feat considering the lack of press attention such studies garnered in the US press) and encouraged me to address this issue from a variety of unique perspectives. In addition, she provided encouragement in ways that only a mother can. Although I am certain that I have exhausted my allotted quota of wax2 in constructing this work it is my sincere hope that I have managed to add a measure of light, while avoiding adding too much heat, to the issue of climate destabilization and the challenges facing its advancement on the US political agenda. If I have, I am greatly indebted to the aforementioned people and to many others whom I have not named here.

In the 15th century, at the height of the Spanish empire, many sculptors were commissioned to craft statues out of expensive white marble. To cover up any mistakes, sculptors would patch their statues with wax.

4 Table of Contents

Preface: Risking Humanitys Survival? (5-9) Chapter One: Climate Destabilization: What the Scientific Community Does and Does Not Know (10-26) Chapter Two: A Brief History of the The Environment as an Issue on the National Political Agenda: How Low Can it Go? (27-38) Chapter Three: Climate Destabilizations Place on the Social Problems Agenda: A Look at the Dominant Framing Constructs Utilized by Media and Prominent Think Tanks in the US (39-49) Chapter Four: US Political Leadership on Climate Destabilization: Besides One False Hope, An Oxymoron (50-71) Conclusion: From Believing Cassandra to Relieving Sisyphus: Melting the Mountain of Ice Before Us (72- 78) Bibliography: (79-82)

5 Preface: Risking Humanitys Survival? Whenever one browses international news today, it seems there is always some mention of another new scientific study reporting the increasing evidence of humaninduced climate destabilization3 or of some renowned scientist or international expert delivering yet another dire warning about its dangers. Just this past January, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (UN IPCC) was addressing the topic of climate change at a UN conference when he announced, we are risking the ability of the human race to survive.4 Dr. Pachauri elaborated on his statement stating that we have, already reached the level of dangerous concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere climate change is for real. We have just a small window of opportunity and it is closing rather rapidly. There is not a moment to lose.5 With the frequent alarmism of mass-media, it would be easy to be unmoved by such a declaration. But what Dr. Pachauri is saying is uncharacteristically important. Essentially, after analyzing and digesting the findings of the IPCCs seventeen year research effort on climate change, the man who has overseen the largest, most transparent,
3

While the terms most popularly used to describe this trend are climate change or global warming, I prefer to use the term climate destabilization because, as I will establish in Ch. 1, it is a more accurate description of what scientists are telling us is actually happening. Yes the climate is changing but it is always and has always been changing. The difference now is the pace and magnitude of that change- on a scale that is destabilizing to natural processes. Similarly global warming does not really convey the full reality of what might happen either, as a destabilized climate could lead to cooling in some areas. This trend has been reported by the UN World Meteorological Organization, which stated in 2004 that During the northern hemisphere wintermaximum and minimum temperatures were below normal by 6-10 degrees Celsius. World Meteorological Organization Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 2004, http://www.wmo.ch/web/wcp/wcdmp/statement/html/983_E.pdf, 5-6. Generally though, mean global temperature is certainly increasing. Regardless of my personal language preference, I have nevertheless used the phraseology of my source whenever referencing him or her and whenever analyzing any of his or her statements. I have only used my preferred term when speaking fully independently. 4 From comments delivered at a UN conference in Mauritius, January 2005. As reported by Geoffrey Lean, Global Warming Approaching Point of No Return, Warns Leading Climate Expert, Independent/UK, January 23, 2005. 5 Ibid.

6 and most peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history6 is now saying that climate change threatens humanitys very survival and requires immediate action. Coming from Dr. Pachauri in particular, these words seem to carry more weight than they would coming from someone with less of a reputation for reservation.7 As Chairman of the UN sponsored IPCC for the past four years, Dr. Pachauri has overseen a panel whose mission is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.8 In the process of fulfilling this mission, more than 2000 scientists and experts from more than 100 countries have contributed to the writing and reviewing of the IPCCs assessment reports.9 In short, the conclusions disseminated by the IPCCs assessment reports, and the process by which those conclusions were made, would seem to be the most credible and sound currently available.10 But the IPCC is not the only body concerned with climate change. Indeed, a host of other disturbing reports and statements, not always limited to the scientific community, have also surfaced recently. As author and journalist Ross Gelbspan wrote in a preface to

Description provided by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Ross Gelbspan, Bush's Climate Follies, The American Prospect Online, July 29, 2001. 7 In fact, Dr. Pachauri replaced Dr. Robert Watson as chair of the IPCC in 2001 in part because Dr. Watsons repeated calls for urgent action to address climate change were considered too alarmist by the Bush administration. In response, the US delegation successfully lobbied for Dr. Pachauri as a replacement. At the time of Pachauris appointment, 2000 Democratic Presidential nominee Al Gore warned against the selection of the lets drag our feet candidate. Lean, Point of No Return 8 From the About IPCC section of the IPCC website, http://www.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm 9 The information regarding the number of scientists and experts involved in producing the IPCC assessment report is taken from a press release produced by the United Nations Environment Program. It can be found here, http://www.unep.ch/iuc/press/climate/pr12-95.htm 10 I do not mean to intend that the IPCC is beyond reproach. Indeed, in Chapter 1 I take a closer look at criticisms of the IPCC and analyze the level of confidence we should have in its findings.

7 the book, Feeling the Heat: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Climate Change,11 the worlds economic leaders are also becoming increasingly concerned with the potential consequences of climate change. He writes: A vote by executives of the worlds largest corporations, finance ministers and heads of state who attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2000 was remarkable. When conference organizers polled participants on which of five different trends were most troubling, the participants overrode the choices and declared climate change to be by far the most threatening issue facing humanity.12 With these warnings, both scientific and economic, in mind the disconnect between the enormity of problems predicted as a result of unmitigated climate destabilization and the issues current lack of any substantive presence on the US political agenda strikes me as particularly negligent. For, if the scientists and economists are correct, what other issue (aside from possible exception of nuclear proliferation,13) presents the sheer enormity of threat to humankind that climate destabilization does? Particularly, as the most powerful country in the world -best positioned to respond to such a global threat- shouldnt we be able to expect this issue to rise the top of the US social problems and political issue agenda? Before answering these questions specifically, I recognize the necessity of challenging some of my driving assumptions more critically. Thus, this work begins in Chapter 1 with a thorough review of the best climate science currently available. Here I have attempted to pinpoint what exactly we currently know, what we dont currently know,
11

Motavalli, Jim, ed., Feeling the Heat: Dispatches From the Frontlines of Climate Change (New York: Routledge, 2004). 12 Ibid., iv. 13 Even if we consider these issues comparable, it seems relevant to mention that Hans Blix, a man who as director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1981 to 1997 probably possesses more knowledge about atomic and nuclear weapons than nearly anyone else in the world, was recently quoted as saying, To me the question of the environment is more ominous than that of peace and war. We will have regional conflicts and use of force, but world conflicts I do not believe will happen any longer. But the environment, that is a creeping danger. I'm more worried about global warming than I am of any major military conflict. Hans Blix, interview by John Norris, MTV News, March 13, 2003.

8 and what can be said with confidence with regard to future predictions. I conclude that not only is there a scientific consensus that humans are contributing to climate destabilization, but also that the best available predictions of future impacts resulting from that destabilization demand an immediate and widespread policy response from US political leaders. With a more solid understanding of climate science at hand, Chapter 2 offers an overview of the history of environmental issues on the issue agenda of the US political system, leading up to the current day. I find that environmental issues experienced a great level of public and governmental attention in the 1970s but that since then the governmental response to environmental issues has declined drastically - to the point where today the environment ceases to be a major issue on the national political agenda. Chapter 3 provides a review of research and literature on the prominent methods most usually utilized to measure the issue prioritization and framing of global warming. Specifically, I review literature that has focused on content analysis of US media and prominent conservative think tanks. Analyzing a wide array of research I conclude that the US media has adopted the exact same conservative frame advanced by conservative think tanks and that conservative think tanks have succeeded in disseminating their opinions much more so than other think tanks. Chapter 4 introduces, explains, and analyzes the most substantive original work of this thesis; my contention that there does not exist political leadership in the United States committed to advancing the issue of climate destabilization commensurate with the relative importance of the issue. This thesis is supported by identifying the lack of issue priority given to climate destabilization on the websites of the US Senate leadership and the

9 members of the Environment and Public Works and Energy and Natural Resources Committees. I then conclude with a review of findings and recommendations for further research. Finally I propose a new paradigm for approaching and advancing the issue of climate destabilization.

Ch.1: Climate Destabilization: What the Scientific Community Does and Does Not Know

10 The purpose of this chapter is to review the most defensible climate science currently available. Not having any expertise in climate science myself, I have primarily deferred to the most exhaustive evaluation of the peer-review process in scientific history,14 (the most recent IPCC Assessment Report on global climate change), for most of my information. However, I have also included the points of view found in various criticisms of that IPCC report and comments from a follow-up report compiled by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) at the request of President Bush. Further, because the last IPCC Assessment Report was released in 2001 and the follow-up NAS report was released later that same year, I have also included relevant major advances in climate science which have occurred since then. These include findings released by the United Nations Meteorological Association in 2004 and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography released in February 2005. Also, comprehensive reports including the latest Arctic Climate Impact Assessment released in November, 2004 and the Recommendations of the International Climate Change Taskforce released in January, 2005 are covered. The theory behind human induced climate change revolves around the fact that certain greenhouse gases exhibit the dual characteristics of Ultra Violet transparency and infrared re-radiation. The concept is scientifically simple enough that social scientists can sum it up with ease, as economists Warwick J. McKibbin and Peter J. Wilcoxen do in an article that recently appeared in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.15 They write: Certain gases in the atmosphere are transparent to ultraviolet light but also absorb infrared radiation. The most famous of these gases is carbon dioxide, but water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons and various other gases
14

Dr. Jeffrey A. Harvey, Senior Scientist, Department of Multitrophic Interactions, Netherlands Institute of Ecology, Centre for Terrestrial Ecology, http://www.ecoglobe.org/nz/biodiv/biod2218.htm 15 Warwick J. McKibbin and Peter J. Wilcoxen, The Role of Economics in Climate Change Policy, Journal of Economic Perspectives 16, no.2 (2002): 107-129.

11 have the same property. Energy from the sun, in the form of ultraviolet light, passes through the carbon dioxide unimpeded and is absorbed by objects on the ground. As the objects become warm, they release the energy as infrared radiation. The carbon dioxide (in the atmosphere) absorbs the infrared and reradiates it back toward the surface, thus raising global temperatures.16 Carbon Dioxide is the greenhouse gas (GHG) most frequently referenced in the climate change debate. It assumes priority for two main reasons: 1) it is the greenhouse gas of greatest concentration in the atmosphere, accounting for approximately 76% of all greenhouse gases,17 and 2) the greenhouse effect of Carbon Dioxide is of a scale larger than that of most other greenhouse gases18 because it stays in the atmosphere and reradiates infrared heat back to earth for centuries, as opposed to the shorter lifespan of other GHGs (this staying property is commonly referred to as Carbon Dioxides inertia)19. With this background in mind let us address the question of what the current state of climate change science is. As already established in the preface but worth repeating, the IPCC was founded in 1988 to collect, analyze, and review the current findings of scientists from around the world with regard to climate change so as to provide the UN and its member countries with assessments of scientific, technical and socio- economic information relevant for the
16 17

Ibid., 108. Percentage figure provided from a report found on the University of Michigan website. Found here, http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/greenhouse.htm 18 As the National Center for Atmospheric Research reports, Some types of emissions, such as methane, remain in the atmosphere for years; others, such as carbon dioxide, stay for centuries. http://www.ucar.edu/research/pollution/atmosphere.shtml However, recent research has suggested that the inertia of carbon dioxide is much longer than previously thought and that not all CO2 stays in the atmosphere for the same amount of time. For example, University of Chicago Professor of Geophysical Sciences David Archers research indicates that as much as 7% of CO2 released today will still be in the atmosphere (reradiating) 100,000 years from now. He thus calculates the mean lifetime of CO2 to be around 30,000 years. However he admits that this number can be deceiving and suggests that several hundred years is a more appropriate number for popular discussion because it indicates the atmospheric CO2 lifetime of about 75% of emitted CO2. A description of his research appears here, David Archer, posting to Real Climate discussion board, March 15, 2005, http://www.realclimate.org/index.php? p=134#more-134 19 A description of the term inertia appears here; IPCC, Summary for Policymakers, Third Assessment Report. http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/un/syreng/spm.pdf 16

12 understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.20 A review of the IPCCs significant findings, taken directly from their most recent 2001 Assessment Report, offers as good a starting point as any. Their findings include the following: Current Findings The atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased from a level of 280 parts per million (ppm) for the period 1000-1750 to 368 ppm in the year 2000 (this represents a 31% increase, with a margin of error of +/- 4%)21 Global mean surface temperature increased by .6 degrees C (1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) (+/-.2 degrees C) over the 20th century (very likely)22 Human activities have increased the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols since the pre-industrial era Globally it is very likely that the 1990s was the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in the instrumental record (1861-2000) Cold/frost days decreased for nearly all land areas during the 20th century (very likely) It is very likely that the 20th century warming has contributed significantly to the observed sea-level rise, through thermal expansion of seawater and widespread loss of land ice Global mean sea level increased at an average annual rate of 1 to 2 mm during the 20th century Widespread retreat of non-polar glaciers occurred during the 20th century There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities (italics and underline mine)

Future Projections The projected concentration of CO2 in the year 2100 ranges from 540 to 970 ppm, compared to about 368 ppm in the year 2000 and 280 ppm as late as 1750 Projections using the SRES emissions scenarios in a range of climate models result in an increase in globally averaged surface temperature of 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius (2.5 to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) over the period 1990 to 2100 (this prediction is an increase from the 1995 2nd assessment report which anticipated a 1 3.5 degree Celsius increase)

20 21

Description provided by the IPCC on the front page of their website, http://www.ipcc.ch All of the following points are taken from the IPCC, Summary for Policy Makers, 5-33 22 The IPCC utilized the following terminology for its 3rd Assessment report to indicate the relative certainty of each assertion or prediction; very likely indicates a 90 99% chance, likely indicates a 66 90% chance, medium indicates a 33 66% chance, and unlikely indicates a 10 33% chance of occurrence. IPCC, Summary for Policymakers, Box SPM-1, 5.

13 Glaciers are projected to continue their widespread retreat during the 21st century Global mean sea level is projected to rise by .09 to .88 meters between the years 1990 and 2100 ( a range of more than 3.5 inches to 2 feet, 10 inches) Models project that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will result in changes in frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme events, such as more hot days, heat waves, heavy precipitation events, and fewer cold days Greenhouse gas forcing in the 21st century could set in motion large-scale, high impact non-linear, and potentially abrupt changes in physical and biological systems over the coming decades to millennia, with a wide range of associated likelihoods (italics mine) Because of inertia, some changes in the climate system, plausible beyond the 21st century, would be effectively irreversible Unlike the climate and ecological systems, inertia in human systems is not fixed; it can be changed by policies and the choices made by individuals The greater the reductions in emissions and the earlier they are introduced, the smaller and slower the projected warming and rise in sea levels Lower emissions scenarios require different paths of energy resource development and an increase in energy research and development to assist accelerating the development and deployment of advanced environmentally sound energy technologies

Key Uncertainties Magnitude and character of natural climate variability Factors in modeling of climate cycle, including effects of climate feedbacks Understanding the probability distribution associated with temperature and sealevel rise - Identification, quantification, and valuation of damages associated with climate change Further Work Required to Better Understand The detection and attribution of climate change The quantification of climate change impacts at global, regional, and local levels What constitutes dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system -

Summarizing these findings, I believe that the four following statements can be made with relative certainty:

14 1) The earth is warming at an anomalous rate when compared with past warming trends. 2) Atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased dramatically from the pre-industrial period. 3) The best science available widely supports the view that rising temperatures are the result of human activities, principally our emission of greenhouse gases like CO2. 4) The best climate models we have now suggest relatively major and destabilizing increases in mean global surface temperature over the next 100 years.

Not content to trust the findings and recommendations of the IPCC, President Bush sought out the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to review the IPCCs assessment report and summarize the validity of its findings.23 While the NAS reported on many facets of the IPCC report, their general conclusion was that greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earths atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures to rise24 and the IPCCs conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community.25 The NAS even went so far as to say that because the IPCC limited

23

Committee on the Science of Climate Change, National Research Council, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, 2001, http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10139.html , 27. 24 Ibid., 1 25 Ibid., 3.

15 its projections to only the next 100 years, it may well underestimate the magnitude of the eventual impacts (italics mine).26 Though I searched extensively, I was not able to locate a single peer reviewed scientific article that contradicted this consensus. Nevertheless, I shall entertain a review of some of the challenges to this consensus from political skeptics for the sake of balance. The most common challenge to the theory of global warming is that conclusive evidence that the earth is warming does not exist because some satellite data has recorded decreasing global temperature since 1979. But as Dr. Kevin Trenberth, Head of Climate Analysis at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado states, the data used to support this claim comes from a spurious conglomeration of data segments, garnered from eight separate satellites. Dr. Trenberth also notes that there is a more reliable satellite record that, consistent with other data, does in fact show rising global temperatures over the same period.27 Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Ross Gelbspan recently addressed the same point of contention in a preface he wrote analyzing the latest findings of climate science. His explanation of the confusion surrounding the satellite record and his description of where the debate is at currently bears full repetition: The very few independent scientists who still question whether global warming is caused by human activity focus on discrepancies between satellite temperature readings in the upper levels of the atmosphere and on the ground. But those discrepancies were eliminated several years ago when researchers discovered the satellite temperature readings were incorrect because scientists had failed to accommodate a natural decay in the orbits of satellites. When that decay was

26

Ibid., 20 Dr. Kevin Trenberth, Global Warming: Its Happening, Dec. 4, 1997, http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-09/ns_ket.html
27

16 factored in, the satellite readings snapped into focus with the ground measurements.28 Another recent controversy has centered around the famous hockey stick graph shown here and included in the IPCCs 3rd Assessment Report in 2001:

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The graph, developed by University of Massachusetts geoscientist Michael Mann purports to show that current average temperature in the Northern Hemisphere is at its highest level since the year 1000. The dramatic rise in temperature, which it shows beginning with the industrial period, coincides nearly exactly with the measured increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations over the same period. The shape formed by the sharp mean temperature rise shown to have occurred beginning around 1900 gives the graph its apt name. However, as reported by the Wall Street Journal30 two Canadians - Stephen McIntyre, a Toronto minerals consultant and amateur mathematician,31 and Ross McKitrick, an economics professor at Canadas University of Guelph, recently published a
28

Motavalli, Jim, ed., Feeling the Heat: Dispatches From the Frontlines of Climate Change (New York: Routledge, 2004), v- vi. 29 Graph taken from Dr. Richard Muller, Global warming bombshell- hockey-stick plot used modified data, http://www.newsweekly.com.au/articles/2004nov20_c.html 30 Wall Street Journal Online, Hockey Stick on Ice: Politicizing the science of global warming, http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006314 31 Description found in Hockey Stick, Ibid.

17 joint critique of the mathematical methods that Prof. Mann used to create the hockey-stick graph. Essentially, they assert that Mann used a mathematical technique involving principal component analysis (PCA) that selects for the hockey-stick shape whenever any data set is graphically constructed. Further, they argue that Mann selected only data sets that would make the graph look flat up until recent times, omitting the medieval warm period so as to increase the visual discrepancy between past temperatures and those of today. While this critique has received much press attention, few accounts have included mention of the clarifying response released by Manns colleagues. It reads in part; even if one were to include all the significant PCs, you get the same answer. If you dont use any PCA at all, you get the same answer. If you use a completely different methodology, you get basically the same answer32 (italics mine). Indeed, a graph shown on Wikipedia plots a comparison of ten separate, independently published accounts of mean temperature change during the last 2000 years. The graph does in fact show more of a pronounced medeival warm period and little ice age, but the anamolous rise in temperature since the pre-industrial period clearly still appears. Essentially, it still looks like a hockey stick, only with an even bigger blade (albeit with a bit of a kink in the middle of its shaft).

32

Gavin Schmidt and Caspar Amman, Dummies guide to the latest Hockey Stick controversy, RealCLIMATE, http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=121

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33

Recent findings published since the 2001 IPPC and NAS reports give even greater weight to the mass of evidence attributing recent anomalous global warming to human activity. In 2004 the UN World Meteorological Association published its Statement on the Status of the Global Climate, concluding that 2004 was the fourth warmest year in the temperature record since 1861 and that the five warmest years on that record were, in decreasing order, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2001.34 In addition, their accumulated and verified temperature readings indicate that the rate of temperature increase since 1976 has been approximately three times higher than the average of the last one hundred years.35 Merely a month before that UNWMO data was released, dramatic findings were also released in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA). The ACIA is a multi-year, comprehensively researched, fully referenced, and independently reviewed evaluation of arctic climate change,36 compiled by over three hundred scientists. It is a project of the

33

*image used under GFDL license http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png 34 World Meteorological Organization Statement on the Status of the Global Climate in 2004, http://www.wmo.ch/web/wcp/wcdmp/statement/html/983_E.pdf, 4. 35 Ibid., 4. 36 Statement by Dr. Robert W. Corell, Chair, Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate, November 16, 2004,

19 International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), a non-governmental organization whose membership consists of eight countries including the United States. The mission of the ACIA is to evaluate and synthesize knowledge on climate variability, climate change, and increased ultraviolet radiation and their consequences.37 Its principal finding was startling: the Arctic is warming at a rate nearly twice that of the rest of the world.38 While it also confirmed the IPCC finding that large portions of Arctic sea-ice are 40% thinner than in 1970, the biggest surprise was the disclosure that one of its climate models pointed to a new possibility; the near complete disappearance of arctic summer sea ice by 2100.39 However, that estimate is at the far end of their projections, while the five model average suggests a more probable decline in summer sea ice of about 50% by 2100. These projections are visually represented below.

40

This past January the International Climate Change Taskforce, co-chaired by British Member of Parliament Stephen Byers and Republican US Senator Olympia Snowe,
37 38

Description of mission found on ACIA homepage, http://www.acia.uaf.edu Susan Joy Hassol and others, Arctic Climate Impact Assessment; Impacts of a Warming Arctic, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 10. 39 Ibid., 36. 40 Ibid., 30

20 also expanded upon the 2001 IPCC report. Responding to the IPCCs challenge to develop a threshold indicating the point at which dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system41 will be reached, the taskforce recommended that a long-term objective be established to prevent global average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F) above the pre-industrial level, to limit the extent and magnitude of climate change impacts.42 This decision was reached after extensive review of relevant scientific literature led the taskforce to conclude that a 3.6 degree Fahrenheit increase is the threshold of temperature increase above which the extent and magnitude of the impacts of climate change increase sharply.43 While the authors of the Recommendations freely admit that climate science has not yet advanced to the point where it can confidently predict a resultant increase in temperature given a specific level of greenhouse gas concentrations, they nevertheless analyzed the best comparative data available regarding carbon dioxide increases since 1750, while also taking into account all other influences on warming and cooling projected for 2100, including other GHGs. After so doing they concluded that in order to avert a rise in temperature greater than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit we must take immediate steps to ensure that atmospheric CO2 concentrations do not rise above 400 parts per million. For perspective, atmospheric CO2 concentrations currently stand at 381 ppm, and are rising at a rate of 2 ppm per year. If such a trend continues, we would arrive at the climate crisis point by 2015.44
41 42

IPCC 3rd Assessment Report Meeting the Climate Challenge: Recommendations of the International Climate Change Taskforce, January, 2005, http://www.tai.org.au/Publications_Files/Papers&Sub_Files/Meeting%20the%20Climate %20Challenge%20FV.pdf , ix. 43 Ibid., 3 44 The term climate crisis point was used by author Bill McKibben in a recent piece that appeared in Grist magazine. Direct repetition of part of that piece bears inclusion here, especially because of the insight it provides as to the comparative significance of this new recommendation. McKibben writes, That 400 ppm

21

While the scientific evidence reviewed up to this point represents an overwhelming likelihood of human-induced climate change as scientific reality, perhaps the greatest evidence yet contributed comes from two pieces of research first reported in the April 2001 issue of Science,45 and recently updated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in February 2005 at the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences annual meeting.46 The first relevant study was led by Sydney Levitus of the National Oceanographic Data Center/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In it, findings indicate that Levitus was able to accurately predict oceanic temperature increases using modeling techniques based on knowledge of man-made emissions levels. Levitus summarized his findings by saying, "I believe our results represent the strongest evidence to date that the Earth's climate system is responding to human-induced forcing.47 Building on that research, the lead author of the recent Scripps study, Tim Barnett, examined over seven million readings of temperature, salinity, and other variables measured from the worlds oceans by the US NOAA. Barnett then used computer models to simulate predicted increases in ocean temperature based on a variety of models, some of which included changes in solar activity and volcanic eruptions- two of the natural processes frequently posited as possible explanations for increased ocean and surface temperature
number is very low; previously, most crisis scenarios focused on 550 ppm, which would represent a doubling of pre-Industrial Revolution carbon concentrations. It's as if the American Medical Association suddenly announced that you needed your cholesterol down below 100 or your heart was going to go. Bill McKibben, Changing the Climate Change Climate, Grist Dispatch, January 25, 2005, http://www.grist.org/comments/dispatches/2005/01/25/mckibben/ 45 Sydney Levitus, Anthropogenic Warmings Oceanic Signature, Science, 292, no.5515 (2001) 157-384. 46 Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Scripps Researchers Find Clear Evidence of Human-Produced Warming in World's Oceans, http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/article_detail.cfm?article_num=666 47 Science Daily Online, Human-Induced Greenhouse Warming Pumps Heat Into Oceans, Two Science Studies Report http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/04/010413081057.htm

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by critics. However, the only model that came even close to predicting the real changes in oceanic temperature that actually occurred were those based on man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. The warming signal indicated by the models based on man-made warming corresponded with the findings from the real measurements obtained at sea over 95% of the time. Barnet concluded, it shows we can successfully simulate its (oceanic temperatures) past and likely future evolution. The statistical significance of these results is far too strong to be merely dismissed the debate about whether there is a global warming signal now is over, at least for rational people the models got it right.48 Barnett also challenged politically driven skeptics stating, If a politician stands up and says the uncertainty is too great to believe these models, that is no longer tenable.49 This ultimatum comes in response to those who have recently challenged the scientific consensus around global warming. For instance, conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation have based their arguments against taking action on global warming on the assertion that the science isnt certain.50 Here, Heritage is technically correct, but the spirit of what they are saying is very misleading.51 Essentially, the problem comes down to one of semantics.
48 49

Scripps, Clear Evidence of Human Produced Warming Mark Henderson, New proof that man has caused global warming, Times Newspapers, February 18, 2005, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,13-1489955-3,00.html 50 For instance, the Heritage Foundation writes, Large uncertainties remain in predicting future climate changes, their impact, and their causes. Charlie E. Coon, Why President Bush Is Right to Abandon the Kyoto Protocol, The Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/BG1437.cfm . The 51 Furthermore, Republican skepticism of climate science is very disingenuous and appears to be driven much more by a fear of what might happen if they concede that the science is accurate than whether or not the science is in fact accurate. As Republican pollster Frank Luntz surreptitiously writes in an internal Republican memo regarding Republican framing of environmental issues, while the scientific debate is closing against us, Republicans should still continue to assert that the scientific debate remains open. While believing the real scientific debate to be nearly closed, Luntz nevertheless counsels Republicans in the same memo that you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate. Frank Luntz, The Environment: A Cleaner, Safer,

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Anyone familiar with academic research and empirical approaches in general knows that no research is ever certain. Indeed, all current scientific research is only the best we have at the present moment in time and is always subject to further inquiry. In light of this understanding I would suggest that conservative critics are taking advantage of the general publics ignorance of the scientific term, certainty, and how it relates to the ideas of laws, theories and hypotheses. While popularly used in such a way as to convey oh thats just what you think, the term theory as it relates to science actually connotes an explanation of phenomena based upon hypotheses that have been independently verified multiple times. In short, it connotes a strong standard of evidence. Thus, since we can never be truly certain about the theory of global warming, we should switch the focus of the current debate away from saying it is just a theory and recognize that theory status is actually incredibly impressive once achieved. To the surprise of many critics, Naomi Oreskes recently reported that the idea of human induced global warming has, for all intents and purposes, already succeeded in achieving theory status. In an essay52 that appeared in the international journal Science last December, Oreskes presented findings based on her content analysis of the abstracts of 928 peer-reviewed articles published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003 which contained the phrase global climate change. Of those 928 articles, not a single article disagreed that anthropogenic climate change is occurring.53
Healthier America, The Luntz Research Companies- Straight Talk, http://www.ewg.org/briefings/luntzmemo/pdf/LuntzResearch_environment.pdf 137-138 52 Naomi Oreskes, The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, Science, 306, no.1126 (2004) 1686. 53 Oreskes describes her methodology as follows; The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Naomi Oreskes, Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, 1686.

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Global warming is certainly not a scientific law, but as an exceedingly complex natural process which could only ever hope to achieve the status of scientific theory, it is very near the pinnacle of its potential categorical status. Other scientific theories include evolution and relativity - would we be likely to call the science supporting those theories unsound or uncertain? So yes, critics are correct to assert that uncertainty exists in climate science. However, that is not newsworthy, it is merely common sense. What is newsworthy is that the best, peer reviewed science that we currently have is predicting global mean temperature increases as large as 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century. Does that mean that this prediction will turn out to be true? We have no way of knowing for sure. But we also have no way of knowing what consumer spending will be like next year. Yet the Federal Reserve still adjusts interest rates based on the best predictions of economists (whose predictions in recent years have not been nearly as accurate as those of climate scientists). Shouldnt we apply the similar standard of best available evidence to an issue as important and far reaching as the stability of our climate? Of course we should continue to test the science of climate change and try to improve upon it so as to be able to better understand natural processes and the effect that humans have on them as critics continue to advocate. Indeed, continuing such research is the highest responsibility of climate scientists. However, that does not mean that the responsible course of action for policy makers in the meantime is to avoid precautionary action that could prevent the worst predicted impacts of climate change. To the contrary, it is their highest responsibility to respond with policy measures informed and driven by the best science presently available. While such a standard may

25

not be perfect, it is the best at our disposal if we are to agree that science can never be certain.54 Thus, for now all we can do, and what we must do, is respond to what that standard indicates: man-made global warming is real, our waiting period is over, and the time for action is now. This action is required not in spite of scientific uncertainty, but precisely because of it. Being that we are tampering with a global process that is infinitely complex (the resulting destabilization of which could result in multiple problems that we have yet to anticipate and can now only dream about), precautionary action is all the more defensible and incumbent. Indeed, it is the very uncertainty that demands the immediate consideration and active implementation of policy responses from our political leaders because the potential dangers are so grave.

54

The best articulation of this idea that I found was written by Peter Gleick, President to the Pacific Institute, an independent think tank based in Oakland, CA. He writes, There are plenty of scientific uncertainties around climate change, as all good climate scientists readily acknowledge (sometimes to the frustration of media, the public, and policymakers). The climate, as one of the most complex geophysical features of our planet should and will engender legitimate scientific debate and research for decades to come. But this ongoing dispute about the details of impacts, the costs and benefits of mitigation and adaptation policies, and appropriate national and international policy should not be used to obfuscate the overwhelming consensus that exists among climate scientists. Climate change caused by human activities is real, is already underway, and poses an unprecedented threat to human health and well-being. Peter H. Gleick, Political Science: The Rise of Junk Science and the Fall of Reason An ENN Commentary, Environmental News Network, February 10, 2005, http://www.enn.com/today_PF.html?id=7110

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Chapter 2: A Brief History of the The Environment as an Issue on the National Political Agenda: How Low Can it Go?

Introduction: Before delving into the question of what issue priority is now given to climate destabilization and whether it is likely to be addressed sufficiently on a policy level anytime soon, it is appropriate to first examine the historical trends associated with the issues-set within which it is most commonly confined: that of environmental issues. With an awareness of the changes over time to the prioritization of this larger issue category, we can better understand the current, confining, paradigm within which consideration of any

27

environmental issue,55 including global warming, operates. Further, only by looking at the historical trends that reveal the comparatively low priority of the the environment as a national political issue today can we gain a proper appreciation for the myriad of complex problems hindering the advancement of climate destabilization as a national political priority in its own right.56

A Look Back at the Factors Motivating Policy Responses to Environmental Concerns in the 1970s In the 1960s and early 1970s environmental issues began to make their way to the top-tier of the national political agenda. With the release of Silent Spring57 in 1962, Rachel Carson provided many Americans (and American policy makers) with a sobering first look at the worrisome impacts that pesticide use, particularly DDT, have on our ecosystems. Many Americans, after reading her book or hearing of its contents, began to contemplate the very real possibility of springtimes absent songbirds. In the wake of Silent Spring,

55

As I will re-establish later, I do not list climate destabilization as an environmental issue because I think that it is an issue which inherently belongs in the environment category. To the contrary, I actually think of climate destabilization as much more of a human rights, foreign policy, and health issue than environmental issue. However, analysis of media reports and political issue statements that will be referenced later all show that global warming is nearly always talked about primarily as an environmental issue. 56 Support for conducting a historical overview of a social problem before examining the feasibility of advancing it on the issue agenda is provided by Sheldon Ungar who writes, Social problemsmust be sold, and the success or failure of such endeavors cannot be adequately understood by examining claims making activities independent of the specific history and properties that have accrued to a social problem. Sheldon Ungar, Bringing the Issue Back In: Comparing the Marketability of the Ozone Hole and Global Warming, Social Problems 45, no.4 (November 1998): 510-527. 57 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962)

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many (in)famous events of the late 1960s further concentrated American attention on the need to address environmental issues through national policy measures. In a history of the development of the modern environmental movement Phillip Shabecoff outlines a series of events and situations that further helped environmental concerns move up the national policy agenda following the publication of Silent Spring.58 He lists the oil spill in Santa Barbara, California of 1969, the ignition of the petroleum-laden Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, also in 1969, the envelopment of many American cities (most notoriously Los Angeles) in harmful smog, and the public disclosures of Lake Eries extensive phosphate pollution and the toxic PCB pollution of the Hudson and Housatonic Rivers, all occurring at around the same time, as a series of events that served to concentrate public attention on the environment.59 Perhaps not coincidentally, the National Environmental Policy Act was passed in 1969, establishing for the first time a national policy for the environment. Bearing these events, and the climate of environmental concern that they contributed to in mind, it is clear that the onset of the 1970s was a ripe time to address water and air pollution issues in particular, and environmental concerns more generally, through concurrent national legislative action. Indeed, only three months after the first Earth Day was held on April 22nd, 1970 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was formed. Five months later, in December of 1970, the Clean Air Act was signed into law by President Nixon, requiring the newly formed EPA to set national ambient air quality standards so as to provide an adequate margin of safety for protection of public health from
58 59

Phillip Shabecoff, A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement (New York: Harper Collins, 1993) Ibid., 111.

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any known or anticipated adverse effects associated with six major pollutants. Following that legislation, the Clean Water Act was passed into law in 1972, setting deadlines for the elimination of pollution discharge into navigable waters and making the goal of fishable and swimmable waters official and enforceable national policy.60 Daniel Mazmanian and Michael Kraft offer a list, and analysis, of other legislative actions taken during the 1970s in their work The Three Epochs of the Environmental Movement61. These included the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (better known as Superfund). Together, this set of laws would come to represent the most comprehensive and far reaching set of environmental policies ever undertaken in United States political history, either before the decade of the1970s or during any decade thereafter. Drawing from the writings of Riley E. Dunlap62 and Christopher J. Bosso63, respectively, Mazmanian and Kraft concluded that during this period of widespread environmental awareness and policy response, (which they refer to as the first environmental epoch,)

60

Michael E. Kraft and Daniel Mazmanian, ed.s, The Three Epochs of the Environmental Movement in Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformation in Environmental Policy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999) 61 Kraft and Mazmanian, Three Epochs, 21. 62 Riley E. Dunlap, Public Opinion and Environmental Policy in Environmental Politics and Policy: Theories and Evidence, 2nd ed., ed. James P. Lester (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 63-114. 63 Christopher J. Bosso, Facing the Future: Environmentalists and the New Political Landscape in Environmental Policy, ed.s Norman J. Vig and Michael. E Kraft (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press), 55-76.

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a consensus emerged among scientists, technicians, policy makers, and the public that the issues of pollution and environmental degradation were severe and should be addressed as a top national priority64 (italics mine). However, the consensus did not last long.

The 1980s: The Beginning of the Decline of Environmental Issues on the National Policy Agenda. Sometime around the early 1980s, the federal approach to environmental policy began to change in focus and in method of response as environmental issues began to recede from the forefront of the national political agenda. Mazmanian and Kraft refer to this as the beginning of second environmental epoch, a period wherein there occurred a dissolution of faith in governments ability to use regulation as a means to remedy environmental problems at all and/or in a way that could effectively balance other social and economic interests. Thus, they describe this second epoch, as being marked by the drive for efficiency and flexibility in the regulatory apparatus created in the first epoch65. The national legislation that most successfully highlights this approach might be found in the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 which established a national market, complete with tradeable pollution credits for Sulfur Dioxide, that successfully utilized market incentives in order to reduce pollution.

The Present: The Death of Environmentalism?

64 65

Kraft and Mazmanian, The Three Epochs, 14. Ibid., 9.

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Judging from the historical record, I believe Mazmanian and Krafts descriptions of the first two environmental epochs (stretching from 1970-1990) to be generally apt and accurate. Indeed, the descriptions they provide of each epochs key traits are grounded in at least some observable evidence of 1) policy makers who (at least tacitly) agreed with opinion leaders on the identification and construction of what the environmental problem(s) then at hand were, and 2) national policy solutions whose methods of response closely mirrored what opinion leaders saw as the appropriate mechanism for dealing with the problem at the time (regulation in the 70s, more flexible and market based approaches in the 80s and 90s). In contrast to the apt nature of their first two environmental epochs as descriptive and accurate categories of real events, Mazmanian and Krafts description of a so-called third environmental epoch would be better understood as an outline for what they hope might happen in the future rather than as any kind of descriptive, evidentiary based reflection of real trends now occurring. Writing in 1999, they described this third epoch, which they say replaced the second and began in 1990 (and is supposed to be occurring at present), as a period marked by considerations of sustainable development and when concerns for the natural environment will play a far more pronounced role than during other periods in American history.66 Granted, while there is extensive support for a claim that the environmental literature and the environmental movement has begun to focus intently on the idea and the goals of sustainable development (and sincerely hopes for such a sustainability-focused

66

Ibid., 8.

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future), there is little real-world evidence, at least in the form of responsive federal legislation, to show that such a sustainability epoch ever really began for national policy makers and/or that such an epoch now exists outside of the dreams of environmentalists. While there are certainly counter-examples, especially at the local community level, the dominant feature of American societys current regard for environmental issues and the national environmental policy atmosphere that surrounds such issues would be much more accurately described as having a focus on (unsustainable) economic efficiency at any cost than as having any real and visible focus on sustainable development. Indeed while Mazmanian and Kraft list the third epochs characteristics as, bringing into harmony human and natural systems; halt(ing) dimunition of biodiversity; embrac(ing) an eco-centric ethic; and as a time of comprehensive future visioning67, such descriptions conflict so much with the actual state of the dominant environmental policy paradigm of today that they almost lead one to consider them fiction writers rather than expert analysts of policy and historical trends associated with environmental concerns. Thus I believe we must move beyond their epoch model if we are to gain an accurate understanding of the true state of the environment as a current issue on the national political agenda today. Ironically, as Shellenberger and Nordhaus write, the truth may be that the lack of issue priority currently given to the environment might actually be the direct result of the environmental movement still being stuck in the thinking of the first environmental epoch. They write;
67

Ibid., 10-13

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The three-part strategic framework for environmental policy making hasnt changed in 40 years: first, define a problem (e.g. global warming) as environmental. Second, craft a technical remedy (e.g. cap-and-trade). Third, sell the technical proposal to legislators through a variety of tactics, such as lobbying, third-party allies, research reports, advertising, and public relations.68 Such a stale strategy for confronting environmental issues has not paid off. Indeed, later in their paper Shellenberger and Nordhaus relay polling results indicative of the general publics declining opinion of environmental groups. In a poll asking whether most of the people actively involved in environmental groups are extremists, not reasonable people, 32% of respondents agreed in 1996. By 2000 the number who agreed had increased to 41%.69 But while such polling may suggest a decline in the credibility and effectiveness of leading environmental groups, such skepticism has not, as of yet, translated into a loss of support for the environmental movement as a whole. Indeed, in a 2003 Gallup poll, 61% of respondents characterized their support of the environmental movement as either an active participant or sympathetic but not active (14% and 47% respectively). 32% were neutral and a mere 6% were unsympathetic to the movement. Such numbers suggest that support for the environmental movement as a whole is currently very wide but not very deep. 70 Practically then, nearly everyone supports a clean and safe environment but the environment as an issue is no longer a top priority for many voters as it was in the 1970s. Surely, such environmental concern has not been strong enough to prevent the re-election of the worst environmental president in the history of the United States.71
68 69

Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, The Death of Environmentalism, http://www.thebreakthrough.org/images/Death_of_Environmentalism.pdf Ibid., 11. 70 Ibid., 11 71 This title has been bestowed on President Bush by many, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Al Gore, and Joseph Lieberman.

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The Environment and Global Warming in the 2004 Presidential Campaign: Even if the issue priority given to the environment by a certain subset of voters has increased, the attention given to the environment by leading politicians has declined dramatically in recent years. To support this claim I have used various measures to gauge the issue importance assigned to the environment by the major party nominees for president in the 2004 presidential campaign. What follows is a brief review of my content analysis of the presidential debates and the nominating convention speeches of both major party nominees. Although an imperfect measure, I would argue that identifying the presence of the environment in the latest presidential campaign is the most obvious and direct way to measure the issues priority (or lack thereof) on the national political agenda today.

The Debates

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My comparison of the last two presidential campaigns reveals that the environment72 has declined as an issue of prominence on the national political stage, (as measured by debate time devoted)73 in the past four years. During more than four hours of televised presidential debate in 2000, the environment was a topic of discussion for 15 minutes.74 While that may seem like a small amount of time, it compares to a mere four and a half minutes devoted to the environment during the four and a half hours of nationally televised presidential debate in 2004. In fact, the environment took up less than 2% of debate time during the 2004 presidential debates.75 Global warming itself was only discussed for one minute- 30 seconds by each candidate. The extent of Kerrys remarks on global warming were, They pulled out of the global warming, declared it dead, didnt even accept the science. Im going to be a president who believes in science. This is hardly a statement that articulates either the threat of climate change or any substantive policy proposal for how it should be remedied. And while Bush never used the term global warming he did respond by saying, well, had we joined the Kyoto treaty, which I guess hes referring to, it would have cost America a lot of jobs. This argument is consistent with the dominant frame presented by US media and conservative think tanks, as will be covered in Chapter 3.

72

Any and all environmental issues listed on the DNC and RNC websites served as my criteria for identifying when an environmental issue was discussed in the 2004 debate. I do not know what criteria Mencimer used in arriving at her 15 minute figure. 73 Granted, candidates themselves do not choose which questions are asked so using debate time devoted to an issue as a measure for how much a politician is concerned about an issue is not wholly fair. However, neither candidate steered comments toward discussion of global warming in question responses that were related and neither candidate addressed the issue in opening or closing remarks. 74 Stephanie Mencimer, Weather tis Nobler in the Mind, Washington Monthly, July/August 2002. 75 Text of all three presidential debates was taken from, Commission on Presidential Debates, http://www.debates.org/pages/debtrans.html

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Nominating Convention Speeches: Accepting the Republican Partys nomination for President last September, President George W. Bush delivered an address of over 5,000 words.76 He did not bother to mention the words global warming, climate change, and/or greenhouse gases once in that entire, nationally televised speech. More alarming, he did not devote a single sentence to any environmental issue facing the country in that speech.77 In contrast, John Kerry devoted a full four sentences (55 words) to the environment in his convention speech, which, like Bushs was also approximately 5000 words in length. Like the debates, those 55 words represent a devotion of one percent of the full text to the environment.78 Further, not once did Kerry use the term global warming, climate change, and/or greenhouse gases in this the speech which was to lay out his vision for America in the next four years.

Preliminary Conclusions:

76 77

The text of his nomination speech can be found here, White House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/09/print/20040902-2.html Again, I operationalized environmental issue by including any and all environmental issues as defined by the RNC and DNC websites. 78 The four sentences were as follows; 1) It was the beginning of a great journey, a time to march for civil rights, for voting rights, for the environment, for women, for peace. 2) She (his mother) gave me her passion for the environment. She taught me to see trees as the cathedrals of nature. 3) I will have a vice president who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. And 4) What does it mean when 25% of the children in Harlem have asthma because of air pollution? The full text of his speech can be found here, Washington Post Online, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/articles/A25678-2004Jul29.html

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Humanity faces an issue that some are saying could potentially threaten our very survival. Yet a review of the most watched and heard statements from the Presidential candidates in the latest presidential campaign indicates that there is little to no issue presence for climate change on the national political agenda. Further, there is strong evidence that the environment in general has declined as a national legislative priority- to the point where it is nearly absent from the major national issue agenda.79 More specifically, climate change suffers from at least two inherent problems that hinder its advancement on the national political agenda. First, it is most frequently categorized as an environmental issue. Second, it is seen as a global problem, not necessarily under the purview of the US federal government. Being categorized as an environmental issue, also means that climate change is susceptible to the same problems facing all other environmental issues fighting for attention from the US government; general deprioritization relative to other social problems since the 1970s.80 Further, and related to it being both an environmental and a global problem, climate change suffers from what economists would call the public good dilemma. With countries acting as individual actors, there is no incentive for any one to undertake potentially costly reforms to their emissions practices, even if they know that without such reforms the world could be worse off for all of humanity.81 Thus, why should John Kerry (or anyone else for that matter) risk political capital to focus on the issue?
79

One would expect an issue of major status in the US to be covered substantively in at least one of the three presidential debates and or the nominating convention speeches of each major party nominee. 80 I examine the differences between the issue priority of the environment during the 1970s and that of its priority today in Chapter 2. 81 This exact problem has hindered the Kyoto negotiations, with the US and Australia essentially free-riding on any global benefits the Kyoto protocol, just enacted without them on February 16, 2005, might produce. While the EU, Russia, and Japan, among others, have committed themselves to achieving emissions levels below that of 1990 levels by 2012 we have instead refused to sign on to the protocol, essentially saying, Why should we clean up if developing countries

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Having established 1) the necessity of addressing global warming through precautionary policy measures, 2) the general decline of the environment as a national priority since the 1970s and 3) the near total lack of mention of the environment and/or global warming during the latest presidential campaign, let us now review the status of global warming as a social problem generally, as measured by a content analysis of leading media outlets and their coverage of the issue.

dont have to?

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Chapter 3: Climate Destabilizations Place on the Social Problems Agenda: A Look at the Dominant Framing Constructs Utilized by Media and Prominent Think Tanks in the US

Having gained an appreciation for the current scientific consensus on human induced global climate change (and the uncertain yet dangerous repercussions it portends) and with an understanding of the past and present place of the environment on the social problems issue agenda, the question naturally arises; what is the current status of global warming on that agenda?

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A significant amount of past research has responded to this question by analyzing the content of news coverage82838485 and/or think tank86 documents. Mainly, this past work has attempted to analyze the development of global warming as a social problem from a sociological perspective with regard to Downs issue attention cycle87 as well as Hilgartner and Bosks public arenas model.88 Downs issue attention cycle consists of five stages; 1) the pre-problem stage, 2) alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm, 3) the cost of significant progress, 4) gradual decline of intense public interest, and 5) the post problem stage.89 Recent research suggests that while global warming has passed through these stages, such a model is not sufficient to understand the obstacles facing global warming on its way to becoming a higher issue priority.90 In particular, because of a concerted response by the conservative movement to assert the non-problematicity91 of global warming, the issue has effectively been pushed back to the very beginning of the issue cycle. This trend can be witnessed in the content of both policy think tanks and the US media in general.
82 83

Moti Nissani, Media Coverage of the Greenhouse Effect, Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 21 (1999) 27-43. Craig Trumbo, Constructing climate change: claims and frames in US news coverage of an environmental issue, Public Understanding of Science, 5 (1996) 269-283. 84 Jerry Williams and R Scott Frey, The Changing Status of Global Warming as a Social Problem: Competing Factors in Two Public Arenas, Research in Community Sociology, 7 (1997) 279-299. 85 Sheldon Ungar, Bringing the Issue Back in: Comparing the Marketability of the Ozone Hole and Global Warming, Social Problems, 45, no.4 (November, 1998) 86 Aaron M. McCright and Riley E. Dunlap, Challenging Global Warming as a Social Problem: An Analysis of the Conservative Movements Counter-Claims, Social Problems, 47, no.4 (Nov. 2000), 499-522. 87 Anthony Downs, Up and Down With Ecology: The Issue Attention Cycle, The Public Interest, 28 (1972) 38-50. 88 Stephen Hilgartner and Charles L. Bosk, The rise and fall of Social Problems: A public arenas model. American Journal of Sociology, 94 (1988) 53-78. 89 Downs, Issue Attention Cycle., 1-2. 90 McCright and Dunlap, Challenging Global Warming, 501. 91 William R. Freudenberg, Social constructions and social constrictions: Toward analyzing the social construction of the naturalized as well as the natural, Environment and Global Modernity, Gert Spaargaren, Arthur P.J. Mol, and Frederick H. Buttel, eds (London: Sage, 2000) 103-119, quoted in McCright and Dunlap, Challenging Global Warming, 501.

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Think Tanks: To illustrate this trend, Aaron McCright and Riley Dunlap conducted a content analysis of the counter-claims made by the conservative movement as disseminated through documents released by prominent conservative think tanks from 1990-1997. Their results exposed a discernable frame guiding conservative counter claims, with nearly all documents propagating one of the following arguments; 1) the evidentiary basis for climate change is weak, if not entirely wrong, 2) if it does occur global warming will result in substantial benefits, and 3) any proposed action to mitigate climate change would do more harm than good.92 The first and third arguments occurred with the greatest frequency, appearing in 71% and 62%, respectively, of all conservative think tank documents containing the terms global warming, greenhouse effect, and/or climate change. The argument with regard to the potential benefits of global warming was decidedly less prevalent, although by appearing in 13% of documents it represented the third most utilized conservative argument in attempting to deconstruct the problematicity of climate change.93 Recently, hypotheses with regard to the framing contrasts between conservatives and liberals have been advanced by linguist George Lakoff.94 Seeking to apply Lakoffs comparative framing approach to the global warming debate, I began a search of documents that I thought would provide an accurate representation of the two sides conservative and liberal that could build off of McCright
92 93

Ibid., 510. Ibid., 510. 94 George Lakoff, Moral Politics: How Conservatives and Liberals Think, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002) and George Lakoff, Dont Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (White River Junction, VT: 2004)

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and Dunlaps research. Like those authors did, I decided to analyze policy think tank documents (though I intended to use them as substitutes for each side of the political debate instead of as representative of one movement). Prior to analyzing the content of liberal95 think tank work on climate change I expected their documents to identify climate change as a valid problem in need of an immediate solution.96 Before analyzing the content of conservative97 think tank work, I expected their documents, in accordance with McCright and Dunlaps findings, to focus mainly on identifying climate change as a scientifically unsound theory not worthy of the publics attention.98 Complicating this research design, and unbeknownst to me prior to commencing my content search, is the reality that think tanks do not necessarily offer good representations of the policy positions taken by politicians at the forefront of national party politics (and thus, are not good stand ins for analysis of national framing conflicts between liberals and conservatives).99
95

The liberal think tanks I looked at were the Center for American Progress (http://www.americanprogress.org ) and the Brookings Institution ( http://www.brookings.edu ) 96 While I was not aware of the relative lack of truly liberal think tanks at the outset of my research, my hypothesis was correct to the extent that the Center for American Progress has indeed called for immediate action to address anthropogenic climate change. See for instance John Podesta, One Day After Kyoto, Center for American Progress, February 17, 2005, http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=387633 . Further, Brookings has also called for immediate action, though they favor relatively moderate actions as compared to the CAP. See for example, David Sandalow, The Years After Tomorrow, The Brookings Institution, July 5, 2004, http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/fellows/sandalow20040705.htm 97 The conservative think tanks I looked at were the Heritage Foundation ( http://www.heritage.org ), the Cato Institute (http://www.cato.org ), and the American Enterprise Institute ( http://www.aei.org ) 98 Indeed, a version of this hypothesis did bear fruit. While Heritage, Cato, and AEI did not overtly say that the issue was not worthy of public attention, each of them had some kind of combination of the following two positions; 1) that the science of climate change is uncertain and/or 2) that any efforts to combat climate change will be too costly. These findings reflect exactly, and reinforce, those of McCright and Dunlap. 99 Certainly, there is an overt focus on framing in conservative think tanks. However, since liberal framing either 1) doesnt primarily happen in think tanks, or 2) simply occurs by default in an unorganized fashion, using think tanks to compare the frames of each side is not fully representative of what frames are really being used.

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For instance, one think tank often associated with the left is the Brookings Institution. However, this categorization has largely occurred by default because up until 2003 it was the only major think tank not to be overtly aligned with the conservative movement.100 Brookings is an independent academic organization that publishes work that could be identified all over the ideological spectrum. They even state publicly and explicitly that they do not let ideology guide their research in their Policy Statement on Non-Partisan, Independent Research.101 In short, Brookings is not guiding the policy prescriptions of the Democratic Party, nor is it pushing the Democratic Party to the far left of the ideological spectrum (the role that some think tanks on the right fill for the Republican Party). In contrast to Brookings, conservative think tanks like Cato, Heritage, and the American Enterprise Institute readily admit that they are committed ideologically.102 Cato speaks of its role as one of promoting American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and peace.103 Heritage states that its mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense104

100

If we use the standard of having at least a $10 million operating budget to qualify as major, the major policy think tanks in 2003 were Brookings ($36 million annual operating budget), the Heritage Foundation ($30 million annual operating budget), the American Enterprise Institute ($16 million in annual expenses), the Cato Institute ($15 million in annual expenses) and the Center for American Progress ($10 million projected annual operating budget). All financial figures were extracted from Alexander Bolton, Democratic Think Tank Taking Shape, The Hill, June 4, 2003, http://www.hillnews.com/news/060403/tank.aspx 101 Brookings Institution, http://www.brookings.edu/index/aboutresearch.htm 102 Granted, simply because a think tank like Brookings does not admit an ideological preference, that certainly does not qualify as proof that one does not, in reality, guide their research. However, in looking through the range of opinion and research on their site, one can readily see that Brookings is less consistently aligned with a predictable ideological framework in their research assumptions and conclusions than the three conservative think tanks I have listed. 103 Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/about/about.html 104 Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/about

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(italics mine). And AEI is dedicated to preserving and strengthening the foundations of freedom--limited government, private enterprise, vital cultural and political institutions, and a strong foreign policy and national defense.105 Reading these mission statements over, one wonders whether these three organizations were all sitting down together while drafting them. Tellingly, the conservative ideological principle of limited government is stated as a guiding principle by each of the three think tanks ad nauseam. Further, although the exact wording is not wholly consistent, each think tank references a dedication to the idea of private enterprise or free markets in some way. Granted, ideologically guided research is not a monopoly of the right. However, the only major liberal think tank that with an overtly ideological commitment currently in existence is the Center for American Progress, which was formed in 2003.106 For this reason and others, doing any kind of content analysis attempting to compare the framing of the climate change debate between policy think tanks (as stand-ins representing the mainstream conservative and liberal positions) would have been nearly impossible. Further any results would have presumably skewed the focus of the debate in the conservative direction107 - especially since no longitudinal analysis could be extracted because while Heritage, Cato, and AEI have all been in existence since at least 1977 (enabling them to publish policy

105 106

American Enterprise Institute, http://www.aei.org/about/filter.all/default.asp Center for American Progress http://www.americanprogress.org 107 Another reason that think tanks are not good stand-ins for viewpoints present in the national political establishment is that, as reported by George Lakoff, In 2002 four times as much money was spent on research by the right as by the left. Lakoff, Elephant, 16. While the Democrats have suffered electoral defeats recently, they have not been to the tune of an 80-20 margin. If money translates to framing influence in the world of think tanks and media, the prevalency of think tank positions are not good reflections of the prevalency of positions taken by national politicians (for instance, 46% of members of congress are Democrats).

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and opinion papers on the climate change debate ever since it began in the 1980s), the CAP was just founded two years ago. For these reasons I did not pursue research in this direction past the cursory search which I have described above.

The US Media: While I was concerned about getting a balanced perspective of conservative and liberal positions when analyzing think tank documents, it may be the case that balance is not necessarily indicative of the dominant frame in the publics mindset, as measured by mass media coverage of climate change. Surely, my very inability to conduct the research I had initially intended stands as evidence that the conservative frame for global warming enjoys a natural advantage in the public perception because of the lack of a think tank framing infrastructure on the left. But analysis of the dominant global warming frame in the national media also exposes a conservative bias in the reporting of global warming. For instance, in an analysis of one hundred articles published over a five month period by four different national newspapers containing the term global warming, it was found that coverage of environmental issues exhibited traits of shallowness and pro-corporate bias.108 Author Moti Nissani writes; A warning by 21 leading ecologists is cited in just one article; a major U.S. government study giving (again) the lie to the greenhouse controversy, is ignored in 99 articles and briefly (mis)reported in one; but the views of British Petroleum are reported in 12 articles!109
108 109

Moti Nissani, Media Coverage of the Greenhouse Effect, Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 21 (1999) 27 Ibid., 33.

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Interestingly, the newspapers that the articles she analyzed originated from - The Christian Science Monitor, New York Times, Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle- are all frequently accused of liberal bias. However, Nissani actually found them to be propagating one of the main (erroneous) conservative arguments identified by McCright and Dunlap in their analysis of conservative think tanks - that addressing climate change threatens our economic well being.110 Sheldon Ungar, who performed a similar content analysis, identified the exact same trend. Even though he cites readily available evidence showing that energy efficiencies created in the wake of the 1970s oil crises resulted in savings to consumers that ended up outweighing the costs, he too found a skewed public debate focusing primarily on the anticipated economic costs of combating climate change. He writes: Excepting a few op-ed articles and technical reports in specialized science and environmental journals, public discourse simply assumes that solutions to the problem will cause personal suffering, job losses, reduced international competitiveness, and possibly a recession.111 While the relative predicted costs and benefits of reducing emissions vary greatly depending on the method chosen to do so (i.e. regulation, market mechanisms, investment etc.), there is no conclusive research demonstrating that a reduction in our emissions need harm the economy. However, there is a body of research articulating how such a change could actually be one of the most promising

110 111

the overall impression is that cutting emissions will cost a fortune and threaten our economy, jobs, and way of life, Ibid., 32. Sheldon Ungar, Bringing the Issue Back in: Comparing the Marketability of the Ozone Hole and Global Warming, Social Problems, 45, no.4 (November, 1998) 520.

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ways to revitalize our economy, creating as many as three million new jobs and increasing gross domestic product (GDP) by $1.35 trillion over the next ten years.112 Aside from complex economic models, common sense also exposes the opportunities inherent to switching to a clean, non-carbon economy. The main sources of CO2 - coal, oil, gas - are all finite fossil fuel resources whose industries are declining to the point where oil companies now focus on finding new sources in our last protected wildlife refuges (the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge represents the last 5% of Alaskas North Slope not yet open to oil drilling) and where coal companies have adopted a practice of mountaintop removal113 in order to extract every last bit of coal. In addition, fossil fuel industries are inefficient when exposed to competition from the global market place and are the beneficiaries of somewhere in the range of $2.9 billion114 to $1.7 trillion115 in federal subsidies each year.116 Koplow and Martins estimate of $16.6 $37.4 billion/year in federal oil subsidies in 1998 is probably the most easily defended and least controversial

112

Estimates from, Redefining the Prospects for Sustainable Prosperity, Employment Expansion, and Environmental Quality in the US: An Assessment of the Economic Impact of the Initiatives Comprising the Apollo Project, http://www.apolloalliance.org/docUploads/Part%202%20Apollo%20Perryman%20Report %5B1%5D%2Epdf 113 US Environmental Protection Agency, http://www.epa.gov/maia/html/valley.html 114 The $2.9 billion figure is the low annual estimate of 1999 federal subsidies to all fossil fuels, as estimated by the US Energy Information Administration and quoted in Doug Koplow and John Dernbach, Federal Fossil Fuel Subsidies and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: A Case Study of Increasing Transparency for Fiscal Policy, Annu. Rev. Energy Environ. 26 (November, 2001) 363 115 The $1.7 trillion dollar figure is the high annual estimate of 1998 (converted to 1999 dollars) federal subsidies to oil, as estimated by the International Center for Technology Assessment. Koplow and Dernbach, Case Study, 363 116 The full range of federal fossil fuel subsidy estimates can be found in Koplow and Dernbach, Case Study, 363 In their analysis the authors compare ten different studies conducted since 1978 identifying the level of federal subsidies for fossil fuels.

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estimate currently available.117 Also, federal subsidies for fossil fuels, no matter the specific estimate chosen, all far exceed the amount of federal support given to the research, development, and support of clean energy technologies.118 In contrast to these dying and overly dependent industries, wind power is the fastest growing electricity resource in the world.119 It is already either cost effective, or nearly as cost effective, as fossil fuels in providing electricity.120 This status has been achieved without the availability of economies of scale and the massive subsidies that fossil fuels now benefit from. The economic, health, security, and environmental benefits that could come from an Apollo type project,121 incorporating wind as a component of a larger effort to move the US energy infrastructure to clean power has been described as follows;

117

Koplow and Martins is the only study conducted since 1993 to have had more than 10 external reviewers from a range of interests including government, environment, academia, industry, and finance. In deriving their estimate they excluded costs associated with the Persian Gulf war, state and local programs, environmental and health externalities, and general transport infrastructure. Ibid., 362. 118 If we only consider the lowest estimate for subsidies -direct appropriations- we find that the following amounts were allocated by the US congress in 1996; $422 million for fossil fuels, $227 for nuclear fusion, $252 million for nuclear fission, $400 million for nuclear waste and $273 million for all renewable energy technologies combined. Source: Public Citizen, DOE releases FY 1997 budget, March 19, 1996. Quoted in Clean Energy Backgrounder, Barriers to the Use of Renewable Energy Technologies, (1999) Union of Concerned Scientists, http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/renewable_energy/page.cfm?pageID=100 . Further Vice President Cheneys 2002 national energy policy proposal would allocate roughly $26 billion in subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear power over the next nine years while only allocating $8 billion for renewable sources and measurable efficiency over the same period. Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, Mobilizing Energy Solutions, The American Prospect, January 28, 2002 http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww? section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=6115 119 US Department of State, Washington File, Wind Power World's Fastest-Growing New Electricity Source, http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/Archive/2005/Apr/2289769.html?chanlid=washfile 120 The cost for wind power is currently between 4 and 6 cents per kilowatt hour, approaching competitiveness with hydropower at around 3 to 4 cents per kilowatt hour, coal at around 2 to 3 cents per kilowatt hour and making it already competitive with natural gas at around 5 to 6 cents per kilowatt hour. Figures provided by Robert Thresher, Director, U.S. Department of Energy National Wind Technology Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) as quoted in Ibid. 121 The Apollo project is so named to convey the scope of vision and intended transformation inherent to the project. It refers back to President Kennedys call to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.

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The programs embodied in the Apollo Project represent an opportunity to capitalize on multiple markets on the brink of phenomenal growth. Moreover, the research, technologies, products, and methods represent a unique fit in the American economy. They involve higher value-added and, hence, higher paying employment. These top-quality jobs are necessary to offset the inevitable loss of manufacturing jobs in lower technology segments and to create opportunities for a new era of expanding production capacity.122 Taking this readily available knowledge into consideration, it is all the more perplexing that the media reports Nissani and Ungar analyzed focused almost exclusively on perpetuating arguments about the costs of mitigating global warming through CO2 reductions. Granted, the Apollo proposal had yet to be developed during the time period in which each news analysis was conducted, but the principal idea on which it was based was certainly being loudly touted by many economists and environmentalists at the time.123 With these findings in mind, I concluded that think tank and media content has a discernibly conservative bias. In light of this finding, further research seemed best directed at the unanswered question of what is the issue priority of climate destabilization on the agenda of leading policy makers themselves? While think tanks and news media certainly influence decision makers and sometimes help them craft policy and legislation, the link is not always clear and is sometimes hard to establish. Essentially, a more accurate measure of the true state of issue priority that

122

Redefining the Prospects for Sustainable Prosperity, Employment Expansion, and Environmental Quality in the US: An Assessment of the Economic Impact of the Initiatives Comprising the Apollo Project, http://www.apolloalliance.org/docUploads/Part%202%20Apollo%20Perryman%20Report%5B1%5D%2Epdf , 7 123 Amory B. Lovins is one of many who have long argued for a switch to a clean energy infrastructure in the US. He published this argument, basing it solely on economic grounds, as early as 1990 - seven years before Nissanis research was conducted. Amory Lovins, Energy, People, and Industrialization. Population and Development Review, 16, (1990) 95-124.

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political leaders are giving climate destabilization - not an understanding of where policy wonks who are not directly part of the legislative process think it is- is the next step in understanding the issue priority of climate destabilization in the US.

Chapter 4: US Political Leadership on Climate Destabilization: Besides One False Hope, an Oxymoron

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During the summer of 1988 and in the midst of an unprecedented national heat wave NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen testified to Congress warning of the impacts that climate change could have on humanity. Hansens statements were the first warnings about climate change to be picked up and covered in a significant way by the US press.124 But they were also picked up and taken seriously by a young Congressman who witnessed the testimony- Al Gore. Gore himself wasnt new to the issue, indeed his previous work in Congress had actually set the stage for Hansens testimony. For not only was Gore an active member of the very subcommittee to which Hansen spoke, he was also the co-sponsor of the very first Congressional hearings held on global warming, hearings that had actually preceded Hansens testimony by eight years. In the aftermath of the Hansen hearing, Gore made the issue his personal crusade.125 When he ran for president in 1988, he became the first presidential candidate to make global warming an issue, so much so that George Bush Sr. later referred to him as ozone man.126 After losing that campaign he then returned to the Senate where, in spite of his busy schedule, he woke up at 4:00 am every morning for months in order to write his 1992 environmental call to action, Earth in the Balance.127 A Gore biographer describes global warming as the centerpiece of the book and comments that Gore was really the only one speaking about it at the time.128
124 125

Trumbo, Constructing Climate Change, 274 Alan AtKisson, Believing Cassandra: An Optimist Looks at a Pessimists World, (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 1999) 37. 126 Stephanie Mencimer, Weather tis Nobler in the Mind, Washington Monthly, July/August 2002. 127 AtKisson, Believing Cassandra, 37. 128 Bob Zelnick, interview by Steve Curwood, Living on Earth, December 20, 2002.

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Although a Senator, Gores impact on the issue of climate change reached far beyond the halls of Congress. Stephanie Mencimer writes; While researching his book, Gore took a trip to the North Pole on a nuclear submarine and realized that the U.S. Navy had 40 years' worth of data on the thickness of the Arctic ice cap. Recognizing the untapped potential in the vast and largely unused information, he brokered a deal to release it to civilian scientists, who discovered that the ice cap had thinned by 40 percent just since 1970, a story that made world headlines.129 Also in 1992, Gore served as a US delegate to the Earth Conference in Rio De Janeiro, the first international conference held to address global climate change in a direct manner. Criticizing then President Bushs token appearance, Gore said, [this issue] is about far more than hopping on a plane for a quick photo opportunity ... and then flying back with a meaningless treaty that has no commitments in it."130 Gore even took the lead in advancing action to combat global warming during a period of his Vice Presidency by signing the Kyoto protocol on behalf of the United States. But after 1997, his large-scale advocacy of innovative and sweeping solutions to global warming came to an abrupt end. It is widely said that in preparation for and in the midst of running for President the second time around, Gore pretty much muted the issue.131 It might be purely coincidental that no major political action has been taken to address global warming in the US since Gore signed Kyoto and, shortly thereafter, left the national political stage. But then again, the absence of his leadership (or any comparable
129 130

Mencimer, Weather tis Nobler Anticipation Builds for Kyoto Finale, Competitive Enterprise Institute, December 09, 1997, http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=318 131 Zelnick, Living on Earth

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leadership from another political leader) might have played a part in the decline of global warmings status as a social problem deserving of government response in the late 1990s and early 2000s. What stifled Gores period of passionate advocacy is still a topic of debate,132 but there can be little doubt that when he was leading the climate charge in the 1980s and early 1990s, he was a major factor in assuring a political response to and an elevated public recognition of climate destabilization. While it is impossible to say for sure, it is entirely plausible that the vacuum of political leadership which he left has contributed to the relative lack of priority the issue has held on the US political agenda since 1997. This raises the question, has any other politician moved to fill Gores shoes? As is exceedingly clear from the findings relayed in Chapter 1 of this thesis, the need for political leadership (and a coordinated policy response) is much greater today than in 1997 or at any other previous time, for that matter. However, while the evidence for global warming and the dangerous predicted impacts inherent to it have increased dramatically, there has not been the simultaneous appearance of a national politician, from either political party, who has attempted to move the issue to top of the US political agenda with the level of bold leadership required to do so.133
132

AtKisson writes, It is impossible to say what might have become of the environmental movement had Al Gore stayed in the Senate and pursued the role of prophetic visionary. Rachel Carson, an inspiration to Gore, demonstrated the force that one person can have if she is willing to hold fast to principle and stand up to power. An Al Gore who had chosen to remain an unshakable voice of conviction, rather than an Al Gore who compromised principle in exchange for political position, might have had more impact on the course of history. We will never know. Ibid., 41. 133 While Sen.s John McCain and Joe Lieberman have cosponsored legislation that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is a terribly modest bill in comparison to the emissions cuts that scientists are telling us need to occur. Indeed, it has been estimated that in order to simply stabilize the climate at its current temperature and avoid increases it would require an immediate worldwide cut in emissions by 70%. In contrast, the McCain Lieberman Climate Stewardship bill would only cap 2010 CO2 emissions from the US at their 2000 levels, a level that would do relatively nothing to slow the onset of climate destabilization that is currently expected.

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Understanding the priority of climate destabilization among national political leaders is important because as Gore did, politicians can help raise its issue profile in the general public134 and also because they alone have the ability to pass federal legislation and/or sign the international treaties that can combat it. While only a relatively small body135 of empirical research has focused on supporting the claim that individual political leadership can shape issue agendas (perhaps because such a contention is so uncontroversial and obvious as to seem unworthy of analysis), it is clear that individual political leadership can greatly impact the priority an issue is given. For instance, Sen.s John McCain and Russell Feingold probably played the single biggest role in bringing the issue of campaign finance reform to the front of the national political agenda in 2000 and 2001. Not only did they draw attention to the problem of unlimited soft money donations but they also effectively addressed that problem through passage of their 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA).136
134

Indeed, research by Wilkins and Patterson concluded that, climate change failed to become a hot topic in the US media during this period of time (pre-1988) because it had not yet become associated with a political symbol. L. Wilkins and P. Patterson, Science as symbol: the media chills the greenhouse effect, Risky Business: Communicating Issues of Science, Risk, and Public Policy (Westport, CT: Greenwood) 159-176 as quoted by Trumbo, Constructing climate change, 274 135 The one conclusive case study I found with regard to political leadership comes from Oregon, and focuses on the issue of migratory labor legislation. It was found that the Oregon action (passage of legislation addressing migratory labor in Oregon) was primarily the result of astute political leadership, rather than party or group activity. Donald G. Balmer, The Role of Political Leadership in the Passage of Oregons Migratory Labor Legislation, The Western Political Quarterly 15, no.1 (March, 1962): 146. 136 Evidence of Feingolds ability to shape, at least in part, the social problems agenda by his leadership comes from data collected at his listening sessions. Every year since he was first elected to the US Senate in 1992, Feingold has held at least one listening session in each of Wisconsins 72 counties. In the process of conducting these listening sessions, (over 900 have occurred since 1992) his staff has tabulated the most frequently cited concern of voters from each year. Up until 1997 the most oft-cited concern was health care. But in 1997 the most frequently cited concern of voters was campaign finance reform. It is most probable that the rise in issue priority of campaign finance reform as a social problem in Wisconsin was a near direct result of Feingolds articulate and impassioned stands against unlimited soft money contributions and his frequent calls for reform. However, the limitations inherent to individual advocacy (at least when that

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Of course, high-profile events such as Clinton-Gore fundraising scandals, (think Lincoln bedroom and Buddhist temple) aided the Senators in their pursuit of ameliorative action. But the point is not that the Senators drew attention to and fixed the situation singlehandedly. No single factor can ever have such effects on an issue alone. Rather, I contend that it is very likely that the significant progress made on campaign finance reform would not have happened as quickly and effectively as it did were it not for the visionary leadership of Senators McCain and Feingold. So while political leadership alone can not make an issue worthy of public attention and policy response, I would assert that it can certainly be a contributing factor to an issues advancement. Further, the absence of such leadership might very well condemn certain issues to a status whereby they might never reach the publics attention or achieve legislative response.137 While events highly illustrative of an issues problematicity may be the most efficient way to impel decision makers and the public at large to action when considering most issues, this is not a method for issue advancement that bodes well for climate destabilization. Unlike most other issues, the impacts of global warming that would impel us to act may well occur only after it is too late
advocacy is of an issue abstract in nature that happens to be competing with what an issue constantly and tangibly felt by constituents) became apparent when health care regained top priority status in 1998, where it has stayed since. Russ Feingold US Senate website, http://feingold.senate.gov/listening/frequent_issues.html Note: while his website portrays it as though Sen. Feingold responded to the campaign finance concerns expressed by voters in his 1997 listening sessions, in reality he was a leading advocate of the issue before that date, introducing the first version of the McCainFeingold legislation in 1996. Thus, while it may be politically astute of him to portray himself on his website as responsive to the concerns of voters, the reality is most likely the inverse of that contention; voters responded to Feingolds advocacy of the issue. 137 It should also be noted that the qualities of the political leader are very important. Simply because a politician adopts an issue as a personal crusade does not mean that that issue will experience a rise in priority. Leadership qualities such as whether or not the leader is a credible person with a good reputation, an articulate and passionate speaker, and/or capable of motivating constituents are important factors that contribute to the level of positive impact a solitary political leader can have. Indeed political leadership from some politicians could probably harm the position of an issue on the social and legislative problems agendas

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to do anything that could halt its effects. While scientists can, and probably will, continue to release alarming research and studies in the near future, an issue really gains its highest priority when its problematicity ceases to be understood as an abstract notion and develops to the point where it is felt tangibly and deeply by a directly affected public.138 In addition, the very scope of the problem may contribute to a feeling of powerlessness among the public. As Sheldon Ungar writes, the perception that the challenge of global warming is almost overwhelming can produce a sense of immobility, and even foster the view that action on the issue is, short of a demonstrable crisis, too costly (italics mine). The sick irony here is that by the time any crisis does demonstrate itself, the window of opportunity to do anything about it will have closed because of our commitment to the CO2 already emitted into the atmosphere in years past is irrevocable. Also, whenever we might try to do something, individuals will likely be intimidated by the sheer enormity of response require to a problem that we have all created together. I contend that because this issue is as complex and overwhelming as it is, the importance of individual political leadership becomes elevated to a point higher than other issue debates. Specifically political leadership can be especially effective in response to climate destabilization because 1) politicians may be able to simplify the issue and its implications for the public in ways that scientists and other experts cant and 2) national politicians, as some of the most powerful people in the world, will have credibility when they convey that there are things we can do to stop global warming.
138

For this reason Craig Trumbo classifies climate change as a new class of environmental problem whereby societies must now acknowledge environmental problems that are practically invisible, yet must be acted upon to avert global consequences at some time in the future. Trumbo, Constructing Climate Change, 269

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Of course, besides political leadership and illustrative events, the other major way that an issues priority can be advanced is through mass social action - particularly through organized social movements. Indeed, this method is perhaps the most direct way that most people can impact the prioritization of climate change. While I fully recognize and agree that developing a social movement to combat global warming is the most effective, assured, and long-lasting way to impact its place on the policy agenda,139 analysis of such a path is much more complicated than the more singular measure of political leadership. Consequently, I have left the issue of strengthening the environmental movement to be addressed in the conclusion. Further, it should be noted that although non-political individual leadership (like that of King or Gandhi) has been effective at advancing certain social issues in the past, the current dearth of high-profile leadership (and a strong underlying movement to support such leadership) from the scientific and/or environmental communities does not bode well for the chances of an individual leader other than an already well recognized politician to advance climate change on the issue agenda. Also, when global warming is covered by the US press, politicians are most frequently cited as sources and environmentalists and scientists get short shrift. Ungar supports this claim with his finding that scientists have declined as news sources140 over the course of the 1990s. Consequently, politicians currently have the most access to the press and have the greatest podium from which to address this issue.
139

Appropriately, a discussion of the environmental movement and its strengths and weaknesses is included in the conclusion. However, such analysis is not the focus of this thesis because movements are highly complex and interdependent - certainly not as easily measured and analyzed as the level of issue priority individual political leaders give to the issue of global warming. 140 Sheldon Ungar, Constructing Climate Change: Claims and Frames in US News Coverage of an Environmental Issue, Public Understand. Sci., 5, (1996): 269

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It is with this perspective that I askIs any national political figure really using that podium? Or asked another way; Is there any identifiable political leadership on this issue at a scale that could succeed in moving it up the legislative and social concerns agenda? While there is no way to determine with any certainty the importance that political leaders personally assign to the issue of climate destabilization, there are rough methods that can be utilized to indirectly measure the priority they give it. Of those indirect methods, I contend that the most useful and obvious to adopt is analysis of the most public and accessible resource that any politician has at his or disposal - his website.141

Go To My Website and You Will Find Taking Ungars advice that short of international negotiations, the most important non-media public arena is arguably the US Congress, I decided to seek out any political leadership on the issue of climate destabilization within that body. I assumed that if such leadership were to be found anywhere within the Congress, it would most likely be in the US Senate on the two committees most directly responsible for addressing climate change: the Environment and Public Works and Energy and Natural Resources Committees. I chose the Senate over the House because, with terms of six years US Senators are more able to advocate on
141

Granted, to truly understand the measure of importance that a politician gives an issue and to accurately gauge his or her level of leadership on that issue, one would have to develop a much more comprehensive means of tracking activity than merely website content. Relative to public speeches, committee activity, behind the scenes lobbying, etc., a candidates website is an inadequate measure of true issue leadership. However, it seems plausible and legitimate to assume that were a candidate to devote the level of political leadership necessary to significantly advance global warming on the national political agenda, such a position or an effort would be made readily available to the public on his or her website. This is the main question I am asking; do political leaders take this issue seriously enough to give it significant placement on their websites?

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behalf of important issues that are not presently on the legislative agenda without worrying about a re-election contest within the next two years. Also, these two committees selected have the most direct jurisdiction over the issue of climate destabilization (and what causes it). In short, if political leadership on the issue of climate destabilization were to be found at all, it would most likely be found in the membership of one or both of these two US Senate committees.142

Methods: I searched the official US Senate websites of all members of both committees for mention of the terms global warming, climate change, and/or, greenhouse gases, focusing specifically on the issues sections of websites (though I defined this broadly143 so as to include any and all instances of issue priority given to climate change). Wanting to determine whether or not the member gave the issue a high enough priority to feature a position statement on global warming as an issue in its own right, I did not search past or present press releases for those terms.

142

While the Senate Committee on Science, Commerce, and Transportation has jurisdiction over Oceans, weather, and atmospheric activities, and has held hearings on the science of climate change, I have chosen the two committees that have a more direct role with regard to the climate; with the EPW committee claiming jurisdiction over the Clean Air Act (which regulates CO2), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Climate Protection Act and the ENR committee claiming jurisdiction over global climate change and new technologies research and development. Further in searching for issue pages, energy and environment pages that directly correlated with each committee were much more predominant than science issue pages. Lists of jurisdiction can be found at the following websites; ENR, http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=About.Jurisdiction EPW, http://epw.senate.gov/commresources/jurisdiction.htm and SCT, http://commerce.senate.gov/about/jurisdiction.html 143 Other titles for the pages I searched included, issues and legislation, legislative issues, legislative activities, legislative priorities, legislative achievements, legislation, and key priorities.

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I performed the content search twice, seeking to ensure that the presence of an issue position (or lack thereof) was not subject to changes in the Senate schedule. My first content search was conducted March 29, 2005 (a date when the Senate was not in session). The second search was conducted on April 17 (a date when the Senate was in session).144 I noted every instance where one of the terms showed up in an issues section of the website and I also noted where the mention occurred (for instance was it the first issue listed on the page or at the end of a litany of issues). For members of the EPW committee I searched their environment145 issues page (if one existed) for mention of global warming, climate change, and/or greenhouse gases. If they did not have such a page I then looked to see if they had an energy page that discussed global warming. Essentially, no matter the committee I accepted any issue heading for a page so long as it included mention of climate change. For members of the ENR committee I searched their energy146 issues page (again, if one existed) for mention of the same three terms. This was only the first and most expeditious avenue that I searched and if I could find a statement on climate change elsewhere on the website, I included it.

144 145

Senate schedule confirmed here, http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/one_item_and_teasers/2005_schedule.htm I defined this broadly, allowing in any title given to a page that included the Senators position on environmental issues. Besides Environment other headings included, Energy/Environment, Environment and Energy, Protecting our Natural Resources, and Natural Resources. 146 Again, I also defined this broadly, allowing in any title given to a page that included the Senators position on energy issues. Besides Energy other page headings included, Promoting Sound Energy Policy, Wind Energy, Energy/Environment, Environment and Energy, and Natural Resources. Also there were two instances where the Senator did not break his or her energy issue positions into a separate section and merely presented one long page with a litany of issue positions. Thus for Sen. Daniel Akaka I analyzed his energy position statements as included within his singular list of legislative achievements and for Sen. Jon Corzine I analyzed his energy issue position statements as included within his lone agenda page.

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It should be stated clearly that I did not limit my content search to energy and environment pages because I personally confined the issue of climate change to such categorization, but rather because those were the only two categories that included mention of the issue. Indeed, after an exhaustive search of other issue pages where the issue might be found (foreign policy for example), I was not able to find a single mention of global warming, climate change, or greenhouse gases on any section of a website other than the issue pages I broadly defined as energy and environment

Findings, EPW:

Only two members of the Environment and Public Works Committee made any mention of global warming whatsoever. The ranking minority member Jim Jeffords had no direct statement on global warming but the term global warming appeared in a caption for the photograph most prominently displayed on his environment page. The caption reads, Senator Jeffords speaks to the National Press Club about the need to fight global warming with members of the Dave Matthews Band to his right, and Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, founders of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, to his left.147 This might be seen as limited evidence that he sees the issue as important enough to command high stature on his environment page and that he wants his constituents to be aware of the problem and of his advocacy to combat it.
147

Senator Jeffords official US Senate website, http://jeffords.senate.gov/issue_environment.html

62

Senator Liebermans site is more substantive and he lists global warming as the first issue on his environment page. The section states; Senator Lieberman is widely recognized as one of the leading experts in Congress on climate change. In the 1990s he was a forceful advocate for proactively confronting this threat, attending major international conferences in Buenos Aires and Kyoto . In early 2005, he reintroduced groundbreaking legislation with Senator John McCain (R-AZ), the Climate Stewardship Act, to create a cap and trade system that would harness market forces to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. When this bill was considered by the Senate during the 108th Congress, it received a strong 43 votes in initial support. Senators Lieberman and McCain are working to bring the reintroduced legislation back to the Senate floor for another vote as soon as possible.148 However, besides these two Senators, not a single member of the Environment and Public Works committee mentions anything about climate change. To be sure, this lack of mention is not for want of environmental issue pages, (as is shown in Table 1). Indeed, aside from Lieberman and Jeffords, Republican Senators Inhofe and Warner and Democratic Senators Baucus, Boxer, and Lautenberg each had environmental issue pages on their sites. The following examples illustrate how these pages have been used, absent mention of global warming: - Out of nearly 1500 words of text outlining her environmental positions, Senator Boxer does not once mention climate change, though she does manage to state that she fought to defeat a Republican effort to sell the Presidio of San Francisco.149
148 149

Senator Joe Liebermans official US Senate website, http://lieberman.senate.gov/issues/environment.html Senator Barbara Boxers official US Senate website, http://boxer.senate.gov/issues/env.cfm

63

- Though he fails to mention the threat of global warming, we can take heart that Sen. Max Baucus has secured research grants and federal money to fight whirling disease in order to end this threat to Montana's blue-ribbon trout streams.150

Table 1: Global Warming, Climate Change, or Greenhouse Gas references in the Environment sections of Environment and Public Works Committee Members webpages

Senator Inhofe, James (Chair) Warner, John Bond, Christopher Voinovich, George Chafee, Lincoln Murkowski, Lisa Jeffords, Jim (RMM)^ Baucus, Max Lieberman, Joe Boxer, Barbara

State OK VA MO OH RI AK VT MT CT CA

Party R R R R R R I D D D

Issue section on website? yes yes yes yes no* yes yes yes yes yes

Environment section? YES YES no no no YES YES YES YES

GW, CC, or GHG mentions on page? no no YES no YES no

150

Senator Max Baucuss official US Senate website, http://baucus.senate.gov/issues-env.html

64

Carper, Tom Clinton, Hillary Lautenberg, Frank

DE NY NJ

D D D

no yes yes

no YES

no

^: RMM denotes Ranking Minority Member * While Chafee has no issues section on his website, it should be noted that a Senator Chafee Fighting for the Environment section appears about one-third of the way down his home-page. This section lists current press releases regarding environmental issues (none of which are in reference to Global Warming). Also, while he does not have an issues section per se, Chafee is the only Republican Senator of the Environment and Public Works Committee to have a portion of his homepage dedicated to promoting his stance on environmental issues. note: Senators Vitter (R-LA), Demint (R-SC), Thune (R-SD), Isakson (R-GA) and Obama (D-IL) are not included in this table. While they are all current members of the Environment and Public Works committee, they are also all freshman Senators who have only served a little over 3 months in congress. Thus, their websites are still under construction and so I have decided to exclude them from the data set so as not to skew results.

Findings, ENR: In concurrence with the lack of issue priority given to global warming on the issue pages of EPW committee members, only two out of the eleven ENR committee members that have energy issue pages mention one of the three terms related to global warming. Senator Akakas page mentions the term greenhouse gas and Sen. Feinsteins actually uses the term global warming.

65

But even these mentions are fairly unimpressive. Indeed, Sen. Akaka seems to think that natural gas, a fossil fuel, will somehow help to combat climate change when he writes that he is an advocate for dealing with the consequences of greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide accumulation, and has consistently supported the exploration and identification of methane hydrates, a natural gas, as alternative source of fuel (italics mine). Meanwhile, Senator Feinstein helps the committee avoid complete embarrassment - essentially matching Senator Liebermans leadership by listing global warming first on her list of energy priorities and stating that she supports, Reducing emissions that are responsible for global warming through conservation, providing incentives for new, less polluting technologies, including hybrid vehicles and encouraging renewable energy production.151 The silence of the rest of the committee on the issue is borne out by Table 2.

151

Senator Feinsteins official US Senate website, http://feinstein.senate.gov/leg-agenda109.html

66

Table 2: Global Warming, Climate Change, or Greenhouse Gas references in the Energy sections of Energy and Natural Resources Committee Members webpages

Senator Domenici, Pete (Chair) Craig, Larry Thomas, Craig Alexander, Lamar Murkowski, Lisa Talent, Jim Burns, Conrad Allen, George Smith, Gordon Bunning, Jim Bingaman, Jeff (RMM)^ Akaka, Daniel Dorgan, Byron Wyden, Ron Johnson Tim Landrieu, Mary Feinstein, Dianne Cantwell, Maria Corzine, Jon

State NM ID WY TN AK MO MT VA OR KY NM HI ND OR SD LA CA WA NJ

Party R R R R R R R R R R D D D D D D D D D

Issues section on website? yes yes yes no yes yes yes yes no yes yes yes yes no yes yes yes no yes

Energy section? YES YES YES no YES YES no YES YES YES YES no YES no YES no

GW, CC, or GHG mentions on page? no no no no no no no YES no no YES -

^: RMM denotes Ranking Minority Member note: Senators Burr (R-NC), Martinez (R-FL), and Salazar (D-CO) are not included in this table. While they are all current members of the Energy and Natural Resources committee, they are also all freshman Senators who have only served a little over 3 months in congress. Thus, their websites are still under construction and so I have excluded them from the data set so as not to skew results.

67

Findings, Senate Leadership: Wanting to also see if the Senate leadership of each Party gave the issue any priority on their websites I did the same content search on the issues sections of the top six ranking US Senators. With more staff and monetary resources, I thought it possible that Party leadership might have more extensive and impressive websites and thus might be more likely to address the issue of climate change. However, as Table 3 shows I was, for the most part, wrong. One leadership website (indeed the only website out of all EPW, ENR, and leadership websites examined), had within it an individual page devoted solely to global warming; that of Minority Whip Dick Durbin.152 Like Sen.s Lieberman and Feinstein, Sen. Durbin also prioritizes global warming as the number one environmental issue on his site. But he goes further than all others by devoting a full eleven paragraphs to the issue. His lead paragraph reads; One of the most significant environmental crises we face is global warming, which is already changing our agriculture, economy and public health. By the end of the 21st Century, temperatures in Illinois are projected to rise 9-18 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, making our climate the same as that of East Texas today.153
152

Even though he was not a member of either of the two committees, I included his website because of his position of leadership as the Democratic Whip in the Senate. 153 Senator Dick Durbins official US Senate website, http://durbin.senate.gov/sitepages/Issues/environment-global%20warming.htm

68

Though Sen. Durbins website shows that he truly understands and respects the nature of the potential crisis, the man he assists is decidedly less prescient with regard to climate destabilization and the need for immediate policy response. Although Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reids website does state that, Alternative fuel technologies offer tremendous potential to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and mitigate global

69

Table 3: Global Warming, Climate Change, or Greenhouse Gas references in the Energy or Environment sections of the Senate Leadership

Senator Frist, Bill Santorum, Rick McConnell, Mitch Stevens, Ted Reid, Harry Durbin, Richard

State TN PA KY AK NV IL

Party R R R R D D

Senate Committee Sen. Maj. Leader Republican Conf. Chair Sen. Asst. Maj. Leader Sen. Pres. Pro Tem. Sen. Min. Leader Sen. Asst. Min. Leader

Issues Section on Website? yes yes no no yes yes

Energy Section? YES YES YES no

GW, CC, or GHG Mentions on Page? no no YES -

Environment Section? YES no YES YES

GW, CC, or GHG Mentions on Page? YES no YES

Note: Party Caucuses (conferences) are held to elect floor leaders, decide committee assignments, and lay out legislative priorities. Conference Chairs oversee these meetings. While the Democratic Leader serves as Conference Chair in addition to his floor leadership responsibilities, the Republican Party separates the responsibilities and elects a Conference Chair who is someone other than their floor leader. Chairing the party conference is a major leadership position of significant authority. For this reason, current Republican Conference Chair Sen. Rick Santorum is listed as part of the Party leadership.

70 warming and other environmental challenges,154 this short statement represents the full extent to which he addresses the issue of climate change on his entire site. In comparison, Reid devotes a full section to the dangers of Mormon Crickets, stating; I have been working to help our state end the worst infestation of Mormon crickets in 40 years. Over the last several years, I have won hundreds of thousands of dollars for Nevada to deal with the cricket infestation. When it became clear that was not enough and that crickets dont respect borders, I established a three-state $20 million fund to eradicate crickets in Nevada, Utah and Idaho. This money will give the hard-working people who have been fighting this threat the support they need to protect our communities from future infestations. Such priorities may be popular in the short term with Nevada constituents and a focus on the cricket issue may also be altogether necessary to ensure his reelection. But as the leader of the Democratic Party, Reid also has a responsibility to the nation (and the world) to address the exponentially more dangerous long term threat of climate change as well. However, his website does not indicate that he conceives of his title as leader extending to the issue. Republican Conference Chair Rick Santorum does not even address the issue on his site and for some reason the Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Senate President Pro Tem Ted Stevens do not even have issue pages that would enable analysis. Surprisingly, the lone Republican site155 (out of a total of eighteen reviewed) to mention climate change at all was that of Majority Leader Bill Frist. Not only does Frist mention the terms climate change and greenhouse gases, they actually appear on the top section of his environment page. He states; It [President Bushs Clear Skies Initiative]
154 155

Senator Harry Reids official US Senate website, http://reid.senate.gov/energy/index.cfm I do not mean to appear partisan in this analysis but it is simply fact that the majority of Republicans are either trying to discredit or ignore the issue of climate change. However, besides McCains work in the Senate, encouraging statements have also come from a few House Republicans including Christopher Shays of CT who recently said of climate change, I dont think were going to have a world to live in if we continue our neglectful ways. Chris Shays, http://www.pbs.org/now/science/climatemediaint.html

71 commits America to an aggressive strategy to cut greenhouse gas intensity by 18 percent over the next 10 years and supports vital climate change research.156 While the mere mention of the issue by Frist is surprising, it is important not to overstate the boldness of his statement. Indeed, the use of the word intensity, is very misleading. A proposal focusing on reduced intensity, as Frist advocates, would not commit the US to any actual cuts in CO2. Decreased intensity simply means that whatever CO2 we emit in the future should have a lower amount of, as Dow Chemical company describes it GHG emissions per pound of production.157 Practically then CO2 emissions could actually increase under this plan because it merely seeks decreased intensity per pound of production, and not fewer total pounds of GHG emissions. But compared to his colleagues on the EPW and ENR committees, the step of simply admitting that the issue is important enough to demand a policy response is a move in the right direction for a Republican Senator.

The Judiciary as a Controlling Balance: To ensure that the Senate website content I analyzed was not simply sparse regarding all political issues, I compared the frequency of environmental issue pages on the websites of those Senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee to a control group of Judiciary issue pages of those Senators on the Judiciary Committee. The significance of choosing the Judiciary committee lies in the fact that national polling has

156

Sen. Bill Frists official US Senate website, http://frist.senate.gov/index.cfm? FuseAction=Issues.Detail&Issue_id=3 157 Dow website, http://www.dow.com/publicreport/2002/stewardship/intensity.htm

72 consistently shown the environment and the judiciary to be ranked with similar levels of priority by the American public.158 This comparison reveals that not only does the Judiciary garner as much issue attention as the environment on the websites of its correlative committee members, but that Judiciary committee members are actually more likely to provide judiciary issue position statements on their websites than are EPW committee members to provide environment issue position statements on theirs. Indeed, while only 63% of EPW committee members with website issue sections included the environment as one of those issue headings, 75% of Judiciary Committee members included the judiciary as one of those issue headings in their issue sections.159 While one might think to attribute the relatively widespread presence of the judiciary as a website issue section to the high profile debate currently occurring regarding the nuclear option, it should be noted that this content search was conducted before the debate regarding whether or not to change Senate filibuster rules to accommodate controversial judicial nominees was taking place.

158

For instance, a 2005 Gallup poll asking respondents to name the issue they think is the most important issue facing the county today revealed that 1% of Americans see the Judicial System/courts/laws as most important and 1% of Americans see the Environment/pollution as the number one issue facing the country today. Another Gallup poll conducted in 2004 garnered a 2% response rate for each issue, again tying them on the priority scale. Similarly and AP/IPSOS Public Affairs Poll conducted in 2004 3% of voters named the environment as one of the most important problems facing the country today while an equal number of 3% also listed Crime/Drugs as one of the most important. All polling data taken from the National Journals Poll Track, http://nationaljournal.com/members/polltrack 159 As I did with the environment, I defined the judiciary issues section broadly, allowing issue headings labeled, judiciary, judiciary committee issues, judicial nominations, crime and justice, judicial and civil rights, the constitution and the rule of law, and criminal justice and the courts. If we were to also include the issue heading of crime used by Sen. Mike Dewine and the heading civil rights used by Sen. Russ Feingold under the judiciary banner, the correlation between committee membership and the existence of relevant issue section on the members website would increase to 88%.

73

Table 4: Do members of the Sen. Judiciary Committee have judiciary issue pages on their Senate websites?

Senator Specter, Arlen (Chair) Grassley, Charles Kyl, Jon DeWine, Mike Sessions, Jeff Graham, Lindsey Cornyn, John Brownback, Sam Leahy, Pat (RMM)^ Kennedy, Edward Biden, Joe Kohl, Herb Feinstein, Dianne Feingold, Russ Schumer, Charles Durbin, Dick

State PA IA AZ OH AL SC TX KS VT MA CT WI CA WI NY IL

Party R R R R R R R R D D D D D D D D

Issue section on website? YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

Judiciary section? no YES YES no (but crime) YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES no (but civil rights) YES no

^: RMM denotes Ranking Minority Member note: Senator Coburn (R-OK) is not included in this table. While he is a current member of the Judiciary committee, he is also a freshman Senator who has only served a little over 3 months in congress. Thus, his website is still under construction and so I have excluded them from the data set so as not to skew results.

Overall Website Content Analysis Findings:

74 In sum, an initial review of 46 US Senate websites belonging to those US Senators most likely to assume a leadership role on the issue of climate change resulted in a total of 30 websites with content sufficient to allow for analysis to proceed (8 of the remaining 16 were freshman Senators whose websites were still in progress, the other 8 had no issues section to their site). Analysis of these 30 sites reveals that only three Democrats (Sen.s Durbin, Lieberman, and Feinstein) and no Republicans assign the issue of climate change enough priority to warrant prominence on their official Senate site. Three other Senators (Independent Sen. Jeffords and Republican Sen. Bill First, and Democrat Daniel Akaka)160 address the issue in passing, though with little substantive content. The remaining 24 Senators who offer an issues section to their website do not mention the terms global warming, climate change, or greenhouse gases whatsoever. If we are willing to accept website content as indicative of a Senators leadership commitment to an issue, this limited analysis suggests that a severe minority of the Senators who have jurisdiction over the climate change issues are actually concerned enough about it to give the issue prominent attention on their site.

Chapter 5: From Believing Cassandra to Relieving Sisyphus: Melting the Mountain of Ice Before Us.
160

In declining order of issue prominence given on website

75

If we are to heed the predictions of the best climate science currently available, we must act quickly to prevent the worst possible impacts of climate destabilization from occurring. In contrast to the modest international CO2 emissions cuts outlined in the Kyoto protocol and the terribly modest national CO2 emissions cuts outlined in the McCain Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, a serious response requires near immediate and total transformation of our energy infrastructure. For instance, if the climate crisis point is truly to be reached at the 400 parts per million threshold as the International Climate Change Task Force believes, then we have less than ten years to reverse our current trajectory of CO2 emissions in order to forestall a breach of that point. Quite simply, the most committed leadership in the US Senate is now being offered by two Senators (McCain and Lieberman) whose proposal is so inadequate that it might, at best, extend the time at which we will hit the crisis point by about a year or two. I do not say this to denigrate the efforts of these two Senators. Surely their efforts are greater than those being offered by the rest of their colleagues. But I do wish to articulate the damning situation we now find ourselves in. A confluence of events has transpired to create a perfect storm whereby 1) Global warmings worst impacts will not be seen until after it is too late to do anything to remedy them and natural events will not likely impel us to action in time to avert the increased temperatures predicted by scientists. 2) No governmental body has direct responsibility for the global climate nor does any governmental body have the incentive to address the issue alone.

76 3) The environmental movement attempting to advance this issue is so mired in ineffectual and redundant policy responses that its own members are debating whether or not it is even still alive. 4) Scientists warnings are not being reported in the US, scientists have declined as news sources relative to politicians, and (in the name of journalistic balance) skeptic scientists representing a severe minority of those within the credible scientific community are frequently cited alongside scientists who hold the overwhelming consensus view that climate change is predominantly the result of manmade greenhouse gas emissions. 5) There is currently a vacuum of national political leadership on this issue, with the most concerned US Senators calling for a policy response that would do little to solve the problem. Fittingly, perhaps Al Gore said it best when he wrote; the time has long since come to take political risks- and endure much more political criticism- by proposing tougher, more effective solutions and fighting hard for their enactment because proposals which are today considered too bold . . . will soon be derided as woefully inadequate."161 But with no politician, including Gore himself, currently heeding that call, the time has come for an approach that is not so reliant on the leadership of fallible individuals. Consequently, regardless of the current state of the environmental movement, there is no choice, for the sake of the planet, but for it to be reborn.

161

Gore, Earth in the Balance, 15

77 The first step towards rebirth involves truly believing Cassandra.162 The environmental movement must not only listen to what our best trained and best informed climate scientists are saying, we must then also respond with calls for levels of precautionary action that are commensurate with the scale of destabilization envisioned if we do not change our ways. This scientifically pragmatic advocacy must occur even if it does not seem politically pragmatic, for defense of principle is the only real goal of any movement worth the name.

Environmentalism born-again: First Step- Believe Cassandra While this thesis focuses much attention on the potential role of individual political leaders, the truth is that leaders of social movements (usually religiously inspired) have most always been the ones to initiate mass social change throughout history and the politicians who have been in power at the time have just been lucky enough to take credit for acquiescing to their demands. As Jim Wallis recounts in his recent book, Gods Politics, after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed and Martin Luther King had just won the Nobel Peace Prize, King visited President Lyndon Johnson calling for the next step towards equality - a voting rights act. Johnson responded by saying that he had no political capital left to spend and that such legislation would not be politically realistic for another five to ten years. King then went
162

Paraphrasing and borrowing liberally from author Alan AtKisson Cassandra was the last daughter of the King of Troy. Because of her beauty the god Apollo fell in love with her and asked her to love him. While she initially refused him, eventually she consented after he offered her the gift of prophecy in return. When Cassandra decided that she could not love Apollo after all, it was too late for him to take back his gift. Instead, Apollo asked Cassandra for one final kiss whence upon he blew into Cassandras mouth in a way that no one would ever believe the prophecies that left her mouth. She was doomed to a life where she could see dangers but where no one would believe her warnings. She warned the Trojans that the Greeks were inside the horse but no one believed her and her city fell. She eventually even foretold her own deathwhich transpired exactly as she predicted because no one believed her. Alan AtKisson, Believing Cassandra, (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 1999) xvii- xviii.

78 and organized a march in a little Alabama city named Selma. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965.163 This is what the D.C.-centric environmental movement leadership fails to understand we will not win by advocating politically feasible but globally disastrous policy. We need to take the moral road and advocate for what is needed- immediate 5070% reductions in CO2 emissions. Otherwise we lose all credibility. Instead, as journalist Ross Gelbspan reports of the current environmental establishment, theyre scared theyll be marginalized by calling for big cuts. They are taking the expedient route even as we see scientists sounding the alarms and saying its too late to avoid significant disruptions.164 The environmental movement must start being a movement and stop being a lobby. Social movements based on moral values (which this movement must be) can not win if the principle upon which it is based is compromised. Practically, this means that if the earth is in danger, a movement or a leader will have no credibility advocating for a policy that will forestall destruction for 10 years. The goal must be permanent avoidance of severe climate destabilization. Make no mistake, stewardship of the earth and protection of humanity is the greatest of all moral issues. Indeed, we are tampering with the earth in a way that our ancestors could have never imagined and that we dare not want to be held responsible for. Author Bill McKibben references the book of Job to put our predicament in perspective. Job, being admonished by God for daring to question His wisdom, is asked, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth, who defined the boundaries of

163 164

Jim Wallis, Gods Politics, (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2005) 22. Shellenberger and Nordhaus, Death, 24

79 the sea, can you ensure the proper sequence of seasons, and who can tilt the water jars of heaven, turning the dry dust to clumps of mud.165 Tragically, we have lost our ability to respond innocently and naively to such questions. Now for the first time in history we have, however unintentionally, been foolish enough to try to answer those questions on our own. For not only are we redefining the boundaries of the sea, tampering with the proper sequence of the seasons, and overturning the water jars of heaven- we are threatening to disrupt the very foundations of the earth. McKibben writes; Our ultimate sadness lies in the fact that we know that this is not a pre-ordained destiny; it isnt fate. New ways of behaving, of getting and spending, can still change the future: there is, as the religious evangelist would say, still time, though not much of it, and a miraculous conversion is called for. 166 But while I cite Job, I do not intend to portray this as a question of Judeo-Christian morality. Indeed, similar warnings regarding our hubris and similar calls for stewardship and responsibility come from countless other religious traditions. The future of all people, of all religions and ethnicities, is impacted by this issue. Thus, the only way to avert the worst predicted outcomes is to recognize our basic human bond and join together to use our interdependence as a means towards a solution and stop using it as an excuse forestalling action. While such an approach may seem politically radical in a contemporary sense, it is actually the simplest fulfillment of our most basic responsibility leaving this earth better than we found it.

165 166

Job. 38.4-34 (New Living Translation) Bill McKibben, Worried? Us?' http://www.granta.com/extracts/2032

80

Relieving Sisyphus: Like Cassandra, Sisyphus suffered a terrible curse from the gods of ancient Greece. A conniving trickster on earth, Sisyphus was condemned to roll a boulder to the top of a mountain in the underworld, only to have it perpetually roll back down the mountain, rendering his task ceaseless. The current work of the environmental movement might likewise be characterized as Sisyphean.167 We spend thirty years expending all of our energy trying to prevent drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge only to have the mountain we are pushing against make all our work for naught with one simple appropriations bill. Similarly, even if we were to pass the McCain-Lieberman bill, what would that accomplish? Isnt that merely an effort to move the boulder further up the hill when we know it will just fall right back down on us without broader, more institutionally focused reform? The environmental movement should shift focus away from the technical policy boulder and start questioning how we might get rid of that which is our real problem- the mountain of ice causing our retreat.

Melting the Mountain of Ice Before Us: A sweeping, revolutionary approach to how we live and consume the earths resources is now necessary. As established earlier in this work, the potential for economic growth in this transition is unparalleled and the promise of a more sustainable future is great. To accomplish this, the environmental movement, or whatever is to replace it, must shift focus away from trying to work in Congress and instead direct resources and
167

This characterization is provided by Shellenberger and Nordhaus, Death, 33

81 energy into organizing and nurturing a real, compelling, and hopeful social movement based on principle first and politics second. While some might see this conclusion as overly impassioned and hopelessly idealistic, I am reminded of Wendell Phillips, a New Englander who became famous as an orator in the 1850s. Railing against slavery, Phillips called the institution a moral outrage and demanded for its immediate abolition. Because both major political parties were wary of the issue at the time, a friend approached Phillips after he had finished speaking and asked, Wendell, why are you on fire?! Phillips responded, Brother May, Im on fire because Ive got mountains of ice before me to melt. Paradoxically, global warming is that mountain of ice for our time. Certainly, melting the mountain will require a level of political leadership which has not yet manifested itself. However, more vital to the task is the (re)birth of a principled social movement that will shed light on both the current scientific consensus that serves as Cassandras call to action and the wholly transformative approach to energy and consumption needed for Sisyphus to finally abandon the boulder. Only then will the mountain melt in time to prevent our civilization from meeting the same fate.

82 Bibliography AtKisson, Alan. Believing Cassandra: An Optimist Looks at a Pessimists World. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green, 1999. Bosso, Christopher J. Facing the Future: Environmentalists and the New Political Landscape, Environmental Policy, ed.s Norman J. Vig and Michael. E Kraft. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 55-76. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962 Dunlap, Riley E. Public Opinion and Environmental Policy, Environmental Politics and Policy: Theories and Evidence, 2nd ed., ed. James P. Lester. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995, 63-114. Edelman, Murray. Political Language: Words That Succeed and Policies That Fail. New York: Academic Press, 1977. Killingsworth, Jimmie, and Jacqueline S. Palmer. Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992. Gelbspan, Ross. The Heat Is On. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997. Gore, Al. Earth In The Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992. Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Back Bay Books, 2000. Hartmann, Thom. The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Waking Up to Personal & Global Transformation. New York: Harmony Press, 1998. Hassol, Susan Joy. Arctic Climate Impact Assessment; Impacts of a Warming Arctic. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Hawken, Paul. The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1993. Kennedy, Robert F. Crimes Against Nature. New York: Harper Collins, 2004. Kraft, Michael E. and Daniel Mazmanian, ed.s, The Three Epochs of the Environmental Movement, Toward Sustainable Communities: Transition and Transformation in Environmental Policy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999. Lakoff, George. Dont Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate.

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