Published on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 by The Toronto Star

Earth Near Tipping Point, Climatologist Warns

by Tim Harper

http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/447808

Reproduced @

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/24/9862/



WASHINGTON–James Hansen returned to Capitol Hill a hero yesterday, but

certainly not a conquering hero.



The soft-spoken scientist, hailed as the "whistle-blower for the

planet,'' tried to quiet a standing ovation from environmentalists

here with a typically blunt admonition.



"It is not a time to celebrate,'' said Hansen, 20 years to the day

since he became the first leading scientist to warn of the dangers of

global warming before a congressional committee.



He returned not to bask in any adulation, but to warn that the Earth

is nearing a tipping point, to call for a national carbon tax and to

say that CEOs of energy companies may be guilty of crimes against

humanity and nature.



On June 23, 1988, by most accounts, the temperature in the committee

room hovered at 38C and the U.S. was in the midst of a historic

drought when Hansen told a Senate committee he was "99 per cent

certain'' that humans were warming the global climate.



His comments brought the issue to American consciousness.



The following day, The New York Times carried an account under the

headline:



Global warming has begun, expert tells Senate.



Although global warming alarms had been sounding for more than a

decade and Canadian scientists were warning of the greenhouse effect

in the early 1980s, Hansen's testimony seemed to crystallize the

concern and provide the first jolt to the mass media in this country.



Two decades later, now 67 and director of NASA's Goddard Institute for

Space Studies, his message has not changed.



"We have reached a point of planetary emergency,'' he said.



"There are tipping points in the climate system, which we are very

close to, and if we pass them, the dynamics of the system take over

and carry you to very large changes which are out of your control.''



During a speech at the National Press Club, he rambled, as if his

ideas were sprinting well ahead of his words, but he kept an overflow

ballroom audience rapt.



Already, he said, the world's safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide

has been exceeded.



Yet, in the 20 years since he first testified, no major U.S. law

restricting greenhouse gas emissions has been passed, 21 new

coal-fired generating units have been built at power plants in this

country and total U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide have climbed by

about 18 per cent.



"If there is any single moment that marked the turning point where the

climate issue became a serious public policy issue, June 23, 1988, had

to be seen as that moment,'' said Christopher Flavin, president of the

Worldwatch Institute.



"(Yesterday) may mark a second kind of turning point.''



Tim Wirth, the onetime Democratic Colorado senator who organized the

hearing that day, said he knew he had made much progress with Hansen's

testimony when a report made the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated.



"It was a brave and lonely leadership role he played then, and he

hasn't stopped one day since,'' Wirth said.



Hansen's second Capitol Hill appearance in 1989 was before a committee

chaired by a Tennessee senator named Al Gore, but the White House

edited his statement before Gore's committee, throwing into question

his certainty about the link between human activity and global warming.



Hansen was told he could accept the revisions, or he would not be able

to testify.



So, in advance of the hearing, he asked Gore to question him on the

edited parts, he then revealed the White House edit and the story led

all U.S. network newscasts that evening. Hansen then moved out of the

political spotlight for 15 years.



Yesterday, Hansen warned of greater forest fire risk in Canada, the

extinction of polar and alpine species, danger to the coral reefs and

the ocean life that depends on them because of carbon dioxide in the

oceans, and refugees from melting ice sheets in Greenland and the

western Antarctic.



He called for a phase-out of all coal-burning power plants by 2030

except those in which carbon dioxide is captured and buried and he

called for a carbon tax on coal, oil and gas.



The tax, he said, should be returned in full to the public – not used

by government – in equal amounts for each adult and a half-share for

children, deposited directly into bank accounts or credited to debit

cards.



Such a non-regressive tax, Hansen says, will spur low and

middle-income people to limit their tax while profligate users will

pay for their excesses.



He also accused corporate America of a "greenwash'' in which their

environmentally friendly words are not backed by actions and he

supported criminal charges against CEOs of corporations such as

ExxonMobil who are smart enough to know the situation but are intent

on continuing their fossil fuel ways.



"When their descendants look back on them, they should not to be able

to pretend that they didn't know,'' Hansen said.



"They do know.''



They are also guilty of funding and promoting contrarian views from

scientists, furthering a charade that confuses the public into

believing there is debate among scientists in this country, Hansen said.



"There is no debate,'' he said.



Next year, with a new president, a new direction is desperately

needed, Hansen said.



He said a call for offshore drilling, sounded last week both by U.S.

President George W. Bush and Republican presumptive nominee John

McCain is "crazy."



"To go around drilling for the last drop of oil on the continental

shelf will extend our addiction a little bit, but it will put us past

the tipping point,'' he said.