Do something about the weather

Editorial Copyright 1998 The Chattanooga Times August 18, 1998

Members of Congress are home on recess and as people do, they've probably passed some time with friends talking about the weather. What they ought to do is take some tips from the weather and realize they need to do some serious work when they get back to Washington.

The tips the weather offers come in the form of extreme heat, which has killed more than 100 people this summer in Texas alone.

They come in the form of widespread droughts that have abetted incredible fires in some areas and evoked comparisons to the Dust Bowl years in the nation's breadbasket.

They come in the form of unusually heavy rainfall in other parts of the country that scientists know raises the danger of waterborne diseases.

Those are the immediate weather issues. Others are longer term.

July was the hottest month ever recorded -- by a full half-degree. That is huge in scientific circles where notable change is generally measured in hundredths of a degree.

And July was no aberration. Every month this year has been hotter than the same month last year. And last year was the warmest since 1880, when records were first kept.

Nine of the past 11 years have set such records. The 12 hottest years ever recorded on Earth have all occurred since 1980.

Something is happening.

It clearly fits the scientific description of global warming -- with an extra kick this year from El Nino.

We all got well acquainted with that weather system. For a long while this year, it got blamed for pretty much every awful bit of weather, but an equally strong El Nino in the early 1980s produced far less warming. That suggests 1998's edition can't carry all the blame for record-setting heat.

But El Nino 1998 may, by magnifying the global warming trend, have given us an early taste of what's to come -- if we do nothing to curb the warming of the Earth. And it appears that doing nothing is precisely the intention of Congress.

So far this year all Congress has done on this issue is resist Clinton administration funding requests for research into and programs to promote energy efficiency and clean-fuel technologies. Advocates of this retrograde position say they're keeping the administration from trying to comply with the Kyoto Protocol on global warming without Senate approval. That's hogwash.

The programs being slashed in Congress predated the Kyoto accords, and many previously enjoyed bipartisan support. That's because they're good for America.

Whether or not the Kyoto treaty is ever ratified, the United States has a direct self-interest in reducing the manmade pollution that causes global warming. The pollution comes primarily from burning fossil fuels. The self-interest lies in the fact that addressing the problem of global warming requires investments that will bring other important social and economic benefits.

It requires investment in developing cleaner-fuel technologies and in using less energy to accomplish the same things more efficiently. Advances in these areas will make U.S. industries more globally competitive. They will lower ground-level ozone, tiny particulate and other forms of pollution that damage Americans' health and degrade our quality of life. And they will stretch our supplies of fossil fuels.

These are good things for our country. Congress should be promoting, not impeding, them.

But the big industries that make money from maintaining the status quo are all too pleased with the congressional stonewall being erected. Once again, big-monied campaign contributors are being served instead of the public interest.

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