Even big companies suspect warming

Editorial Copyright 1998 Morning Star (Wilmington, NC) August 12, 1998

The Europeans are baking this summer, too. That doesn't prove, as President Clinton and Vice President Gore suggest, that the earth is overheating because humans are sending "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere. But it certainly does nothing to weaken the theory that that's what's going on.

Arguments against the human role in "global warming" sound like the ones the tobacco industry made for years: There's no proof.

Of course, there will never be enough proof to satisfy many companies - mainly in oil, automobiles and power generation - whose products and activities produce these gases.

They have launched major public relations and political campaigns against the Global Warming Treaty the United States signed last year in Kyoto, Japan. The Senate, controlled by politicians like our own Jesse Helms, is refusing to approve it.

Remarkably enough, some other major companies within those affected industries are supporting it as a "first step." They include British Petroleum, Toyota, Sun Oil Co., United Technologies, Boeing, Lockheed, Whirlpool, Maytag and American Electric Power, a large Midwestern utility.

At last report, these outfits were not in the grip of tree-hugging Birkenstock-wearers, but profit-hugging Gucci-wearers. These executives are smart enough to realize that it wouldn't be easy to make profits - or have much fun - in a world baking under a shield of gases.

Whatever the source of this year's heat, it has devastated crops, forests, livestock and property and taken human lives. If such heat were to persist into the future, it would have long-term effects on plants, wildlife and people. It could even melt polar ice caps, raising sea levels and flooding coastlines. (People in Fayetteville might like oceanfront lots, but where would that leave us?)

It may be years before every reputable scientist agrees on whether human activity - mainly, the burning of fossil fuels - is heating up the planet. But the heads of these Fortune 500 corporations are ready to act now.

They said they "accept the views of most scientists that enough is known about the science and environmental impacts of climate change for us to take action to address its consequences."

Tell it to the Senate. And please pass the iced tea.

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