The Time to Act Is Now
By Al Gore
Salon.com
Friday 04 November 2005
The climate crisis and the need for leadership.
It is now clear that we face a deepening global climate crisis that
requires us to act boldly, quickly and wisely. "Global warming"
is the name it was given a long time ago. But it should be understood
for what it is: a planetary emergency that now threatens human civilization
on multiple fronts. Stronger hurricanes and typhoons represent only
one of many new dangers as we begin what someone has called "a
nature hike through the Book of Revelation."
As I write, my heart is heavy due to the suffering the people of the
Gulf Coast have endured. In Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana
and Texas, and particularly in New Orleans, thousands have experienced
losses beyond measure as our nation and the world witnessed scenes many
of us thought we would never see in this great country. But unless we
act quickly, this suffering will be but a beginning.
The science is extremely clear: Global warming may not affect the
frequency of hurricanes, but it makes the average hurricane stronger,
magnifying its destructive power. In the years ahead, there will be
more storms like Katrina, unless we change course. Indeed, we have had
two more Category 5 storms since Katrina - including Wilma, which before
landfall was the strongest hurricane ever measured in the Atlantic.
We know that hurricanes are heat engines that thrive on warm water.
We know that heat-trapping gases from our industrial society are warming
the oceans. We know that, in the past 30 years, the number of Category
4 and 5 hurricanes globally has almost doubled. It's time to connect
the dots:
* Last year, the science textbooks had to be rewritten. They used
to say, "It's impossible to have a hurricane in the South Atlantic."
We had the first one last year, in Brazil. Japan also set an all-time
record for typhoons last year: 10. The previous record was seven.
* This summer, more than 200 cities in the United States broke all-time
heat records. Reno, Nevada, set a new record with 10 consecutive days
above 100 degrees. Tucson, Arizona, tied its all-time record of 39 consecutive
days above 100 degrees. New Orleans - and the surrounding waters of
the Gulf - also hit an all-time high.
* This summer, parts of India received record rainfall - 37 inches
fell in Mumbai in 24 hours, killing more than 1,000 people.
* The new extremes of wind and rain are part of a larger pattern that
also includes rapidly melting glaciers worldwide, increasing desertification,
a global extinction crisis, the ravaging of ocean fisheries, and a growing
range for disease "vectors" like mosquitoes, ticks and many
other carriers of viruses and bacteria harmful to people.
All of these are symptoms of a deeper crisis: the "Category 5"
collision between our civilization - as we currently pursue it - and
the Earth's environment.
Sixty years ago, Winston Churchill wrote about another kind of gathering
storm. When Neville Chamberlain tried to wish that threat away with
appeasement, Churchill said, "This is only the beginning of the
reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste, of a bitter
cup which will be proffered to us year by year - unless by a supreme
recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we rise again and take our
stand for freedom."
For more than 15 years, the international community has conducted
a massive program to assemble the most accurate scientific assessment
on global warming. Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries,
have produced the most elaborate, well-organized scientific collaboration
in the history of humankind and have reached a consensus as strong as
it ever gets in science. As Bill McKibben points out, there is no longer
any credible basis to doubt that the Earth's atmosphere is warming because
of human activities. There is no longer any credible basis to doubt
that we face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we prepare ourselves
and deal with the underlying causes of global warming.
Scientists around the world are sounding a clear and urgent warning.
Global warming is real, it is already under way and the consequences
are totally unacceptable.
Why is this happening? Because the relationship between humankind
and the Earth has been utterly transformed. To begin with, we have quadrupled
the population of our planet in the past hundred years. And secondly,
the power of the technologies now at our disposal vastly magnifies the
impact each individual can have on the natural world. Multiply that
by six and a half billion people, and then stir into that toxic mixture
a mind-set and an attitude that say it's OK to ignore scientific evidence
- that we don't have to take responsibility for the future consequences
of present actions - and you get this violent and destructive collision
between our civilization and the Earth.
There are those who say that we can't solve this problem - that it's
too big or too complicated or beyond the capacity of political systems
to grasp.
To those who say this problem is too difficult, I say that we have
accepted and met such challenges in the past. We declared our liberty,
and then won it. We designed a country that respected and safeguarded
the freedom of individuals. We abolished slavery. We gave women the
right to vote. We took on Jim Crow and segregation. We cured fearsome
diseases, landed on the moon, won two wars simultaneously - in the Pacific
and in Europe. We brought down communism, we defeated apartheid. We
have even solved a global environmental crisis before: the hole in the
stratospheric ozone layer.
So there should be no doubt that we can solve this crisis too. We
must seize the opportunities presented by renewable energy, by conservation
and efficiency, by some of the harder but exceedingly important challenges
such as carbon capture and sequestration. The technologies to solve
the global-warming problem exist, if we have the determination and wisdom
to use them.
But there is no time to wait. In the 1930s, Winston Churchill also
wrote of those leaders who refused to acknowledge the clear and present
danger: "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided,
resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all
powerful to be impotent. The era of procrastination, of half-measures,
of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close.
In its place, we are entering a period of consequences."
With Hurricane Katrina, the melting of the Arctic ice cap and careless
ecological mayhem, we, too, are entering a period of consequences. This
is a moral moment. This is not ultimately about any scientific debate
or political dialogue. Ultimately it is about who we are as human beings.
It is about our capacity to transcend our own limitations.
The men and women honored as warriors and heroes have risen to this
new occasion. On the surface, they share little in common: scientists,
ministers, students, politicians, activists, lawyers, celebrities, inventors,
world leaders. But each of them recognized the threat that climate change
poses to the planet - and responded by taking immediate action to stop
it. Their stories should inspire and encourage us to see with our hearts,
as well as our heads, the unprecedented response that is now called
for.
As these heroes demonstrate, we have everything we need to face this
urgent challenge. All it takes is political will. And in our democracy,
political will is a renewable resource.
Climate Warriors and Heroes
Meet the 28 leaders - scientists, politicians, activists, celebrities
and inventors - who are fighting to stave off planetwide catastrophe.
Global warming is a planetary emergency everywhere but in the White
House. While the Bush administration fiddles, the rest of the world
burns with concern about the earth's rising temperature. With our industries
billowing a relentless stream of gases into the atmosphere, trapping
heat, we're decimating our natural ecosystems, exacting an incalculable
toll on our planet and future health.
The climate warriors and heroes honored here embody the environment's
best defense. They are scientists, ministers, students, politicians,
activists, lawyers, celebrities, inventors, and world leaders. As Al
Gore says in his accompanying essay, they share little in common. "But
each of them recognized the threat that climate change poses to the
planet - and responded by taking immediate action to stop it,"
Gore writes.
The range of their actions is remarkable. A college dropout tours
the country in a bus that runs on vegetable oil, educating young people
about fuel efficiency. The CEO of General Electric, one of the world's
biggest polluters, argues for a federal policy to reduce global warming.
An emissary from the Inuit in the Arctic accuses the United States of
violating the rights of her people by refusing to curb its climate-heating
pollution.
"Their stories should inspire and encourage us," Gore writes,
"to see with our hearts, as well as our heads, the unprecedented
response that is now called for."
The Dropout - Billy Parish
There are lots of ways to fight global warming: drive less, send e-mails
to Congress, buy more efficient light bulbs. Billy Parish dropped out
of Yale.
Parish, a junior from New York, became convinced that climate change
poses a serious threat to human survival. So he quit school and became
the coordinator of Energy Action, mobilizing more than a thousand student
groups to lower climate-warming pollution. Working on a laptop and sleeping
on couches from San Francisco to North Dakota, Parish has galvanized
students across the country to take action on global warming.
In July he led a three-day fast at the White House to call attention
to the estimated 150,000 deaths caused each year by climate change.
He dispatched a bus that runs on biodiesel and vegetable oil to tour
summer music festivals and promote fuel efficiency, culminating in a
two-day forum in Detroit. And he has persuaded more than 120 universities
to sign the Campus Climate Challenge, vowing to lower their emissions
of greenhouse gases.
Parish first became concerned about the environment in high school,
when he spent a semester tending an organic farm in rural Vermont. The
23-year-old is soft-spoken in a way that commands respect: He's sincere
without sounding self-righteous. "Billy had the courage to leave
Yale to go get something done on the climate issue when it is most needed
- now," says James Gustave Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry
and Environmental Studies. "His efforts to mobilize young people
are exactly what is needed."
For Parish, who once dreamed of being a doctor, dropping out of college
seems like a small price to pay to halt global warming. "More and
more young people are beginning to realize that climate change will
significantly impact their future," he says. "We need to do
everything that we can - fight as hard as we can. Right now it doesn't
feel like there's time for me to be in school."
The Avenger - Al Gore
When history derailed the presidency of Al Gore, it may have increased
his power to save the planet. Freed from the restraints of elected office,
the former vice president is now widely regarded as America's most persuasive
and passionate spokesman on global warming. "Rescuing the environment
from climate collapse was a - if not the - defining issue of my political
career," says Gore, 57. "And you can be damn sure I'm not
giving up on it now."
No public figure has a deeper working knowledge of the climate crisis.
Gore studied the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions at Harvard and
held the Senate's first hearing on the science of climate change. In
1988, when he ran for president at the age of 40, his "primary
motivation was to push the global-warming issue." Four years later,
he wrote "Earth in the Balance," the bestselling book on global
warming. Not long after that, Bill Clinton, who calls Gore "one
of the greatest political and scientific intellects of our time,"
asked him to be his running mate.
As vice president, Gore was a chief architect of the Kyoto Protocol,
the historic accord on reducing carbon-dioxide emissions. But the Senate
refused to ratify the treaty, calling the evidence "inconclusive."
Now that the scientific consensus is irrefutable, Gore considers it
"damned immoral" that the White House and Congress continue
to block action on global warming. "This is an emergency of historic
proportions," he says. "We are in a race against time. There
is a brave and hearty band of about 2 percent of Washington officials
who are working on this, but 98 percent are in denial."
These days, Gore devotes much of his energy to pressuring Washington
to act. Since 2001, he has traveled the world giving a riveting presentation
titled "Global Warming: A Planetary Emergency," a lecture
and multimedia display that lays out the causes and consequences of
what Gore calls "the collision between civilization and the earth."
And last year, he co-founded an investment firm that supports climate-change
initiatives and sustainable development.
For Gore, who grew up on a cattle farm in Tennessee and keeps a picture
of environmental pioneer Rachel Carson on his desk, global warming is
as much a moral issue as a scientific one. But despite the urgency of
the issue, he remains at heart more an optimist than a doomsayer. "If
Americans act immediately, we can innovate our way out of this problem,"
Gore says. "We must use our political institutions, our democracy,
our free speech, our reasoning capacity, our citizenship, our hearts
and reason with one another, see the reality of this problem, and act
as Americans."
The Paul Revere - Dr. James Hansen
On June 23, 1988, as the temperature in the nation's capital climbed
to a record 101 degrees, James Hansen sat before the Senate Committee
on Energy and Natural Resources and offered a blunt warning about the
threat of global warming. "The greenhouse effect has been detected,"
he testified, "and it is changing our climate now."
That early alarm earned Hansen a reputation as the "Paul Revere
of climatology." His testimony drew on extensive scientific data
he had gathered as head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at
NASA - but that didn't stop the energy industry from attacking him.
When Hansen testified again, the first Bush administration inserted
a disclaimer into his remarks, portraying his findings as "not
reliable."
Hansen, a mild-mannered Iowan, blew the whistle on the White House
tampering - and quietly collected more evidence of global warming. In
April, he reported that readings gathered by thousands of robotic sensors
from deep in the earth's oceans show that the planet is "trapping"
enough heat to raise average global temperatures by one degree in the
next century. "He's a good example of what a citizen-scientist
can do," says NASA colleague Ronald Miller. "His work is scientifically
rigorous, but he also advises voters on how to deal with global warming."
Hansen, the son of a tenant farmer, is a die-hard Yankees fan who
uses baseball statistics to help explain global warming. He made his
name as one of the world's leading experts on Venus before switching
planets in 1976. What alarms him most, he says, is how the current Bush
administration is suppressing evidence of climate change. "In my
more than three decades in government, I have never seen anything approaching
the degree to which information flow from scientists to the public has
been screened and controlled as it is now," Hansen says. "Delay
of another decade, I argue, is a colossal risk."
The Messenger - Dr. Robert Watson
It's not easy getting international scientists to agree about anything.
Meteorologists look at the world differently than geologists, and developing
countries have different agendas than industrial nations.
But Robert Watson, an American born in England, practically invented
the process of getting the world's scientists to work together. In the
1980s, he persuaded researchers to combine their efforts to study damage
to the ozone layer. And as chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, he brought the same skills to bear on global warming. In 2001,
the panel issued a landmark study endorsed by 120 nations. Its simple
but devastating conclusion: Human beings have already caused the planet
to heat up significantly, and it is likely to get worse. The study found
that the earth's temperature will likely rise as much as 10 degrees
by 2100, and that sea levels will rise as much as 35 inches.
The Bush administration responded by killing the messenger. After
the study appeared, ExxonMobil sent a memo to the White House lobbying
for Watson to be removed from the United Nations panel. A few months
later, Watson was unceremoniously replaced with a less outspoken representative.
"The Bush administration axed him because they saw him as too effective,"
says Michael Oppenheimer, a geosciences professor at Princeton University.
"The world is poorer for not having Bob in this kind of role."
Not that the ouster silenced him. As chief scientist for the World
Bank, Watson is on the road almost half of every year, working with
developing nations to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions and to raise
awareness about climate-related threats posed by widespread disease
and flooding. "There could be a lot of lives lost and people being
displaced," says Watson, 56. And despite being a target of the
Bush administration, he notes that Democrats in Congress have also refused
to impose mandatory targets to curb greenhouse gases. "What if
tomorrow morning President Bush decided he wanted to move to targets
- would Congress approve it?" he asks. "The answer is most
certainly no."
The Elder Statesman - Raúl Estrada Oyuela
In 1997, Argentine diplomat Raúl Estrada Oyuela presided during
a two-week conference in Japan, where thousands of international delegates
were meeting to hammer out the first global treaty on climate change.
On the final night, after three days of nonstop negotiations, the delegates
were close to an agreement. But at the last minute, US representatives
refused to sign, insisting that the treaty include a provision allowing
countries to buy and sell "emissions credits" from one another,
essentially trading the right to pollute. Tempers among the exhausted
delegates grew short - until Estrada, a portly and distinguished statesman
known for his love of good food, stepped in and eased the tension with
rapturous descriptions of his wife's home cooking. At the 11th hour,
he accepted the American provision, sealing the deal on a unanimous
agreement he named the Kyoto Protocol.
"Estrada is a grandmaster of diplomacy and the godfather of Kyoto,"
says David Sandalow, an assistant secretary of state under Bill Clinton,
who helped negotiate the agreement. "It wouldn't have happened
without his leadership, excellent judgment and good humor."
Eight years later, the landmark agreement has become the centerpiece
of international law. In February, 131 countries - including Canada,
Japan and every member of the European Union - began implementing the
treaty, which requires nations to limit heat-trapping gases by 2012.
But Kyoto failed to receive a single vote when it was brought before
the US Senate in 1997, and the Bush administration has refused to implement
it, insisting that it would have "wrecked our economy."
In fact, as Estrada points out, Kyoto is proving to be an advantage:
Germany, for example, has created 450,000 new jobs while cutting carbon
emissions by nearly 20 percent. "We expected the United States
leaders to comply," says Estrada, "because the protocol is
economically forward-thinking." What's more, he adds, American
companies can't escape the treaty: Any US business that operates in
a Kyoto-endorsing country must comply with the agreement's emissions
restrictions at its overseas plants.
A father of eight and grandfather of 12, Estrada started out as a
journalist before getting his law degree and serving in embassies from
the United States to China. His global experience makes him confident
that America will eventually join Kyoto. "I believe that international
collaboration is the only way to solve this global problem," says
Estrada, 68. "And I have faith that US leaders will eventually
agree to participate in this greater good."
The Power Player - Paul Anderson
You wouldn't expect the cutthroat CEO of one of the country's largest
utilities to propose a tax on his own pollution - but that's exactly
what Paul Anderson of Duke Energy is doing. Anderson wants to slow global
warming by giving industry an incentive to go green - levying a "carbon
tax" on their emissions of climate-warming gases. Since Duke burns
17 million tons of coal each year, the tax would encourage the North
Carolina power company to replace its aging generators with newer, cleaner
facilities that run on wind or natural gas. "It gives you the flexibility
to make intelligent investment choices," Anderson says.
Many of Anderson's colleagues in the energy industry consider the
carbon tax "a high-cost proposal for something that we're not even
sure is real." But Anderson has no doubt that global warming is
real: He witnessed the damage himself in 1999, when he was CEO of what
is now the world's largest mining company, in a chopper flying over
one of his operations in New Guinea. "I saw that the glaciers had
shrunk to practically nothing," he says. "It was a heck of
a dramatic way of understanding that something is actually happening
here."
In the normally staid utility industry, Anderson is something of a
maverick - an energy czar who has been invited to captain Greenpeace's
ship, the Rainbow Warrior. The son of a nuclear-plant worker, he jokingly
refers to himself as Bart Simpson. But Anderson, 60, doesn't kid around
about global warming: The beauty of a carbon tax, he says, is that it's
a "no regrets" policy: "If somebody tomorrow were to
discover that global climate change isn't real, the carbon tax still
would have resulted in higher-performance machinery, more conscientious
executives and healthy debate in the industry. Better yet, it would
have reduced our dependence on foreign oil. At the end of the day you'd
say, Well, that wasn't a bad deal anyway."
The Hawk - Jim Woolsey
Stern and officious, Jim Woolsey comes across like the hard-core hawk
he is - a former director of the CIA with access to high-level officials
in the White House and the Pentagon. But going against the grain of
old-school conservatism, he has become the loudest voice in a growing
chorus of "cheap hawks" who want to wage the war on terror
with plug-in cars and fuel made from manure. A member of the Defense
Policy Board, Woolsey wants to defeat terrorism by freeing America from
its dependency on foreign oil, rather than routing the enemy in costly
wars. "America's energy demand is financing terror," Woolsey
says. "We don't need pie-in-the-sky hydrogen scenarios that are
20 years out. We don't have that kind of time."
Among the techno-fixes Woolsey promotes: producing ethanol from prairie
grass and corncobs, harvesting biodiesel from farm waste, and adding
a battery to existing hybrid cars. "Plug-in hybrids could get up
to 150 miles per gallon," he says. "And since electricity
is comparatively cheap, you would get the functional equivalent of 50-cent-a-gallon
gasoline."
Woolsey's primary goal is to bolster America's national security.
But his energy-independence strategy would also curb global warming,
create a market for clean-energy providers, strengthen the dollar, cut
the deficit, and generate international goodwill. "It's not just
win-win," he says. "It's win-win-win-win-win."
Woolsey, 64, is careful not to criticize his fellow conservatives,
and the White House has begun to borrow his ideas about energy efficiency.
"Conservatives dismiss renewable energy as kind of airy-fairy -
you know, real men dig and drill," says Reid Detchon, executive
director of the Energy Future Coalition. "Woolsey has used his
security-hawk clout to cut through that myth and pump up the profile
of clean-tech solutions."
An Oklahoma native, Woolsey earned degrees from Stanford, Oxford and
Yale. For a hawk, he can be a bit of a prankster; he sings backup in
a rock band called the Goths and played the role of Homeland Security
secretary in a war-game scenario prepared for Congress that envisioned
terrorist attacks disrupting oil supplies. An avid kayaker who lives
in a solar-powered house off Chesapeake Bay, he also confesses to being
"a tree hugger" - but he isn't worried about sharing an agenda
with environmentalists. "It doesn't matter what the principal motivation
is," he says. "It's just two different sets of reasons for
wanting the same thing."
The Emissary - Sheila Watt-Cloutier
Sheila Watt-Cloutier's people, who have lived in the Arctic for thousands
of years, recognized the threat posed by global warming long before
science confirmed their observations. When robins and barn owls began
showing up in the North's frozen reaches, the Inuit had no name for
them.
As chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference - an alliance of 155,000
indigenous people - Watt-Cloutier serves as an international emissary.
This fall, the ICC is filing a petition with the Inter-American Commission
on Human Rights that accuses the United States of violating the rights
of the Inuit by refusing to curb its climate-heating pollution. "Sheila
is putting a human face on the problem of global warming," says
Donald Goldberg of the Center for International Environmental Law.
Watt-Cloutier has only to look out of her living-room window in the
Canadian town of Iqaluit to see the effects of global warming: Sea ice
is melting and permafrost is thawing. "What you do in the United
States is connected to people falling through the ice in the Arctic,"
she says. "What happens to the planet happens first up here. We
are the early warning for the rest of the world."
A grandmother at 51, Watt-Cloutier spent the first 10 years of her
life traveling by dog sled. Today she hopes the human-rights petition
will show the rest of the world that the Inuit aren't simply helpless
victims who can't make it in the modern world. "I don't think we're
meant to be eliminated by globalization," she says. "We're
meant to be the beacon, so that the rest of the world can understand
what it's doing to itself."
The Prime Minister - Tony Blair
Eighteen months after the September 11 attacks, British Prime Minister
Tony Blair stepped on a podium in London and identified the biggest
long-term threat confronting the world. "There will be no genuine
security," Blair declared, "if the planet is ravaged."
He went on to equate global warming with weapons of mass destruction,
a position later elaborated by his chief science advisor, Sir David
King: "Climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing
today - more serious even than the threat of terrorism."
Blair's international reputation was damaged when he supported President
Bush's invasion of Iraq - but he has tried to use his political capital
to push the White House to wage war on global warming. Blair made climate
change one of his top two priorities at the G8 summit last summer, and
he warns that only "timely action" will avert a threat "so
far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power
that it alters radically human existence." Britain's own record
debunks Bush's insistence that curbing climate change would hurt the
economy: Since 1990, Britain has reduced its greenhouse-gas emissions
by 14 percent, while its economy has grown by 40 percent.
Blair, 52, is no newcomer to the fight. After a briefing by his science
advis0rs in 2001, he ordered a detailed investigation into the impact
of climate change. The conclusion: Global warming will become irreversible
unless the world slashes CO2 emissions by 60 percent within 50 years.
In a stroke of diplomatic genius, Blair pledged to achieve such reductions
in Britain by 2050 - making him the first world leader to propose concrete
targets beyond the time frame outlined in the Kyoto Protocol. Spurred
by his example, France, Germany and Sweden followed suit. "If there
is one political leader who has most vigorously championed the issue
of climate change, it is Tony Blair," says Klaus Toepfer, executive
director of the U.N. Environment Programme.
An Oxford grad who played in a rock band as a student, Blair is an
avid nature buff who has hiked the Pyrenees and an obsessive scholar
who has been known to read the Koran on vacation. His urgency over global
warming sharpened considerably in 2003, after a record heat wave in
Europe left 30,000 people dead. In recent years, he has ordered his
government to purchase a fleet of hybrid cars and make its buildings
more energy-efficient.
So far, the Bush administration has ignored his calls for action.
But Blair remains determined to force the United States to take responsibility
for its contribution to global warming. "The blunt reality,"
he says, "is that unless America comes back into some form of international
consensus, it is very hard to make progress."
The Road Warrior - Hiroshi Okuda
Hiroshi Okuda, the chairman of Toyota, envisioned the need for a hybrid
car long before history demanded it. In the 1990s, at a time when oil
prices were hitting rock bottom and America's SUV market was exploding,
Okuda greenlighted the engine technology that would usher in an era
of fuel-efficient - and eventually zero-emission - cars.
Today there are more than 350,000 Priuses on the road worldwide, and
other automakers are racing to catch up with the 350 patents Toyota
holds on gas-electric hybrids. "When it comes to perfecting the
killer app of hybrid technology," says Ashok Gupta, director of
the air and energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council,
"Okuda is the Bill Gates of the auto world."
Six feet tall and a black belt in judo, Okuda likes to break the rules.
To encourage youthful innovation, he promotes younger employees to managerial
roles. He has dismissed American carmakers as "stupid." And
in June, to help Japan meet its climate targets under the Kyoto Protocol,
he sauntered down a Tokyo catwalk in a lightweight suit, sans tie, his
shirt collar unbuttoned down to midchest. It was a fashion statement
almost as scandalous as an emperor with no clothes: Formal business
attire is to Japanese executives as shitkickers are to Texas oilmen.
But Okuda, an outspoken climate crusader at age 72, was promoting Japan's
emerging "cool biz" movement, modeling lighter suits that
could alleviate the need for air conditioning in office buildings.
For all his showmanship, Okuda is dead serious when it comes to the
fight against global warming. "People and countries simply will
no longer allow autos to damage their living environments or the earth's
ecosystems," says Okuda, who has worked at Toyota for 50 years.
The Prius "embodies this spirit," he adds, contributing to
the company's "growth in the moral dimension."
Okuda, a serious reader who ranges from political memoirs to Goethe,
selected the name "Prius" because it means "to go before"
in Latin - signifying "a forerunner to the 21st century and to
the era when automobile technologies become highly diverse." Hybrid
technology is already setting the stage for the future: Building on
the system used in the Prius, Toyota has developed a prototype, the
FCHV, that runs on hydrogen fuel cells.
The Ice Hunter - Dr. Lonnie Thompson
Lonnie Thompson has spent more time above 18,000 feet than any other
person on earth. Trekking to the Himalayas and Andes and beyond, he
has risked blood clots and temporary blindness in the name of a single
pursuit: preserving tens of thousands of years of weather history coded
deep in the planet's fast-vanishing glaciers. "No scientist has
taken bigger risks to track ancient weather patterns and help us understand
the anomaly of current climate trends," says Al Gore.
Thompson stores his prehistoric glacial samples at Ohio State University
in vaults kept at subarctic temperatures and studies the dust particles
and air trapped within the ice. From this atmospheric evidence, he has
reconstructed a meticulous calendar of temperatures dating back 750,000
years. The upshot: "It proves that the warming trends of today
are vastly more dramatic than what we've seen over 5,000 years,"
Thompson says.
Growing up on a small farm in West Virginia, Thompson studied geology
so he could work in the coal industry. But he got sidetracked in grad
school, when he examined the first ice core ever extracted by American
scientists. "You could have knocked me over with a feather the
day I discovered, firsthand, that glaciers contain a frozen history
of the earth," he recalls. Now, in his work at the Byrd Polar Research
Center at Ohio State, Thompson possesses a will to survive on par with
Lance Armstrong's, defying frostbite and hurricane-force winds. Photographs
he has taken provide disturbing views of the world's melting glaciers
- including the ice cap on Mount Kilimanjaro, which is expected to disappear
entirely by 2015.
Thompson dismisses skeptics who contend that the current warming trend
is due to a natural cycle. "Name one who has ever really studied
climate or collected data," he says. "I bet you can't."
Glaciers, he adds, "have no political agenda. They don't care if
you're a Democrat or a Republican. Science is about what is, not what
we believe or hope. And it shows that global warming is wiping out invaluable
geological archives right before our eyes."
The Hardballer - Dr. Ralph Cicerone
In 2001, after 2,000 international scientists issued a landmark report
concluding that climate change is a man-made problem, the White House
flatly rejected the resounding global consensus, demanding "information
based on science." Casting suspicion on the work of foreign scientists,
President Bush called for a report by America's elite scientific institution,
the National Academy of Sciences - referring the issue to an NAS panel
that included leading skeptics intent on refuting the conclusive evidence
of global warming.
But Bush didn't count on Ralph Cicerone. An atmospheric chemist who
has spent decades computing pollution levels around the world, Cicerone
put up a formidable fight against the skeptics - and won. The NAS published
a corroboration of the international report, broadcasting the message
that scientists will not serve as apologists for the president. "It
took incredible courage," says Stephen Schneider, a climate expert
at Stanford University. "Ralph's team refused to buckle under pressure
from the administration." Faced with the panel's strong conclusions,
Bush had no choice but to publicly admit to the overwhelming evidence
that humanity is causing climate change, even as his administration
fails to address it.
Before opting for a career in science, Cicerone played varsity baseball
at MIT and was offered a job as a radio announcer for the San Diego
Padres. Having spent decades collecting greenhouse-gas samples from
sources as varied as tailpipes, rice paddies and cow pastures, Cicerone
has proved to be a remarkably savvy political operative. He opposed
Bush's ouster of Robert Watson from a U.N. panel on climate change,
claiming it would "greatly reduce the emphasis on science."
And in June, when Rep. Joe Barton of Texas demanded an investigation
to discredit three scientists whose data confirmed global warming, Cicerone
denounced the move as "intimidating" and demanded that it
be halted.
To Cicerone, 62, the politics of global warming seem simpler than
the science. "I can't emphasize enough how complicated the climate
system is," he says. "So to see all the evidence that has
come together recently is staggering. And despite all the political
polarization around the issue of climate change, there is more serious
interest in it than I have ever seen. That revs me up."
The Litigator - John Adams
If the planet has a lawyer, it's John Adams. In 2003, when the Bush
administration failed to curb auto emissions as mandated by the Clean
Air Act, Adams unleashed his team of attorneys at the Natural Resources
Defense Council to file a landmark lawsuit against the government. He
also sued the nation's five largest power companies for spewing the
greenhouse gases responsible for global warming, and he will soon be
going to court to stop automakers from blocking a new clean-car law
in California.
All told, the organization currently has more than 200 lawsuits pending
against polluters. "NRDC represents the gold standard," says
Eric Schaeffer, former head of law enforcement at the Environmental
Protection Agency. "Their attorneys rival the sharpest minds in
the EPA and are defending public health right now in a way that officials
under the Bush regime can't."
At 72, Adams is a white-haired, button-down attorney who comes across
as mild-mannered and unflappable. But he can display a mean bark in
the courtroom, as well as an impeccable command of the facts. A crackerjack
strategist who co-founded NRDC in 1970, he promptly made a name for
the organization by playing a key role in writing the Clean Air Act
and the Clean Water Act.
NRDC now boasts more than a million members, an annual budget of $60
million and a more powerful climate arm than any other environmental
group. In his 35 years of shaping NRDC's legal tactics, Adams says,
he has never seen a more worthy target than the Bush administration:
"Their denial is stupefying. Here we have an administration that
invaded Iraq on sparse and even bogus evidence, and yet they claim to
be unconvinced by the overwhelming data on climate change - despite
a bigger scientific consensus than most any we've ever seen in history."
Adams grew up in New York's Catskills and still owns a farm there,
often wheeling guests around on an ancient Cub Cadet tractor. But he
is not afraid to draw the ire of his allies: NRDC has taken flak from
fellow environmentalists for siding with the Bush administration and
fossil-fuel producers on the benefits of "clean coal," a new
technology that filters out climate-warming pollutants so they can be
"sequestered" underground. "We're not going to solve
the climate problem unless we get industry to join us in the fight,"
Adams insists.
Coal accounts for more than half of US electricity production, and
Adams believes that a complete shift to renewable energy will simply
take too long to protect the climate. "The bottom line," he
says, "is that America has to start significantly reducing greenhouse
gases even before we phase out fossil fuels."
The Producer - Laurie David
No one has done more to get global warming off the science page and
on to the front page than Laurie David. A trustee of the Natural Resources
Defense Council, David is putting together a comedy special on climate
change that will air Nov. 20, featuring celebrities such as Tom Hanks,
Steve Martin and Robin Williams. She is producing an HBO report on global
warming called "Too Hot Not to Handle," which she promises
will be "the least wonky documentary anybody has ever seen on this
issue." And she has organized a "virtual march" on Washington,
signing up Walter Cronkite, Sen. John McCain, Leonardo DiCaprio and
140,000 other Americans to demand immediate action on global warming.
"She can get any studio head on the telephone within a few minutes,
and virtually any Hollywood celebrity," says Robert F. Kennedy
Jr. "She's opened up new corridors of power to the environmental
movement."
David is working those corridors to "permeate pop culture"
with environment-friendly images. Her husband, Larry David, the creator
of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," drives a Toyota Prius hybrid -
both on the show and in real life. And thanks to her efforts, hybrids
also make prominent appearances on "24" and "Alias"
- cause-related product placement designed to make the fight against
global warming look cool.
David, 47, used to berate Hummer drivers at red lights for their lousy
fuel economy, but she gave up the lectures at the insistence of her
preteen daughters. These days, her urgency is most apparent in the virtual
march, which will be featured this fall on "The Young and the Restless"
and "The Bold and the Beautiful." Rather than burn fossil
fuels to get millions to Washington, David is signing people up online
for a cross-country look at climate change's devastation. "You
don't have to go to Alaska to see that global warming is real and now,"
David says. "You can see it in Louisiana and Florida, in New Jersey
and Arizona. We have to shift the debate on this issue this year."
Her husband likes the online protest for a different reason. "The
virtual march is a perfect opportunity for the lazy man to do something
good without having to expend any effort," he says. "This
thing was made for me."
The Lawmakers - John McCain and Joe Lieberman
For a politician, Sen. John McCain doesn't sound optimistic about
staving off global warming. "We're making great progress,"
he says, "but I'm not convinced that we are going to devise solutions
in time to prevent serious damage to the environment."
Not that McCain isn't doing his part. At a time when some Republicans
in Congress dismiss global warming as a "hoax" perpetrated
by environmentalists, McCain and Sen. Joe Lieberman have forged a bipartisan
counterassault to tackle the crisis. The Climate Stewardship Act, which
they introduced in 2003, is the only bill that seeks to force American
industry to reduce its total emission of greenhouse gases. Under the
measure - modeled on the market-based program that successfully reduced
acid rain in the 1990s - businesses that exceed a federal cap on emissions
would be permitted to buy pollution "credits" from companies
that cut their output of CO2. "It's an ingenious solution in which
polluters are paying pioneers to innovate," Lieberman says.
Although the Senate has twice rejected the measure, McCain and Lieberman
have held repeated hearings on the issue, exposing the tactics of their
opponents. In one of the most memorable sessions, McCain shot down fellow
Republicans who were brandishing a statement signed by "experts"
on climate science - pointing out that Perry Mason and a Spice Girl
were among the signatories.
The Bush administration also refuses to support a mandatory cap on
climate-warming pollution, arguing for voluntary limits. Lieberman,
63, calls the president's do-nothing approach "monumental negligence,"
while McCain, 69, attacks it as "disgraceful." But the deadlock
will continue, they say, as long as Congress and the White House remain
under the influence of polluting industries. In 2004 alone, the energy
industry contributed nearly $38 million to congressional candidates.
"We see governors and mayors across the nation taking action
on climate change, and yet here in Washington, the special interests
rule," McCain says. "But they won't rule forever."
The Tide Turner - Dr. Robert Corell
Few scientists know as much about how global warming is changing the
world as Robert Corell. As chair of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment,
Corell oversaw a five-year study by 300 scientists from 15 countries
who studied the effects of climate change in the Arctic. The conclusion:
Greenhouse gases are causing the planet to heat up faster than anyone
realizes. "We're talking about the sea level rising at a rate of
about a meter every hundred years or so," says Corell - enough
water to swallow a chunk of Florida and more than 40 percent of Bangladesh.
Even if all climate-warming pollution ceased today, he adds, "the
oceans would continue to warm, and the glaciers would continue to melt
- and those processes will take 1,500 years to stabilize."
The detailed findings - laid out in a peer-reviewed, 1,200-page report
published on Oct. 21 - provide the most advanced evidence yet of global
warming's stark reality. But a year before the study was finished, the
Bush administration stalled its progress, shutting down talks designed
to come up with specific policy recommendations. "The United States
took umbrage to the process, even though they had voted to create it,"
says Corell, a senior fellow with the American Meteorological Society.
"They said the science was not complete." After a series of
tense meetings in Greenland, Iceland and Denmark, the administration
finally yielded - endorsing the recommendations at 3 a.m. on the very
last day of negotiations.
Corell, 70, became interested in climate change while studying oceanography.
His plain-spoken authority has been instrumental in settling the debate
over global warming. "He talks about climate change in terms that
regular people can understand," says Sen. John McCain. "A
lot of people who used to be skeptical about global warming have been
persuaded by the overwhelming scientific evidence presented by studies
like the ACIA."
Corell remains optimistic that those who doubt the reality of global
warming - those he calls "the Bush recalcitrants" - will come
around as industry finds ways to profit from cleaner forms of energy.
"By 2100, the power plants of today are going to look like the
steel mills did in Pittsburgh in 1975," he says. "They will
be derelict, because they're no longer useful." Corell has turned
his attention to hydrogen and other forms of renewable energy, looking
for a way to stem the coming tide. "My grandchildren are pretty
damned important to me," he says. "I can't sit here saying,
'Take action,' when I didn't take part in the action time. I don't want
to leave a legacy that I didn't do my damnedest to try to slow this
down as fast as we could."
The Up-and-Comer - Zhao Hang
If China fulfills expectations in the coming decades by emerging as
the world's dominant industrial power, its explosive growth could heat
the planet to catastrophic levels. China has only 20 million cars on
the road - but at its current pace, that number will surpass 300 million
by 2030. That's why Zhao Hang, director of the China Automotive and
Technology Research Center, has fought so hard to implement what one
US analyst calls "the most important energy policy adopted by any
country in the world in the last 30 years."
Working with advisors in California, Michigan and Japan, Zhao devised
fuel-economy standards for China that are 20 percent tougher than those
in the United States. He then steered the measure through the central
government, where it was approved unanimously. The new standards, which
went into effect this summer, will reduce climate-warming emissions
in a country that is already home to 16 of the world's 20 most polluted
cities. They will also save more than 1 billion barrels of oil by 2030
and force automakers to clean up their act: By 2008, 90 percent of the
SUVs currently built in America will no longer be legal for sale in
China.
China has also implemented a landmark law requiring the country's
utilities to produce 10 percent of their electricity from renewable
sources by 2020. "China understands that climate change is a very
big challenge in human history," says Zhao, 43, speaking in his
native Mandarin. "It is a matter in our own interest to ensure
that our growth is sustainable - and to impose limits on our contribution
to this problem."
The Prophet - Jim Ball
In the summer of 2003, the Rev. Jim Ball took a road trip through
the Bible Belt. Driving a dark-blue Prius from Texas to the nation's
capital, he stopped at evangelical churches to talk about the moral
and ethical implications of burning fossil fuel, sparking debate over
global warming with a simple question: "What would Jesus drive?"
As executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network, Ball
continues to inject the language of scripture into the debate over climate
change, calling on Christians to trade in their SUVs for more fuel-efficient
cars. "Is it loving your neighbor to put them at risk of all these
threats of climate change?" he asks. "Is it doing unto others
as you would have them do unto you? I don't think so." Under his
leadership, 30 prominent evangelical leaders - representing 45 million
congregants - held a three-day retreat last year to discuss global warming
and are preparing to issue a landmark statement on the issue.
"Jim is like one of the Old Testament prophets warning the people,"
says the Rev. Richard Cizik, of the National Association of Evangelicals.
"I'm sure he has wondered if he was ever going to see the day when
the evangelical world was going to wake up. But he's a patient servant
of the Lord, and I think that day has come."
By speaking directly to evangelicals - the base of President Bush's
support - Ball is working to dismantle the divide that has long separated
churchgoers and tree huggers. Last January, he attended a pro-life rally
carrying a provocative placard that read "Stop Mercury Poisoning
of the Unborn."
Ball, 44, grew up in Texas and engages in what he calls "spiritual
jogging," praying on his eight-mile runs. He became interested
in climate change while getting a doctorate in theological ethics. "Climate
change isn't just an environmental problem - that's low-balling it,"
he says. "Millions of poor people could die in this century because
of global warming, and millions of others are at risk of hunger and
malnutrition. The poster child of global warming is a poor child. And
Christians are supposed to look out for the poor, because God loves
them."
The Governator - Arnold Schwarzenegger
In his first two years as governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger
has implemented more ambitious initiatives to reduce global warming
than any other politician in America. "We have to make very, very
aggressive moves to reverse this threat," he says. In June, the
governor signed an executive order requiring California - the world's
sixth-largest economy - to slash its climate-warming emissions by 80
percent by 2050. "The goal he set eclipses Britain's," says
Sir David King, chief science advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"Now we're second to California - and that is one race I'm delighted
to be second in."
Schwarzenegger also backed a law requiring that all cars sold in California
lower their emissions by nearly a third within a decade - a move that
sparked similar measures in 10 other states, as well as a lawsuit by
automakers. He is installing hundreds of hydrogen fueling stations along
the state's major highways and is pushing California utilities to produce
20 percent of their electricity from renewable energy by 2010. "He
belongs in the sparsely populated top tier of elected officials who
are not only taking global warming seriously but devising solutions
on a scale that actually matches the problem," says David Hawkins,
climate director for the National Resources Defense Council.
Schwarzenegger - who has been influenced behind the scenes by his
wife's cousin, Robert Kennedy Jr. - appears to have embraced his inner
tree hugger on a personal level as well. He has instituted a five-minute
limit on showers at his home, downsized the fleet of Hummers that he
has been collecting since his "Terminator" days and worked
with GM to develop an SUV that runs on hydrogen.
His environmental policies are extremely popular with voters, proving
that taking a stand on global warming doesn't hurt a politician at the
polls. But Schwarzenegger, 58, characterizes his commitment to climate
change as an issue of morality. "In decades past, when we brought
this damage to the world around us, we did not know any better - that
was our mistake," he says. "But now we do know better. And
if we don't do anything about it, that will be our injustice."
The Visionary - Amory Lovins
Nobody has a more varied and eccentric set of credentials as a climate
crusader than Amory Lovins. A respected physicist and economist who
co-founded the Rocky Mountain Institute in 1982, Lovins has published
29 books on energy and the environment, helped the semiconductor industry
devise hyper-efficient factories, and advised 18 heads of state, including
Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. His top priority, however, is transforming
the automobile. Thanks to America's love affair with the Hummer, average
fuel efficiency is actually worse today than it was in 1980.
"Transportation accounts for 70 percent of America's oil demands
and generates a third of all carbon emissions," says Lovins, 57.
"It is the most intractable part of the climate problem."
To prod Detroit to think cleaner, Lovins has designed a new kind of
SUV: the Revolution. His concept car goes from zero to 60 in 8.3 seconds
and gets 114 miles per gallon. Crafted from superstrength plastics,
the Revolution weighs only 1,850 pounds - less than half as much as
a conventional car - yet has more than five times the crash resistance.
That makes it light enough to be driven by hydrogen fuel cells, which
lack the oomph to power heavier cars with gas engines.
Lovins, the son of an inventor, attended Harvard and became an Oxford
don at 21. He has briefed automakers on the Revolution and is working
with some to incorporate more lightweight plastics into their designs.
His goal is to push American industry to double its fuel efficiency
and find substitutes for oil - a move that he projects would save $70
billion a year. "Using energy more efficiently doesn't just address
the climate crisis - it offers an economic bonanza," Lovins says.
"Why? Because saving fossil fuel is a lot cheaper than buying it."
The Go-Between - Jonathan Lash
What do leading Fortune 500 companies such as IBM, General Electric,
DuPont and Starbucks have in common? They've all listened to Jonathan
Lash. As president of the World Resources Institute, Lash has arguably
done more than any other environmentalist to bridge the bitter divide
between industry interests and green groups determined to halt global
warming. A former top advisor to President Clinton, Lash has waltzed
into the boardrooms of the world's biggest polluters, sweet-talked CEOs
with his kindly air, and pushed them to not only slash their emissions
but also improve their bottom lines. "He is a committed green and
a pillar of integrity, but he does what most eco-purists are too prudish
to do: get in bed with industry," says Kevin Curtis of the National
Environmental Trust. "And he never regrets it in the morning."
A former Peace Corps volunteer and the son of Greenwich Village radicals,
Lash considers himself a "pragmatic idealist." He even supports
nuclear power as a necessary evil in the fight against climate change
- a position that has drawn the ire of some environmentalists. "Global
warming is the most pressing environmental problem humankind has ever
faced," he says. "We can't push any potential solution off
the table." The challenge of storing radioactive waste, Lash insists,
pales in comparison to the floods, violent storms and droughts that
are increasing as a result of global warming.
An avid skier and sailor, Lash used to own 13 motorcycles - but stopped
riding after his youngest daughter threatened to get one for herself.
A Harvard graduate, he started off as a federal litigator, switching
to environmental law after he grew weary of putting people in jail.
His hard-bitten pragmatism about climate change is paying off. He helped
DuPont cut its climate-warming pollution by 65 percent - five years
ahead of schedule. He worked with Starbucks to obtain 5 percent of the
electricity for its North American retail stores from renewable sources,
and with IBM to dramatically boost the energy efficiency of its factories
and products.
Lash, 60, believes that a growing number of corporate leaders are
ready to back a strong federal cap on climate-warming pollution. "It's
enough to make even a gloomy environmentalist hopeful," he says.
The irony, he notes, is that a president who boasts of his business
degree is bucking the industry trend. "Everyone predicted that
George Bush was going to be the 'CEO president,'" Lash says. "But
if he truly had business savvy, he'd be following the path of these
trailblazers."
The Hydrogen Professor - Dr. Bragi Árnason
Can a single nation completely eliminate its consumption of oil and
coal, meeting all of its fuel needs entirely through hydrogen? That's
what Iceland plans to do in the next 40 years, thanks to the pioneering
efforts of Bragi Árnason. Known as "Professor Hydrogen,"
the University of Iceland scientist has turned his nation into a testing
ground for the world's most advanced experiment in renewable energy.
Prompted by Árnason's crusade, the university has teamed up with
Shell and DaimlerChrysler to wean the country from its annual dependence
on 6 million barrels of imported oil, converting every bus, car and
boat on the island to hydrogen. "If they can demonstrate that an
economy run on renewable energy is viable," says Kert Davies of
Greenpeace, "it will be an enormous precedent for the world to
follow."
Árnason, who has been pushing his vision of a hydrogen future
for nearly 30 years, was long regarded as something of an eccentric.
"He was the preacher in the desert - very few people listened to
him," says Thorsteinn Sigfusson, a fellow professor. "Now
he is the founding father of hydrogen, well-known all over Iceland."
Following Árnason's blueprint, the city of Reykjavík
is transforming its bus fleet into hydrogen vehicles. Árnason
concedes that switching the entire country to fuel cells won't be easy:
It takes energy to produce hydrogen - energy that usually comes from
the very fossil fuels it's meant to replace. But Iceland already produces
nearly all of its electricity from geothermal and hydroelectric power,
giving it a clean, homegrown way to separate hydrogen molecules from
water. By the time the country is finished implementing Árnason's
vision, it will have cut its climate-warming pollution in half.
Árnason, 70, doesn't expect to be around to witness that day
- but his four daughters and eight grandchildren will be. The professor,
who rides horses across Iceland for weeks at a time, says his country's
future will look much like its past. "When the Vikings settled
in Iceland, they used only renewable energy like wind, sun and wood,"
he notes. "The Icelanders were in the 'first solar-energy civilization'
- and so was the whole world. Now we are finding our way out of the
fossil-fuel era, back into the 'second solar-energy civilization.' And,
in the end, the same will also be the case for the rest of the world."
The Pied Piper - Greg Nickels
Earlier this year, as the rest of the industrialized world prepared
to implement the Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming, Greg Nickels
was frustrated to see the United States sitting on the sidelines. So
the Seattle mayor decided that if "the White House isn't going
to make it happen from the top down, America's cities can and will make
it happen from the ground up."
In February, Nickels introduced the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement,
calling on municipalities to meet Kyoto's targets - reducing greenhouse
gases to below 1990 levels. So far, 187 mayors from major cities in
38 states have signed the agreement, and Nickels hopes to double the
number next year. "He's making global warming the focus of the
next great grass-roots revolution," says New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.
"Let's face it - if we wait around for the feds to act on global
warming, nothing is going to happen."
Nickels, 50, got involved in politics when he dropped out of the University
of Washington to volunteer for the Young Democrats. Under his initiative,
cities from Miami and Atlanta to Denver and Los Angeles are implementing
a host of climate-control strategies: adding bike paths and bus routes,
planting trees to absorb CO2, buying hybrid cruisers for police, pushing
local utilities to use more renewable energy, and using energy-efficient
light bulbs in street lamps and stoplights. By cutting their emissions,
cities have already saved a total of $700 million - smacking down Bush's
claim that Kyoto would destroy the economy.
When it comes to global warming, cities are both the problem and the
solution. They account for 78 percent of all climate-warming emissions
- but they may possess enough purchasing power to actually alter the
weather. "We buy car fleets, buses, construction equipment, computer
systems, light bulbs," says Nickels, whose city's economy is larger
than Ireland's. "If we invest in efficient technologies, that can
have huge implications for climate change."
The Profiteer - Jeff Immelt
As the CEO of General Electric, Jeff Immelt is interested in global
warming for only one reason: the bottom line. "Rest assured, I
am not tackling climate concerns because it's moral or trendy or good
for P.R.," he says. "The biggest driver for me is business
potential: It will accelerate economic growth." In May, Immelt
announced that G.E. is doubling its annual R&D spending on clean
technology to $1.5 billion - developing a dizzying array of wind turbines,
hybrid-engine trains, state-of-the-art jet engines, zero-emission coal
plants and superefficient home appliances. In return, the 49-year-old
chairman expects to double revenues from those same inventions, taking
in $20 billion a year by 2010. "Immelt is the tipping point,"
says Joel Makower of Clean Edge, a leading green-business consulting
firm. "Where he goes on climate, industry will follow."
Immelt, whose company is one of the world's biggest polluters, is
part of a growing push by industry to cash in on the business opportunities
presented by global warming. In October, Wal-Mart unveiled a plan to
invest $500 million annually to make its stores and trucks more energy
efficient. Whether such corporate giants follow through on their commitments
remains to be seen - but as companies and consumers search for replacements
for fossil fuels, Immelt is banking on GE's ability to supply them with
cleaner machines. "We now live in a carbon-constrained world where
the amount of CO2 must be reduced," he says. "GE has built
a history on solving the world's toughest problems, and this one is
no exception."
Immelt majored in math at Dartmouth, where he was an active frat member
and "Animal House" fan, before getting an MBA at Harvard and
going to work for G.E. at age 27. As CEO, he has ordered the company
to boost its own energy efficiency by 30 percent over the next seven
years and to reduce its projected pollution by 40 percent. To the shock
of environmental advocates and industry colleagues, he has also called
for a federal policy to reduce global warming.
"Industry cannot solve the problems of the world alone,"
he says. "We need to work in concert with government."
The Big-Three Foe - Dan Becker
"Convincing the automotive industry to change their business
practices," says Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global
warming program, "is like pushing a Suburban up a mountain with
your nose." Still, Becker has shouldered that Sisyphean task for
the last 16 years, lobbying on Capitol Hill and in Detroit's corporate
suites for stricter fuel-economy standards and improved environmental
design.
"Every gallon of gas we burn produces 28 pounds of global warming,"
Becker explains. "And the biggest single step we can take to curb
global warming is to make cars go further on their fuel."
Becker has taken that challenge not only to the federal government
but also straight into America's garages. When Toyota and Honda introduced
their first hybrid models in 2000, the Sierra Club gave both companies
its first-ever award for environmental excellence. Then, with the aid
of a former Big Three automotive adman, Becker helped launch the Sierra
Club's "I Will Evolve" campaign. It aimed at educating and
exciting young people about hybrid vehicles and alternative fuel sources,
with the conviction that they can set car trends, just as they do for
fashion and music.
This summer, after decades of publicly castigating Ford for its atrocious
fuel-economy record (Becker calls the Ford Excursion the "Ford
Valdez"), the environmentalist offered the automaker a carrot rather
than a stick. In return for Ford's pledge to cut its fleet's global
warming emissions by 40 percent by the year 2030, Becker said the Sierra
Club would publicly support the new Mercury Mariner hybrid SUV.
Although encouraged by the incremental change he has seen, Becker
is aware that the relationship between the Sierra Club and the car industry
remains a tenuous peace. In 2004, Becker helped steer a law through
the California Legislature that establishes the world's strictest emissions
standards - aiming to cut auto exhaust levels by 25 percent by 2016.
Canada recently adopted the new standards, and 10 Northeastern and Pacific
states are poised to do the same.
The chain reaction has sent shock waves into the auto industry, and
last winter the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers filed suit against
the state of California, challenging not only the new standards but
also the Legislature's right to set the rules in the first place. "They're
gearing up for a big fight," Becker says. "It won't be easy,
but I believe we can win. This is the tipping point, and once we get
past it, all of America will be able to breathe easier."
The Developer - Robert Congel
Robert Congel wants you to know that Destiny USA is not just another
mall. The 800-acre resort, slated to open in his hometown of Syracuse,
N.Y., in 2009, will be the largest man-made structure on earth. Designs
for the $20 billion complex include 1,000 shops and restaurants, 80,000
hotel rooms in 12 high-rise towers, a 40,000-seat arena, performance
theaters, and a 200-acre climate-controlled recreational biosphere.
But here's the capper: The entire development will be built and operated
without burning a single gallon of fossil fuel. Bulldozers. cranes and
construction trucks will run on biodiesel. The completed mini-city will
be powered by wind turbines, solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells. Food
in Destiny USA restaurants will be organically or locally grown. The
jolly green mall, Congel explains, is "a gigantic research lab
disguised as a resort." As the biggest renewable-energy development
in the world, Destiny USA will be a new paradigm for a clean future.
The 70-year-old Congel is famous for malling the Northeast. Twenty-five
of his complexes dot the area. The ambitious developer first envisioned
Destiny USA as a Mall of America for upstate New York, a tourist attraction
to boost the area's economy. Then he visited the D-day beaches of Normandy
with his family in 2001. Walking among the graves of tens of thousands
of American soldiers, he says, left him with a nagging question: What
have you done for this wonderful country that gave you all these blessings?
Shortly after returning from Normandy, the self-described "profit-motivated
guy" saw the dark side of our oil-drunk world.
"Nobody wants to see these kids coming back from Iraq with their
legs shot off or in body bags, just for oil," he says. Congel,
who began his career as a "ditch-digging contractor," is confident
that projects like Destiny USA can help America wean itself from oil
and preserve our standard of living. After all, he is talking about
building a new paradise of consumerism. "I think we can live responsibly
and have a better lifestyle than we have now," Congel says.
The Futurist - Martin Hoffert
To borrow an old phrase, Martin Hoffert sees the world of tomorrow
today. "We're using fossil fuels a million times faster than nature
is making fossil fuels," he says. "That's a shock to the system."
What also may be a shock are the alternative energy sources that Hoffert,
a physics professor at New York University, has tapped to combat global
warming.
Take, for instance, his notion of wiring the entire planet with thousands
of miles of superconductor cables to transmit electricity efficiently.
Conceivably, we could create one huge energy grid, where Beijing could
buy electricity from Boise. Then there's his plan for suspending turbines
in the jet stream to harness wind power. And don't overlook his idea
for sparking nuclear fusion by extracting helium-3 from the atmospheres
of Jupiter and Neptune, rendering the entire solar system a "Persian
Gulf" for planet Earth.
At the moment, Hoffert is focused on space-based solar power: giant
orbiting satellites containing huge photovoltaic cells that would capture
sunlight and beam it to Earth to generate energy. There is about eight
times more sunlight in space than on Earth, he points out, and a solar
power satellite - as opposed to planetside solar panels - would not
be hindered by night or cloudy weather. Earlier this year, Hoffert joined
his son Eric (a former Bell Labs scientist) to launch a company called
Versatility Energy to explore the applications of space solar technology.
Hoffert first saw unmistakable signs of global warming while studying
climate change at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. His
research led him to the conclusion that the increase in levels of carbon
in the environment, generated by humans and their machines, was a significant
source of the warming.
"In the long run," he says, "if we burn the whole fossil-fuel
reserve, we have the potential for an incredibly adverse transformation
of the world's ecosystem."
"Climate Warriors and Heroes" was written by Ira Boudway,
J.J. Helland, Sarah Karnasiewicz, Aaron Kinney, Amanda Griscom Little,
Katharine Mieszkowski and Page Rockwell. |
