Editorial:

Acting locally to stem global warming

Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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Global warming is one of those problems that is so, well, global, that it's hard to relate to it. Our global energy use is causing heat trapping gasses to build up in the atmosphere, thus raising the temperature of the earth and the oceans and changing our climate. The vastness of the problem makes a lot of people just turn off to it and continue on with their lives. That isn't good when you consider the potentially dramatic effects of global warming.

A report released last week by a team of 14 scientists and the Union of Concerned Scientists brings the issue far closer to home for those of us in New England -- let's say they've painted the scenario of "local warming." By doing so, the researchers have performed a public service by telling us just what global warming could do to us here in this region and what we can do to stem its effects.

There's a big caveat: What the researchers have done is to predict local and regional effects of climate change. Though their modeling was extensive and painstaking, other scientists have long warned that it is very difficult to make on-the-ground, locally-based climate predictions. Yet even if the scientists are off by a degree here or there, their larger message is still compelling: The character of New England and the Northeast stands to profoundly change if we do nothing to curb global warming.

The study's authors predict that by the end of the century, summers in Maine could warm to the point where they would resemble summers in Maryland. We'd have 50 percent fewer days with snow on the ground and experience a lot more rain during the winter. Droughts will be more frequent. We'd suffer 60 more days per year with above-90 degree temperatures. All of this has major implications for tourism in the state and region, as well as agriculture, forestry and other natural-resource dependent industries.

Yet scientists also presented a different outcome: what would happen if we took decisive action and reduced by 50 percent the heat-trapping emissions that cause global warming. While they say that global climate change is not stoppable at this point, its growth can be slowed. Under the 50 percent reduction scenario, the climate here during a Maine summer would more likely resemble New York's by the end of the century and we'd have more snow on the ground during the winter.

That's a substantial difference.

Reducing those emissions by half will take enormous commitment and discipline in the region and action by the federal government to reduce smokestack emissions nationally -- a step the current adminstration refuses to take.

Taking steps to reduce emissions could also spur the development of new technologies and industries, especially in a region so rich in intellectual capital and a strong work ethic.

We'll have to increase building and industrial efficiencies; provide incentives for energy saving technology use; develop alternative energy sources like wind; promote the development of better mass transit and the production and use of more efficient vehicles. All those are recipes not for crippling our economy, but rather for spurring innovation and growth.

The Northeast region is the seventh largest emitter of carbon dioxide -- the most important heat-trapping gas -- when ranked against all the nations of the world. We're grateful for the report issued last week because it brings the effects of global warming home to our doorstep in ways that we can understand. Yet given our contribution to a problem that is truly international in nature, and the resources we have to devise solutions to the problem, acting in measured and deliberate ways to curb global warming is not simply important so that we can keep our snow and enjoy our fall foliage, it's a moral obligation to the rest of the world as well.