Seattle and the Kyoto Protocol posted by Ben

Mayor Is on a Mission to Warm U.S. Cities to the Kyoto Protocol

I was pleasantly surprised to read this article this morning. In it, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels discusses how global warming is visibly affecting Washington State and how he has decided to campaign for 140 U.S. cities to join the Kyoto Protocol.

Of particular interest is his discussion of the snow pack in the Cascades. Although I am no longer in Washington, I lived there for the last seven years, during which time I watched each year's snow pack decrease. Last spring I drove up to the Cascades with my advanced film students to shoot a scene for their feature film next to a mountain lake. As we worked our way along the interstate, I was shocked and amazed by the state of most of the lakes. Fully half of the water was gone in some of them, leaving blank stretches of cracked mud behind. It wasn't even summer yet, but the snow pack had receded to only the tips of the peaks around me.

Of most concern to Nickels is the snow pack in the Cascade Mountains, which provides water for Seattle and most of western Washington. Meteorologists say the snow pack is less than one-third of its usual mass this time of year, and is lower than it's been in nearly three decades.

Residents of Washington, whether consciously or not, have certainly noticed the changes in the weather. Winters have been short and warm, with temperatures mild, even balmy, in February. Rainfall that lasts for days on end has seemed less frequent. I remember during my second year of college, we had almost 100 days (we counted) where the sun didn't shine. Such an event would seem terribly unlikely now.

In the last month or two, quite a bit of new data relating to global warming has been released. The most startling revelation has been the increased temperatures that the oceans have been retaining. West of the Cascades, currents and conditions from the Pacific play a huge part in local weather patterns. As those deep conditions change, we can expect to see quite an increase in regional climate change as well, even if average air temperature barely rises.

One of the major reasons that Bush has offered for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol is that it could harm the economy. What cities like Los Angeles; Santa Monica; Portland, Ore.; Minneapolis; Oakland; and Seattle understand is that massive climate change in the long term will cause far more economic damage than the cost of taking action now to reduce emissions.

For a fun research project, you might take a look at the number of real estate developers who are quietly selling off coastal land in Florida. They know what's coming. So does the Pentagon, who released a report last year that climate change is a bigger threat to national security than terrorism. The report states unequivocally that in the future, wars will be fought over basic resources and survival. They know what's coming too. (Naturally, the report was barely mentioned in the mainstream media, and the White House chose to ignore it.)

It's difficult to feel hopeful when America's leadership steadfastly ignores the environmental problems we have helped to create. For all that Bush talks about

"Emerging technologies, such as hydrogen-powered vehicles, electricity from renewable energy sources (and) clean coal technology [that] will encourage economic growth that is environmentally responsible..."

he has already made America's priorities crystal clear: business comes before the environment and in four years, it will be somebody else's problem. (Perversely, Bush's approach to clean coal technology seems to be allowing more emissions and taking away the regulations that mandate bringing plants up to date technologically.) In the meantime, as Greg Nickels has indicated, perhaps the best that we can do is work from the local level on up to build a non-partisan national movement to reduce emissions and curb climate change. Of course, if that movement becomes too powerful a force against Bush's agenda, we can expect the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to switch from their current bash-the-AARP campaign to a new campaign of distortion about those evil, America-hating environmentalists. Ooh, I'm scared.