Seven years ago, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ross Gelbspan focused his reporter’s lens on the issue of global climate change and wrote The Heat Is On, a landmark book that exposed the links between the so-called global warming skeptics and the fossil fuel industry, which stands to lose much if the world gets serious about curbing oil and gas consumption.
Now Gelbspan is back with a new book, Boiling Point (Basic Books). This time he examines powerful new evidence that the world's climate system is on the verge of spinning out of control. At the same time, he offers some remedies that the world's governments can adopt before it is too late.
The obstacles -- particularly in the U.S. -- are enormous. The current chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, James Inhofe (R-OK), has said, "With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it." And, Vice President Cheney has called energy conservation a "personal virtue," but not a "sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."
Despite the official denials, Gelbspan marshals an impressive array of facts showing that the climate is indeed changing. Seventeen of the 18 hottest years on record have occurred since 1980.
Glaciers are melting on every continent, and migratory species in both hemispheres are shifting their ranges toward the poles. Coral reefs around the world are dying in response to higher temperatures. Mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue fever are spreading to higher altitudes and higher latitudes. In Alaska, the average temperature has risen by a startling seven degrees over the past 30 years.
Meanwhile, Gelbspan reveals, the oil and coal industries are conducting a furious campaign of disinformation to confuse the public and delay action – and evidence shows that it is working. A 1991 poll by Newsweek magazine showed that 35 percent of the public thought global warming was a serious problem. By 1996, even after scientific evidence had become much stronger, another Newsweek poll found that this number had shrunk to 22 percent – although it has risen since that time, with many people expressing growing concerns about increasingly violent weather patterns.
Gelbspan lays much of the blame on his fellow journalists, who have allowed themselves to be manipulated into giving equal time to industry-funded skeptics, even though they are at odds with the overwhelming majority of mainstream scientists. Nor does he spare the major environmental groups, whom he finds too consumed with infighting and turf battles to mount an effective campaign to fight the oil and coal industries.
To avert the coming crisis, Gelbspan urges a rigorous, global campaign -- based on three specific interactive policies -- to shift power production to renewable energy. Such a program, he argues, would carry the added benefit of helping democratize the global economy, putting the public back in charge of both their governments and corporations.
It's a tall order. But as Gelbspan indicates in this highly readable book (very favorably reviewed by Al Gore in the August 15 Sunday New York Times Book Review), there is really little choice.
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