The debate over global climate change has moved to Copenhagen, where representatives of 192 nations are discussing how to address it. Amid all the dire warnings, it’s hard not to wonder whether science or ideology is playing a greater role.
Both are clearly in play in a debate that has taken on near-religious overtones. Certainty is elusive, as it tends to be in science, and faith seems to be replacing it to some degree, on both sides.
On one side: Many who doubt that human activity has driven a rise in global temperatures think they’ve found the smoking gun of conspiracy. E-mails and documents stolen from a major climate research institute in England indicate that some leading scientists fudged data to help make their case, and tried to keep opposing views out of the scientific literature. An institute director’s admission that “some of the published e-mails don’t read well” may have rewritten the global standard for understatement.
On the other side: Many who believe human behavior is largely responsible for receding glaciers and other ominous climate changes remain strident — some would say arrogant — in their certainty not only about causes, but of future effects. Projections of temperatures and sea levels decades from now, and the effect curbing greenhouse-gas emissions and deforestation can have on them, are by their nature fuzzy. They must be recognized as such.
That some key scientists may be have falsified evidence to make their case stronger, however, doesn’t change decades of sound, peer-reviewed science. Melting glaciers, rising sea levels and changing temperatures have long been observed by scientists around the world. The effects of an accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which has grown rapidly since the start of the industrial revolution, are widely understood. The evidence of human influence remains strong, and humans must act.
The international conference in Copenhagen won’t produce the major, binding agreements many had sought, but it will likely produce progress. Monday’s formal decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act will put pressure on Congress to act responsibly and fairly on climate legislation. These are steps in the right direction. Further steps should encourage cost-effective solutions that make a real difference in reducing carbon and other greenhouse-gas emissions, create new economic opportunities and spread sacrifices equitably.
And they should take place amid an open, respectful debate that’s grounded firmly in science, not ideology.
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