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Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis--And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster (Hardcover)
by Ross Gelbspan
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Gelbspan, a Pulitzer Prize“winning journalist, offers no less than a call to arms in this treatise on how global warming is a threat and how it can be avoided. Gelbspan expands the argument about global warming: not only is the current U.S. administration to blame, but journalists and activists are as well. Journalists, he says, are culpable because they are minimizing the story; activists, while well-meaning, are so busy trying to form alliances and make compromises that they lose sight of a problem that Gelbspan believes could ultimately compromise the planet. Gelbspan writes clearly, and he argues that Republican members of Congress have latched onto theories of the few scientists who don't believe that global warming is a major problem. He lays out three of the plans being discussed to attack the problem, as well as one of his own (which focuses on changing energy subsidies from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources, funding the transfer of renewable energy sources to developing countries and greatly tightening emission standards). But at times, he adopts an apocalyptic tone”the first sentence of his first chapter contains the words, "global climate change is threatening to spiral out of control" ”and that may limit this work to true believers.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Denouncing the oil and coal industries as "criminals against humanity," Gelbspan justifies his use of that label by communicating his sincere belief that human civilization is in mortal peril from global warming. Yet he recognizes that the American public is not as alarmed as he is, so the first half of his work dissects the forces he alleges are keeping Americans in ignorant thrall. They are the fossil fuel lobby, the current Bush administration, and journalism. An ex-member of the Fourth Estate, Gelbspan denounces it for inadequate coverage of global warming, and when covering it, for giving equal weight to the arguments of skeptical scientists. In the second half, after criticizing local environmental gestures and proposed free-market solutions as insufficient, Gelbspan presents his proposals for separating civilization from its hydrocarbon appetite. Key to the program is the establishment of an international organization to fund green technologies, financed by a global tax on international currency transactions. If ExxonMobil is your enemy, Gelbspan is your champion. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright Â© American Library Association. All rights reserved

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The Heat Is Online
Boiling Point one of the year's best science books: Discover Magazine (Jan.2005)(Al
... But we can stop global warming-by calling an end to the Carbon Age. ...
http://www.heatisonline.org/main.cfm

US Weakens G-8 Climate Plan

New US move to spoil climate accord

The Observer (U.K.), June 19, 2005

Extraordinary efforts by the White House to scupper Britain's attempts to tackle global warming have been revealed in leaked US government documents obtained by The Observer.

These papers - part of the Bush administration's submission to the G8 action plan for Gleneagles next month - show how the United States, over the past two months, has been secretly undermining Tony Blair's proposals to tackle climate change.

The documents obtained by The Observer represent an attempt by the Bush administration to undermine completely the science of climate change and show that the US position has hardened during the G8 negotiations. They also reveal that the White House has withdrawn from a crucial United Nations commitment to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions.

The documents show that Washington officials:

· Removed all reference to the fact that climate change is a 'serious threat to human health and to ecosystems';

· Deleted any suggestion that global warming has already started;

· Expunged any suggestion that human activity was to blame for climate change.

Among the sentences removed was the following: 'Unless urgent action is taken, there will be a growing risk of adverse effects on economic development, human health and the natural environment, and of irreversible long-term changes to our climate and oceans.'

Another section erased by the White House adds: 'Our world is warming. Climate change is a serious threat that has the potential to affect every part of the globe. And we know that ... mankind's activities are contributing to this warming. This is an issue we must address urgently.'

The government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, has dismissed the leaking of draft communiques on the grounds that 'there is everything to play for at Gleneagles.' However, there is no doubt that many UK officials have become exasperated by the Bush administration's refusal to accept the basic principle that climate change is happening now and is due to man's activities.

Earlier this month, the senior science academies of the G8 nations, including the US National Academy of Science, issued a statement saying that evidence of climate change was clear enough to compel their leaders to take action. 'There is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring,' they said.

It is now clear that this advice has been completely ignored by Bush and his advisers. 'Every year, it (local air pollution) causes millions of premature deaths, and suffering to millions more through respiratory disease,' reads another statement removed by Washington.

Washington also appears to be unsympathetic towards the plight of Africa, the other priority singled out by Blair for the G8 Summit in Gleneagles.

The documents reveal how the Bush administration has pulled out of financial pledges to fund a network of regional climate centres throughout Africa which were designed to monitor the unfolding impact of global warming.

'Africa, Asia-Pacific and the Arctic are particularly vulnerable to climate variability and are starting to experience the impacts,' reads another excerpt rejected by the US.

Other crucial schemes ditched by the US include the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) set up to help developing states develop economically while controlling greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the documents, the American government has reneged on plans to 'ensure that the CDM executive board is adequately funded by the end of 2005.'

U.S. Pressure Weakens G-8 Climate Plan
Global-Warming Science Assailed

The Washington Post, June 17, 2005

Bush administration officials working behind the scenes have succeeded in weakening key sections of a proposal for joint action by the eight major industrialized nations to curb climate change.

Under U.S. pressure, negotiators in the past month have agreed to delete language that would detail how rising temperatures are affecting the globe, set ambitious targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions and set stricter environmental standards for World Bank-funded power projects, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Negotiators met this week in London to work out details of the document, which is slated to be adopted next month at the Group of Eight's annual meeting in Scotland.

The administration's push to alter the G-8's plan on global warming marks its latest effort to edit scientific or policy documents to accord with its position that mandatory carbon dioxide cuts are unnecessary. Under mounting international pressure to adopt stricter controls on heat-trapping gas emissions, Bush officials have consistently sought to modify U.S. government and international reports that would endorse a more aggressive approach to mitigating global warming.

Last week, the New York Times reported that a senior White House official had altered government documents to emphasize the uncertainties surrounding the science on global warming. That official, White House Council on Environmental Quality chief of staff Phillip Cooney, left the administration last Friday to take a public relations job with oil giant Exxon Mobil, a leading opponent of mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

The wording of the international document, titled "Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development," will help determine what, if any, action the G-8 countries will take as a group to combat global warming. Every member nation except the United States has pledged to bring its greenhouse gas emissions down to 1990 levels by 2012 as part of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- who currently heads the G-8 -- is trying to coax the United States into adopting stricter climate controls.

In preparation for the summit, negotiators are trying to work out the wording of statements on climate change and other issues that leaders of all eight nations are willing to endorse. The language is not final, but the documents show that a number of deletions have been made at U.S. insistence.

Although the new statement by G-8 leaders may not dramatically alter the other nations' policies on global warming, what it says could mark a shift for the United States. (The other G-8 members are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia.) U.S. officials pressed negotiators to drop sections of the report that highlight some problems tied to global warming, warn of more frequent droughts and floods, and commit a specific dollar amount to promoting carbon sequestration in developing countries.

One deleted section, for example, initially cited "increasingly compelling evidence of climate change, including rising ocean and atmospheric temperatures, retreating ice sheets and glaciers, rising sea levels, and changes to ecosystems." It added: "Inertia in the climate system means that further warming is inevitable. Unless urgent action is taken, there will be a growing risk of adverse effects on economic development, human health and the natural environment, and of irreversible long-term changes to our climate and oceans."

Instead, U.S. negotiators substituted a sentence that reads, "Climate change is a serious long term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the globe."

James L. Connaughton, who heads the Council on Environmental Quality, said the United States was in "extremely constructive discussions on preparing leadership text for the G-8 meeting" that would outline the world's climate change problem in a "succinct and strong" manner.

"It's very important to view [the deletions] in context," Connaughton said in an interview. "The overall context is one of strong consensus about a shared commitment to practical action, as well as defined management strategies."

But environmentalists and Democrats criticized the administration for trying to water down the international coalition's initiative.

"The administration is pursuing a dangerous 'ostrich' policy: put your head in the sand and pretend nothing's happening," Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said in an interview.

Some advocates are urging the seven other G-8 members to adopt their own global warming plan rather than accept a milder statement that they say would provide the Bush administration with political cover.

"The U.S. will just not budge," said Hans J.H. Verolme, director of the World Wildlife Fund's U.S. climate change program. "We'd rather not have a deal than have a deal that lets George Bush off the hook."

Bush's top science adviser, John Marburger, said he is "impatient and frustrated" with such charges, because the administration is seeking to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through technological advances and other voluntary measures.

"From the beginning, this administration has acknowledged the Earth is getting warmer and we're going to have to take responsibility for our emissions," Marburger said. Critics claim the White House believes "climate change is not happening, which is not true."

Several officials involved in the negotiations said none of the document's wording is fixed, and it could change before the leaders adopt a final version for the summit. Connaughton emphasized that the administration's suggested changes address the threat of rising temperatures and offer several proposals to mitigate climate change as well as air pollution.

"We are looking for economy of expression in a leadership text," he said.

The controversy follows recent charges by several climate specialists that Bush appointees are exerting undue political influence on federal global warming documents.

Last week, Rick S. Piltz, a policy expert and former Democratic congressional aide who worked until March in the federal office coordinating climate change, released documents showing that Cooney, the White House official, had edited the office's documents to highlight higher temperature's benefits and uncertainties surrounding global warming. Before joining the administration, Cooney was an oil lobbyist.

In December, the administration issued new guidelines calling for federal officials to have final sign-off on a series of climate change assessment. Several experts objected that the requirement undermines their independence, and senior scientist Eric Sundquist of the U.S. Geological Survey resigned as lead author on one report in protest.

In a May 12 letter from his personal e-mail account, Sundquist said the new rules may make it difficult "to communicate the best independent scientific judgment to decision makers."

NOAA Deputy Administrator James R. Mahoney, who is overseeing the government's 21 periodic climate assessments, said these concerns were unfounded because the government will publish the full reports before political appointees have a chance to alter them.

Researcher Eddy Palanzo contributed to this report.
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