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Global warming and carbon dioxide emissions (last updated March 20, 2002)
The phenomenon known as global warming centers around the possible rise in climate temperature due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases. In fact, more greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are being emitted into the atmosphere, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels, and the global surface temperature has risen by about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the 20th century and is expected to rise even faster in the future. While there is still some scientific debate as to how significant the temperature increase is and how much is being caused by greenhouse-gas emissions, there is little debate that there is some connection.
In order to minimize the temperature increase and the resulting climatic changes, many nations have acted both individually and collectively to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. For example, the United States, which has the highest carbon-dioxide emission levels of any major country on an absolute and per capita basis, has individually implemented fuel-efficiency standards and targeted the worst polluters through penalties and pollution-credit allocations. Collectively, many nations agreed to commit themselves via the Kyoto Protocol adopted in 1997 to meet certain reduction goals by around 2010. However, the Protocol has not been widely adopted, and President George W. Bush has criticized the protocol and said that it will not bind the United States.
The problem of global warming lies not in the existence of a greenhouse effect, but in how human activity may be enhancing that effect so much that climactic changes result. The greenhouse effect is simply nature's way of regulating the temperature on Earth. Greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) trap infrared (heat) radiation from the sun within the lower part of the atmosphere (the troposphere) and then re-radiate some of the heat towards the surface of the Earth. Without such gases, the heat would escape from the atmosphere into space and the earth would be 60 degrees Fahrenheit colder and uninhabitable.
Atmospheric concentrations of naturally-occurring greenhouse gases have been increasing over the 20th century. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by about 28 percent since 1860, that of methane has doubled, and that of nitrous oxide by about 10 percent. Also, the atmosphere now contains engineered greenhouse gases such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), that result from industrial activities and that deplete the ozone layer while absorbing heat.
While some of the concentration increases may be due to phenomena such as volcanoes or the loss of land-based vegetation, one major cause is the burning of fossil fuels such as petroleum or coal. About 22 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide gas are added to the atmosphere each year due to emissions from fuel combustion, still a small fraction compared to the amount of carbon dioxide exchanged in the Earth's normal carbon cycle each year, but enough to cause a buildup of carbon dioxide beyond natural fluctuations. In the United States, about 98 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions are the result of the combustion of fossil fuels.
At the same time, global average surface temperature (average of near surface air temperature over land, and sea surface temperature) has increased, with the rate increasing since the 1970s. The temperature increased about one degree Fahrenheit over the 20th century, and the 1990s was the warmest decade in record since 1861. The temperature is expected to increase by another two to six degrees over the 21st century.
This rise in temperature is believed to be caused by the higher concentrations of greenhouse gases, and that temperature increase in turn is believed to lead to worsened air pollution, damaged crops, an intensification of the Earth's hydrological cycle, and a rising sea level due to melting glaciers and expanding oceans. However, some dispute the significance of the temperature data, arguing that it is still too soon to determine whether the temperature increase is actually significant or if it is just a normal variation. Also, some point to satellite data that shows little if any warming over the past two decades, though such data does not always correlate with what is happening on the surface due to the effect of ozone layer depletion.
While the exact link between the rising temperature and greater carbon-dioxide emissions probably cannot be proven definitively for decades to come, there is an overall consensus accepting it among many scientists and policy-makers. Even a National Research Council study commissioned by the Bush administration in 2001 to investigate uncertainties in the science of climactic change concluded that, while it could not rule out the possibility of some natural variance in global temperature, "the changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities."
Global warming thus became an international concern in the 1980s, when the international community began discussing possible actions to limit human impact on the climate. In 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created to help provide scientific research and advice to policymakers.
In the 1990s, international efforts focused on organizing individual countries' efforts via mechanisms of international law. In 1992, more than 160 countries - including the United States - adopted an international convention (the Framework Convention on Climate Change) committing themselves to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990-levels. Nevertheless, greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and other developed nations continued to rise.
In 1997, international negotiators reached a new agreement on goals for the first decade of the 21st century. The United States signed this agreement, known as the Kyoto Protocol to the Framework Convention, on November 12, 1998, but is not bound by it until it is ratified by the Senate. President George Bush has criticized the Kyoto Protocol and said he will not submit it for ratification.
Both the original Framework Convention and the Kyoto Protocol distinguish participating nations based on the extent of their industrialization. Industrialized countries such as the United States are classified as "Annex I" and commit to meeting specific reduction goals; under the FCCC, Annex I nations committed to reduce carbon-dioxide emission levels to 1990-levels by 2000, and under the Kyoto Protocol, to about 95 percent of 1990-levels by around 2010. Non-industrialized countries such as China and India are still required to limit emissions but do not commit to specific goals.
Such differentiation recognizes that industrialized countries emit more carbon dioxide than non-industrialized nations, and that the United States on its own emits about 25 percent of the world total. Even on a per capita basis, the United States emits more carbon dioxide from fuel combustion per person than any other major country, about 20 million metric tons per person. China, by contrast, produces about 13 percent of the world total and about 10 times less carbon dioxide per person than the United States. After the United States and China, no single country emits more than six percent of the world total.
Nonetheless, President George W. Bush has indicated that the United States will not agree to the Kyoto Protocol because it "exempts 80 percent of the world, including major population centers such as China and India, from compliance, and would cause serious harm to the U.S. economy," as he wrote in a March 2001 letter. The Bush administration has said that it does not object to other countries continuing to participate in the Kyoto Protocol or the Bonn Agreement which finalizes some implementation issues, but that the United States will develop its own alternatives.
Recently, some in the Bush administration have proposed focusing not on how much a country emits or how much it emits per person, but on how much a country emits per $1,000 of gross domestic product. Such a standard would allow a country to improve its environmental record by having its economy grow faster than emissions, thus rewarding efficiency rather than necessarily requiring emission-reduction. Under such a standard, the United States has a good record at about 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide for every $1,000 GDP, but then so does China with its growing economy.
The following photos show the rapid breakup in early 2002 of an ice shelf about the size of Rhode Island on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula, a dramatic example of the climactic changes that global warming may be effecting. Photos are by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (on-line here).
January 31, 2002
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February 17, 2002
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February 23, 2002
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March 5, 2002
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Sources: Data on carbon dioxide emissions for the tables comes from the Energy Information Administration, on-line here. The Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center provides data on current greenhouse gas concentrations and comparisons to pre-industrial levels here, and the DOE's 2000 report on greenhouse gas emissions is on-line here. Temperature data was taken from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, available on-line here. The text and current status of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol is on-line here. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is on-line here. The 2001 report commissioned by the Bush administration on global warming ("Climate Change Science: an analysis of some key questions") was done by the National Research Council and is available via the National Academy Press.
Superfund (last updated April 23, 2002)
The Superfund legislation, which was enacted in 1980, has funded the cleanup of hundreds of hazardous waste sites nationwide. As of August 2000, there were 1,509 sites on the National Priorities List and 757 of these sites had completed cleanup construction.
Officially known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), the Superfund legislation provided authority for the Environmental Protection Agency to respond to the release of hazardous substances into the environment, and gave the EPA powers to make the parties responsible for such release pay for any cleanup. As of FY 1999, private parties had paid more than $18 billion to the EPA for the cost of cleaning up sites.
The legislation was passed in response to growing environmental awareness and to the discoveries in the late 1970s that the community of Love Canal, New York had been built around an abandoned landfill; hundreds of families were relocated in 1978 during a state of emergency declared by President Jimmy Carter.
The following map, taken from the Enviromapper tool on the EPA's website, reflects the National Priorities List, which consists of the hazardous waste sites that are being cleaned up under the Superfund program.
The following photos, taken from the EPA's Superfund site, show how the Bowers landfill in Pickaway County, Ohio, was turned into wetlands due to efforts funded by Superfund.
Before clean-up
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During clean-up, 1993
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After clean-up, 1997
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As for Smelterville, Idaho (featured in the April 22, 2002 episode of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart), the Superfund site there is at the Bunker Hill Mining & Metallurgical Complex, which covers 350 acres of northern Idaho. The plant smelted lead and zinc for 50 years, and closed in 1981 for economic reasons. Elevated levels of metals such as lead were found in the area beginning in the 1970s and are the result of the historic mining, milling and smelting activities, according to the EPA's September 1992 record of decision for the site.
EPA cleanup activities at the mining complex began in the 1980s and have included several rounds in which the EPA or the parties deemed responsible have removed contaminated soil from residential yards and controlled the dust in residential areas.
For more on the environment, go here.
Sources: The EPA's page on Superfund is on-line here. The Enviromapper tool is on-line here, and pictures of the Bowers landfill in Ohio are taken from a page here. Information on the Smelterville, Idaho facility is located here and through the EPA's National Priorities List in Idaho, on-line here.
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (last updated March 20, 2002)
A battleground in the debate linking environmentalism and energy policy, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is a 19-million acre area on the northeast corner of Alaska, bordering Canada on its east and the Arctic Ocean on its north. While much of the ANWR was designated protected wilderness in 1980, the status of a 1.5-million-acre coastal plain area (known as the "1002 Area") was specifically left open pending geological studies, and thus is the area under dispute.
A 1998 geological study by the U.S. Geological Survey of the Interior Department estimated that the refuge's 1002 Area contains somewhere between 5.7 and 10.6 billion barrels of oil. Of this oil, about 75 percent is believed to be extractable (estimates also indicate that it would take seven to ten years for any of that oil to get to market), and such oil would be enough to meet the United States' current oil consumption entirely by itself for about 0.6 to 1.6 years (the United States consumes about 20 million barrels a day). Opening up the ANWR might thus might help increase domestic oil production and decrease US dependence on oil imports; the United States has imported more oil than it has produced since the early 1990s.
The following photo and map show the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's coastal plain and where it is located in relation to other areas where oil drilling is currently allowed.
Control of Alaskan land -- particularly Northern Alaska, where oil was first found in the 1920s and a major find was made in 1968 -- has been a complicated, multi-layered issue, involving oil interests, environmental concerns, federal-state relations, and the land claims of Native Alaskans.
Since the 1950s, land use in Northern Alaska has struck a tense and controversial balance between environmental concerns and oil interests. On one hand, the Interior Department in 1957 opened up 20 million acres of the North Slope of Alaska to oil and gas leasing, expanding a 23-million acre oil reserve created in 1923 (the National Petroleum Reserve - Alaska, or NPRA). On the other, the same Interior Department in 1960 designated 8.9 million acres of coastal plain and mountains in northeast Alaska as protected wilderness; this land would be the basis for what is now the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
When Alaska became a state in 1959, the federal government granted the state the right to select 104 million acres of land for its own management. The state soon reached an impasse over land selection due to the conflicting claims of Native Alaskans. That impasse would have prevented development, and so once the largest North American oil field was discovered at Prudhoe Bay in northern Alaska in 1968, momentum built for a settlement. In 1971, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was enacted, thus clearing up development rights over parts of northern Alaska as well as preserving some lands for special protection. The Nixon administration soon afterwards authorized construction of the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Alaska's southern coast.
However, the ANCSA's environmental protections had a shelf-life and would have expired by 1978 unless new legislation was passed. That led to a battle in the late 1970s over whether more Alaskan land should be preserved or opened up for development. President Jimmy Carter used the Antiquities Act in 1978 to designate 56 million acres of Alaskan land, thus forcing the eventual passing of new legislation in 1980.
The Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980 doubled the protected area to 19.8 million acres and renamed it the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The legislation also permanently designated most of the original range as protected wilderness, creating millions of acres of new national parks and monuments throughout Alaska.
However, Congress deferred decision on a 1.5 million-acre area of coastal plain, the so-called 1002 Area, after the ANILCA section carving it out of the other protections. Whether for symbolic reasons or for the actual development at stake, this 1002 Area has become a battleground between environmentalists and oil interests since 1980.
In 1987, the Department of Interior released its 1002 report and recommended full-scale oil development on the coastal plain, despite the impact that such development would have on native wildlife. Since then, Congress has fought over whether the 1002 Area should be opened for drilling. President Bill Clinton vetoed a 1995 budget resolution that would have allowed drilling in the 1002 Area. President George W. Bush, on the other hand, has vowed to open the 1002 Area for drilling.
For more on energy use, go here. For more on Indian land claims in other parts of the country, go here.
Sources: The U.S. Geological Survey's 1998 petroleum assessment of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge's 1002 Area is on-line here (the photo and map excerpt used above are from this document). Background on the ANWR and the Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act was provided by the Alaska Wilderness League (on-line here), the National Parks Conservation Association (on-line here), and the Defenders of Wildlife (on-line here).
Antiquities Act (last updated December 30, 2001)
The Antiquities Act of 1906 (16 U.S.C. s. 431-33) is a tool by which the President can quickly protect federal lands and resources by declaring "historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest" on such lands. Since 1906, presidents have proclaimed more than 100 national monuments totaling about 70 million acres. Some of these designations have been controversial; most recently, President Bill Clinton sparked controversy with his designations, including about 15 that he designated in his final days in office.
The law, which is also known as the National Monuments Act, was created to respond to concerns of theft from and destruction of archeological sites. President Theodore Roosevelt was the first to use the authority in 1906 and he interpreted the law expansively, seeing "scientific interest" as including geological. He thus designated Devil's Tower in Wyoming as the first national monument and ultimately designated a total of 18 national monuments covering more than 1 million acres in nine states, including the Grand Canyon in 1908. Fourteen of the 18 presidents since 1906 (all but Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes) have proclaimed national monuments, including the Statue of Liberty and more than 50 million acres in Alaska.
Such designations can affect how the land is used and can limit existing or potential development of the land; most designations forbid future development but maintain current contracts. These limitations vary by monument and inspire much of the opposition to designations. Presidents have often explained their designations as a means to prevent commercial development such as mining, but imminent threat is not required under the law.
As for monument size, the law does require the president to designate areas "confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected." Critics have pointed to legislative history showing that the law's drafters contemplated landmarks to be no more than several hundred acres in size, but there is no formal requirement in the law and courts have generally deferred to the president's judgment in such cases. Courts also defer to the president's judgment in what counts as a permissible landmark, though critics say the law was originally designed just for specific objects and not for the conservation purposes for which it is now used most regularly.
Bill Clinton made 21 designations during his administration and sparked much controversy with them. His first designation was the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, which triggered several lawsuits and an unsuccessful effort to amend the Antiquities Act of 1906 to require the president to seek public participation before making any designation (H.R. 1487, 106th Congress).
In 2000, Clinton made four more designations (including the Giant Sequoia National Monument in California, which specifically forbids future timber cutting but allows current contracts to be maintained) and expanded a previous designation. Shortly before leaving office, he designated a number of additional monuments, which the new Bush administration publicly considered reversing. Clinton did decline to designate the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, saying that the area was sufficiently protected from oil drilling by federal law.
Other presidents have used designations to force legislative action in long-running land-use battles. In 1943, FDR designated Jackson Hole in order to protect the elk wildlife that were not in the nearby Yellowstone National Park. In 1978, Jimmy Carter designated 56 million acres of Alaskan land in order to force the passing of legislation preserving even more Alaskan land from oil interests. Congress responded to these actions by requiring the president to get Congressional approval before making any more designations in Wyoming (16 U.S.C. s 341a) or before making any designations of more than 5,000 acres in Alaska (16 U.S.C. s 3213).
Most national monuments are managed by the National Park Service, which was created in 1916 to manage federal lands then assigned to the U.S. Department of Interior, such as Yellowstone National Park which was created by federal legislation in 1872. Most of Clinton's designations (15 of 21) were on lands that were already under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management, and are still managed by the BLM.
Sources: Carol Hardy Vincent and Pamela Baldwin, RL30528: National Monuments and the Antiquities Act (Congressional Research Service, April 17, 2000). National Wildlife Federation (Q&A available here). Alfred Runte, National Parks: the American experience (University of Nebraska Press, 2d ed., 1987). Notes to 16 U.S.C. 431, available on-line via Findlaw.com.
Wildland Fires (last updated June 12, 2002) (back to top)
Wildland fires have begun affecting wider areas in recent years. With human development pushing the edges of the urban-wildland border, such fires are now directly affecting more people and have resulted in the evacuations of some communities. Most recently, in the summer of 2002, communities in Colorado and California have been threatened with particularly severe fires.
Besides weather patterns, the federal government has identified several causes of this increased severity : the unintended results of a long-standing fire-suppression policy, the introduction of non-native weeds and grasses, and the spread of human development deeper into areas previously left as wildland. In response, the federal government has been developing a long-term National Fire Plan that would better organize and support efforts to improve firefighting abilities and to reduce the risk of fires through controlled burns and the removal of undergrowth.
In the year 2000, which was said to be one of the worst years in a half-century, fires in Idaho and Monatan were so substantial and widespread that President Bill Clinton, at the respective governors' request, declared them disaster areas entitled to federal aid. About 123,000 fires burned more than 8.5 million acres in 2000, more than twice the average for the past decade. Almost 30,000 personnel were involved in fighting these fires, including about 2,500 Army soldiers as well as personnel from Canada, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand. The federal government alone spent more than $2 billion fighting fires in 2000.
For most of the 20th century, the federal government followed an aggressive policy of suppressing all wildfires as soon as possible. As a result of this policy, the annual acreage affected by wildfires dropped from 40-50 million acres a year in the 1930s to about 5 million acres in the 1970s.
However, the annual acreage burned has begun to rise again, in part because the aggressive fire-suppression policy is now believed to have disrupted normal ecological cycles. Wildland fires help the overall environment by eliminating dead or dying trees that would otherwise fill the forest floor. With fires suppressed by humans, wildland areas have accumulated heavy undergrowth that now serves as fuel for the fires that do happen, thus making such fires more severe than before.
In addition, human development has played a major part. First of all, humans also cause most wildland fires, as opposed to lightning strikes, according to statistics collected by the National Interagency Fire Center. The introduction of non-native weeds and grasses has also added fuel to the undergrowth, and the spread of human development into fire-prone areas has put more people and communities at risk than before.
Since the early 1990s, the federal government has tried to reduce the risks of wildland fires through a fire management policy. The Departments of Agriculture and the Interior have been treating increasingly greater areas by removing brush, small trees and down material through small, intentionally-set, "prescribed" fires and mechanical thinning techniques. In 1999, the federal government spent about $489 million to treat about 2.2 million acres.
In response to the 2000 wildfires and to further coordinate and support a broad-based fire-management policy, the USDA Forest Service and the Department of the Interior have been developing a National Fire Plan. Work on the plan was authorized in 2001, and a 10-year comprehensive strategy was completed in August 2001. An implementation plan was to be completed by May 2002.
However, aspects of this fire-management policy can go awry. In May 2000, one such prescribed fire in New Mexico's Bandelier National Park went out of control and resulted in the burning of 48,000 acres, the evacuation of thousands of people, damage to or the destruction of around 300 homes, and damage to nearby Los Alamos National Laboratories.
Sources: Much information is available through the National Fire Plan's website, on-line here. Managing the Impact of Wildfires on Communities and the Environment, A Report to the President in Response to the Wildfires of 2000 (USDA Forest Service and the Department of the Interior, September 8, 2000), on-line here. The Fire Plan's 10-year comprehensive strategy is on-line here. Statistics on the number of wildland fires and the acreage affected are available from the National Interagency Fire Center, on-line here, and the wildland fire photo used is from the NIFC's Image Portal, on-line here. The NIFC also has information on current fires.
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