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Featured stories in this issue...

The Coal Industry Is in Deep Trouble
  As the bad news about global warming sinks in, Big Coal finds
  itself in decline. They have pinned their hopes on a massive federal
  bailout, asking Congress and the military to jump-start a new 'coal to
  liquids' industry -- but there are cheaper, cleaner ways to make
  liquid fuels.
Breast Cancer Hazard Rising as Girls Enter Puberty Earlier
  The stakes are high: "The data indicates that if you get your first
  period before age 12, your risk of breast cancer is 50 percent higher
  than if you get it at age 16," said the report's author, biologist
  Sandra Steingraber.
Scientists Call for All-out Effort To Save Amphibians
  The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) says that up to
  half of all amphibian species could become extinct in coming years
  through habitat loss and climate change -- the biggest mass extinction
  since dinosaurs disappeared.
Pesticide Exposure Tied To Asthma in Farmers
  Overall, 16 of the pesticides studied were associated with asthma:
  12 with the allergic variety of asthma and 4 with the non-allergic
  type.
Global Warming Will Increase Infectious Disease: Study
  Experts cite West Nile virus as a disease whose spread has been
  facilitated by global warming. A rise in North American temperatures
  since 1999 has allowed non-native mosquitoes that transmit the virus
  to thrive.
'Too Late To Avoid Global Warming,' Say Scientists
  The latest study from the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel
  on Climate Change (IPCC) put the inevitability of drastic global
  warming in the starkest terms yet, stating that major impacts on parts
  of the world are unavoidable.
One Answer To Global Warming: A New Tax
  "Among policy wonks like me, there is a broad consensus. The
  scientists tell us that world temperatures are rising because humans
  are emitting carbon into the atmosphere. Basic economics tells us that
  when you tax something, you normally get less of it. So if we want to
  reduce global emissions of carbon, we need a global carbon tax.
  Q.E.D."

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From: Rachel's Democracy & Health News #925, Sept. 20, 2007
[Printer-friendly version]

THE COAL INDUSTRY IS IN DEEP TROUBLE

By Peter Montague

Big Coal is in deep trouble and wants Congress to provide a massive
federal bailout. Since the beginning of 2006 at least two dozen new
coal-fired electric power plants have been canceled, most for
environmental reasons. As of May there were only 132 coal plants
scheduled for construction nationwide, down from 137 in 2006, and
even this number will likely dwindle. A small but effective citizens'
movement has managed to box in Big Coal.

Last week Alan Greenspan, the nation's financial elder statesman,
acknowledged that the Iraq war "is largely about oil." Big Coal is
hoping instability in the Middle East will spook Congress into a $10
billion subsidy for 10 or more coal-to-liquid (CTL) plants, to make
diesel fuel from coal instead of from oil. Coal-to-liquid (CTL) is Big
Coal's best hope for remaining viable, but the chances of success
grow dimmer each passing day.

As recently as 2004, the coal industry seemed invincible. But since
then the threat of global warming has produced a scientific consensus,
which has begun to produce a political consensus. 'Ban coal' is
becoming a popular slogan.

** U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) has announced he
opposes the construction of any new coal plants: "There's not a
coal-fired plant in America that's clean. They're all dirty," Reid
told reporters recently. "Unless we do something quickly about global
warming, we're in trouble," he said.

** Some states have begun to force utilities to consider renewable
energy sources. For example, in June the bi-partisan Florida Public
Service Commission rejected a proposal from Florida Power and Light to
build a coal-fired electric plant. Florida's Republican governor
Charlie Crist said approvingly that the Public Service Commission's
decision "sent a very powerful message" and that Florida "should look
to solar and wind and nuclear as alternatives to the way we've
generated power in the Sunshine State."

** In January the California Public Utilities Commission voted 4-0 to
prohibit the state's three big electric companies from entering into
long-term contracts with sources that emit more carbon dioxide than a
modern natural gas plant. This means no coal.

** Colorado has a new law requiring its rural electric coops to get
10% of their electricity from renewable sources. And in July
environmental groups in Montana sued to stop the U.S. Agriculture
Department's Rural Utilities Service from giving hundreds of millions
of dollars in low-cost loans to rural electric cooperatives to build a
huge coal-fired plant to supply electricity to Missoula, Montana and
to sell excess electricity far and wide. The case could have important
consequences because rural electric coops rely on coal for 80% of
their power and many have been planning new plants subsidized by low-
cost government loans.

** The Sierra Club is asking U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) to reconsider all air permits issued to coal-burning plants
because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that carbon
dioxide is a pollutant that must be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
The Supreme Court ruling created great uncertainty about the future of
carbon dioxide regulation -- and investors dislike uncertainty more
than anything else. Who knows? Perhaps the Supreme Court ruling will
create some new liabilities among major carbon dioxide emitters. Coal
plants emit more than a third of the nation's total carbon dioxide
each year.

** The Washington Post reported September 4 that, "In July,
Citigroup coal analysts downgraded the stocks of coal companies across
the board." "Prophesies of a new wave of coal-fired generation have
vaporized, while clean coal technologies... remain a decade away, or
more," Citigroup said.

** In late August U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced
that it is reconsidering whether to label coal ash a "hazardous
waste." In 2000 EPA had decided not to apply the "hazardous" label to
coal ash, but since that time the agency has discovered what many
already knew, that groundwater beneath coal ash piles can become
contaminated with dangerous levels of arsenic, thallium, and other
toxic materials.

** EPA itself has also proposed new air regulations that would require
utilities to capture more of the "fly ash" that presently flies out
the smokestack -- and any captured ash must be buried in the ground
somewhere. The electric utility industry presently captures roughly
120 million tons of toxic ash each year. About 38 percent of it is
presently "recycled" into highways and other concrete construction
projects (on the old, mistaken assumption that "dilution is the
solution to pollution") but EPA's proposed new air regulations would
require the addition of chemicals to the ash, making it unsuitable
for use in construction. It will have to be buried in a big hole in
the ground, where it will almost certainly contaminate groundwater
sooner or later.

** Big Coal played a crucial role in getting George Bush elected,
and Mr. Bush is loyal to a fault. The President has said he wants the
nation to adopt "alternative energy" -- being careful not to say
"renewable energy." Coal fits the President's definition of
"alternative" energy.

The administration in August proposed to weaken the already-weak
regulation of coal mining in Appalachia, but citizen groups there have
promised a major fight. In Appalachia, jobs in the coal mines are
being steadily replaced by machines, and the up-and-coming industry is
tourism. In Appalachia, coal companies employ a mining technique
called "mountain top removal," which is incompatible with a growing
tourist industry. As the name implies, whole mountains are blasted
into rubble with high explosive and then gigantic machines shovel the
millions of tons of broken rock and soil into adjacent valleys and
streams. In Appalachia between 1985 and 2001, 724 miles of streams
were buried beneath mine rubble, and 400,000 acres of forest were
destroyed. By 2018 the destruction will have doubled in size. Mr.
Bush's lax new federal mining rules were written initially by Deputy
Secretary of the Interior Stephen J. Griles, a former mining industry
lobbyist who is now relaxing in a federal prison for lying to a
Senate Committee.

** Coal can readily be turned into diesel fuel or jet fuel (though not
into gasoline). Reliable coal-to-liquid (CTL) technology was developed
in 1925 by German chemists and it provided half of Nazi German's
military fuel during World War II. Unfortunately, the German process
uses 5 to 7 gallons of water for each gallon of fuel it produces --
and in the U.S. much of the nation's coal lies beneath semi-arid lands
in Montana and Wyoming where water is particularly precious.

Worse yet, the German process (known as Fischer-Tropsch) produces
twice as much carbon dioxide per unit of energy, compared to diesel
made from petroleum. From a global warming perspective, investing in
coal-to-liquid plants could be a serious mistake, and Wall Street
knows it. CTL plants are having trouble finding financing.

On paper, the coal industry has a plan for dealing with its massive
carbon dioxide emissions. The plan -- or, more accurately, the hope --
is to "capture" the carbon dioxide and "permanently store" it deep in
the earth. But our civilization has been down this road before -- we
built 438 nuclear power plants worldwide without any solid idea where
to "permanently store" the radioactive wastes. Almost 70 years into
the nuclear enterprise, scientists still don't even have a consistent
definition of "permanent storage."

If we pretend to have a "permanent" solution to the carbon dioxide
problem only to discover in 100 years that our solution was full of
holes, the earth will heat up rapidly, perhaps even becoming
uninhabitable. Do we really want to gamble the future of humanity and
of the planet on untested (and essentially untestable) schemes for
"permanently" storing carbon in old oil fields, beneath the ocean, or
in deep mine shafts? Have humans ever engineered anything that could
be considered permanent?

** Big Coal does have one solid plan: they are spending tens of
millions of dollars buying the support of representatives and senators
in Congress. Big Coal is banking on the U.S. military to jump-start
the coal-to-liquids (CTL) industry and thus salvage the future of Big
Coal. If the CTL industry could get off the ground, U.S. coal
consumption could increase from 1.2 billion tons in 2006 to 2.2
billion tons in 2030, according to Peabody Coal Company, the nation's
largest coal producer. Peabody knows what it wants: if CTL gets going,
the value of the company's coal reserves will increase 10-fold.

Unfortunately for Peabody, the military buys much of its fuel
overseas, so a domestic CTL industry might be of limited use to them.
Perhaps a military petroleum reserve makes better sense from a defense
perspective. "Right now, coal-to-liquids looks to me to be pretty darn
low on the reasonable list of alternatives," says James Woolsey,
former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who is part of a
study team examining the Pentagon's energy options.

CTL plants are expensive. The industry estimates that building an
80,000-barrel-per-day coal-to-liquids refinery would cost $7 to $9
billion, compared with less than $2 billion to build a similar-size
petroleum refinery. Despite endless lip service to "free markets,"
Wall Street investors are not going to gamble such large sums without
a substantial return guaranteed by the government. Long-term contracts
to sell expensive fuel to the Air Force is what the CTL industry has
in mind. Presently the Air Force is prohibited from making contracts
longer than 5 years -- so Congress would have to extend that to at
least 20 years (and then come up with additional subsidies, loan
guarantees, and price supports) to kick-start the CTL industry. In
Congress, it is Democrats who are most keen to subsidize the CTL
industry, the New York Times reports.

** A massive study of the coal-to-liquids, released by a team at
M.I.T. last March [7 Mbytes PDF] estimated that it would take an
investment of at least $70 billion to build enough plants to replace
10 percent of American gasoline consumption. And the M.I.T. team
pointed out that past cost estimates of CTL plants have been "wildly
optimistic." All this makes Wall Street investors nervous. They don't
want more blather about free markets. They want substantial gains
guaranteed by government.

** Virginia is a coal state, but a June 5 editorial in the Roanoke
Times, titled, "Billion-Dollar Boondoggle" said, "The National Coal
Council, an industry-laden advisory board, painted an even bleaker
picture. It estimated that a $211 billion investment would be needed
over the next 20 years to replace 10 percent of current gasoline
usage.

"More important, the council found that burning the same amount of
coal to produce electricity to power plug-in hybrids would replace
twice as much oil without generating nearly as much greenhouse gas."

** This summer the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
(IEER) completed its report Carbon Free and Nuclear Free: A Roadmap
for U.S. Energy Policy. As the name implies, the report lays out a
strategy for meeting the nation's energy needs without emitting carbon
and without any nuclear power plants.

The existence of this new report shifts the burden of proof onto the
energy corporations and the federal government to show why we need any
new coal plants, any new oil refineries, or any more nuclear plants.
Has your favorite presidential candidate take a position on this
report?

It is apparent that, for the first time in years, Big Coal finds
itself on the defensive. At this point, their only hope is a massive
federal bailout to jump-start a new industry -- coal-to-liquids, or
CTL. CTL is a dirty, expensive, -- and above all, unnecessary
-- solution to the nation's need for liquid fuels. This seems like a
political fight we can win -- if we can just keep the Democrats in
Congress from making a pact with the devil.

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From: Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, Sept. 15, 2007
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EARLY PUBERTY IN GIRLS TROUBLING

The trend raises the risk of breast cancer, emotional problems.

By Dorsey Griffith, Bee Medical Writer

American girls are entering puberty at earlier ages, putting them at
far greater risk for breast cancer later in life and for all sorts of
social and emotional problems well before they reach adulthood.

Girls as young as 8 increasingly are starting to menstruate, develop
breasts and grow pubic and underarm hair -- biological milestones that
only decades ago typically occurred at 13 or older. African American
girls are especially prone to early puberty.

Theories abound as to what is driving the trend, but the exact cause,
or causes, is not known. A new report, commissioned by the San
Francisco-based Breast Cancer Fund, has gathered heretofore
disparate pieces of evidence to help explain the phenomenon -- and
spur efforts to help prevent it.

"This is a review of what we know -- it's absolutely superb," said Dr.
Marion Kavanaugh-Lynch, an oncologist and director of the California
Breast Cancer Research Program in Oakland, which directs tobacco tax
proceeds to research projects. "Having something like this document
put together that discusses all the factors that influence puberty
will advance the science and allow us to think creatively about new
areas of study."

The stakes are high: "The data indicates that if you get your first
period before age 12, your risk of breast cancer is 50 percent higher
than if you get it at age 16," said the report's author, biologist
Sandra Steingraber, herself a cancer survivor. "For every year we
could delay a girl's first menstrual period, we could prevent
thousands of breast cancers."

Kavanaugh-Lynch said most breast cancer cells thrive on estrogen, and
girls who menstruate early are exposed to more estrogen than normally
maturing girls.

Steingraber's paper, "The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls: What
We Know, What We Need to Know," examines everything from obesity and
inactivity to family stress, sexual imagery in media sources and
accidental exposures of girls to chemicals that can change the timing
of sexual maturation.

Steingraber concludes that early puberty could best be understood as
an "ecological disorder," resulting from a variety of environmental
hits.

"The evidence suggests that children's hormonal systems are being
altered by various stimuli, and that early puberty is the
coincidental, non-adaptive outcome," she writes.

Steingraber's report is being released amid growing national interest
in how the environment contributes to disease, particularly cancer.

California is at the forefront of the research movement. Among the
ongoing efforts:

** The California Environmental Contaminant Biomonitoring Program, a
five-year, state-funded project, will measure chemical exposures in
blood and urine samples from more than 2,000 Californians.

** The Bay Area Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Center, a
federally funded project run by scientists at Kaiser Permanente and
the University of California, San Francisco, is studying predictors of
early puberty through monitoring of environmental exposures in more
than 400 Bay Area girls over several years.

For years, parents, doctors and teachers have recognized the trend in
early puberty among girls, with little information to explain it.

Dr. Charles Wibbelsman, a pediatrician with Kaiser Permanente in San
Francisco and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee
on adolescents, said he now routinely sees girls as young as 8 with
breast development and girls as young as 9 who have started their
periods. He said the phenomenon is most striking in African American
girls.

"We don't think of third-graders as using tampons or wearing bras," he
said. In fact, he said, pediatricians are having to adjust the way
they do regular check-ups because the older approaches don't jibe with
reality.

Steingraber acknowledges that some of the shift in girls' puberty is
evolutionary, a reflection of better infectious disease control and
improved nutrition, conditions that allow mammals to reproduce.

But since the mid-20th century, she said, other factors seem to have
"hijacked the system" that dictates the onset of puberty.

Rising childhood obesity rates clearly play a role, she said, noting
that chubbier girls tend to reach puberty earlier than thinner girls.
Levels of leptin, a hormone produced by body fat, is one trigger for
puberty, and leptin levels are higher in blacks than in other groups.

But obesity cannot alone be blamed for the shifts, she said.
Steingraber's paper explored many other factors that likely play a
role, including exposure to common household chemicals. And she cited
findings that link early puberty with premature birth and low birth
weight, formula feeding of infants and excessive television viewing
and media use.

"My job was to put together a huge jigsaw puzzle," she said.

Steingraber also reported associations of early puberty with emotional
and social problems. "The world is not a good place for early maturing
girls," she said. "They are at higher risk of depression, early
alcohol abuse, substance abuse, early first sexual encounter and
unintended pregnancies."

The reasons for this may be related to the way these children are
treated or because of the way puberty affects a child's judgment, she
said.

"It's possible that developing an adult-style brain at age 10 instead
of 14 makes you make decisions about your life that are not really in
your best interest," she said.

Priya Batra, a women's health psychologist at Kaiser Permanente in
Sacramento, said she's seen the effects on girls who "look like sexual
beings before they are ready to be sexual beings," and counseled
mothers worried about their daughters entering puberty too early.

"It's a stressful culture, and we have a lot of demands on children,"
she said. "It's hard when we add this other layer of early puberty."

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From: Planet Ark, Sept. 3, 2007
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2008 DECLARED YEAR OF FROG TO SAVE AMPHIBIANS

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON -- Conservationists from around the world have declared 2008
the Year of the Frog to highlight their new campaign to save
threatened amphibians from extinction.

The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) said on Friday that
up to half of amphibian species could be wiped out in coming years
through habitat loss and climate change -- the biggest mass extinction
since dinosaurs disappeared.

"It's imperative that the world zoo and aquarium community plays an
active role in working to save the planet's critically endangered
amphibian species," said WAZA president Karen Sausman following the
decision at a meeting in Budapest.

As part of the campaign, which needs to raise up to US$60 million in
funding, WAZA also set up a petition calling on all governments to
take action to beat the amphibian crisis and agreed to an Amphibian
Ark captive breeding programme.

"It's both our obligation and our privilege to help these glorious
animals. We invite all people around the world to help amphibians
survive by signing our global petition and contributing to fund this
initiative," Sausman added.

The programme will bring priority amphibian species into dedicated
facilities at zoos, aquariums, and other institutions around the world
for safekeeping and breeding.

The creatures will be released back into the wild when the original
threats have been controlled.

WAZA, founded in 1946, is the umbrella organisation for 237 major zoos
and aquariums as well as 24 regional or national federations
representing a further 1,100 zoos and aquariums.

IUCN, the World Conservation Union, which is taking part in the
Amphibian Ark programme, said 1,856 of the 5,743 known amphibian
species were threatened with extinction.

WAZA, which hopes its petition will be signed by the millions of
people who visit zoos and aquariums each year, appointed world
renowned British naturalist David Attenborough as patron of the Year
of the Frog.

"Without an immediate and sustained conservation effort to support
captive management, hundreds of species of these wonderful creatures
could become extinct in our own lifetime," he said.

"But implementation calls for financial and political support from all
parts of the world."

Copyright Reuters

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From: Scientific American, Sept. 17, 2007
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PESTICIDE EXPOSURE TIED TO ASTHMA IN FARMERS

By Anthony J. Brown, MD

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -- Exposure to several commonly used
pesticides appears to increase the risk of asthma, US researchers
report.

This finding stems from a study of nearly 20,000 farmers, which was
presented Sunday at the European Respiratory Society Annual Congress
in Stockholm.

Pesticide exposure is a "potential risk factor for asthma and
respiratory symptoms among farmers," lead author Dr. Jane A. Hoppin,
from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, told Reuters Health.

"Because grains and animals are more common exposures in agricultural
settings, pesticides may be overlooked," Hoppin warned, adding:
"Better education and training of farmers and pesticide handlers may
help to reduce asthma risk."

Of the 19,704 farmers included in the study, 127 had self-reported
(doctor diagnosed) allergic asthma and 314 had non-allergic asthma.

The main finding was that a history of high pesticide exposure was
associated with a doubling of asthma risk, Hoppin noted. The link
remained statistically significant after adjusting for a variety of
potentially confounding factors including age, smoking, body weight,
and state of residence.

Overall, 16 of the pesticides studied were associated with asthma: 12
with the allergic variety of asthma and 4 with the non-allergic type.
Coumaphos, EPTC, lindane, parathion, heptachlor, and 2,4,5-TP were
most strongly linked to allergic asthma. For non-allergic asthma, DDT,
malathion, and phorate had the strongest effect.

"This is the first study with sufficient power to evaluate individual
pesticides and adult asthma among individuals who routinely apply
pesticides," Hoppin noted. Moreover, this is the only study to date to
do this for allergic and non-allergic asthma separately, the
researcher said.

Copyright 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc.

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From: Agence France Presse, Sept. 18, 2007
[Printer-friendly version]

GLOBAL WARMING TO INCREASE INFECTIOUS DISEASE: STUDY

CHICAGO (AFP) -- Global warming likely will lead to an increase in
infectious disease around the world, as viruses, microbes and the
agents that spread them flourish, experts at a medical conference
warned Tuesday.

The problem is already evident and has become particularly acute in
just the past decade, according to researchers at a meeting of the
American Society for Microbiology.

"Years ago we probably would not be talking about this topic," said
Anthony McMichael, lead scientist on a study entitled "The Impact of
Climate Change on Human Health."

"Human-induced climate change... is proceeding a little bit faster
than we would have expected," said McMichael, an epidemiologist at the
University of Canberra in Australia.

Experts cite West Nile virus as a disease whose spread has been
facilitated by global warming.

Native to Africa, West Nile can be found today throughout Canada and
the United States, according to McMichael, who explained that a rise
in North American temperatures since 1999 has allowed non-native
mosquitoes that transmit the virus to thrive.

Jim Sliwa, spokesman for the American Society for Microbiology,
underscored the potential health crisis posed by a rise in world
temperatures.

"We know that climate change is going to change the pattern of
infectious diseases," said Sliwa at the conference, which, with some
12,000 physicians and scientists, is billed as the world's biggest on
disease-causing microbes.

For example, he said, "the malaria line in mountainous regions will
continue to rise," as global average temperature increases.

McMichael also predicted a rise in the incidence of "year-round
influenza" in the tropics.

Near the equator, he said "there is no influenza season, so as the
temperature rises the tropical areas expand and we'll get more year-
round influenza."

Climate change experts believe that the earth's temperature is likely
to rise by 1.8-4.0 degrees Celsius by the year 2100.

Experts believe diseases worsened by global warming already have
contributed to the deaths of between 150,000 and five million people
per year.

In addition to an increase in diseases like malaria and dengue fever,
global warming is likely heighten the incidence of diarrhea, heat
waves, drought, floods and malnutrition.

To prevent a global warming drive health crisis, McMichael said,
researchers will have to begin to think about the interconnectedness
of climate and infectious diseases.

"We are going to have to think within larger integrated terms (and)
employ a more ecological perspective," he said at the conference,
which runs through Thursday.

However, McMichael said there are some areas where infectious disease
may be less virulent as a result of global warming.

"In West Africa, for example, the rate of (malaria) is likely to
decline, as future conditions are getting too hot and too dry for the
mosquito," he said, adding that there has been a 25 percent decline in
rainfall over the last three decades in the Sahara region of Africa.

"Sub-Saharan Africa almost certainly is in an early stage of a climate
change process which we know is tending to displace rainfall systems,"
McMichael said.

Copyright 2007 AFP.

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From: The Independent (London, England), Sept. 19, 2007
[Printer-friendly version]

'TOO LATE TO AVOID GLOBAL WARMING,' SAY SCIENTISTS

By Cahal Milmo

A rise of two degrees centigrade in global temperatures -- the point
considered to be the threshold for catastrophic climate change which
will expose millions to drought, hunger and flooding -- is now "very
unlikely" to be avoided, the world's leading climate scientists said
yesterday.

The latest study from the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) put the inevitability of drastic global warming
in the starkest terms yet, stating that major impacts on parts of the
world -- in particular Africa, Asian river deltas, low-lying islands
and the Arctic -- are unavoidable and the focus must be on adapting
life to survive the most devastating changes.

For more than a decade, EU countries led by Britain have set a rise of
two degrees centigrade or less in global temperatures above pre-
industrial levels as the benchmark after which the effects of climate
become devastating, with crop failures, water shortages, sea-level
rises, species extinctions and increased disease.

Two years ago, an authoritative study predicted there could be as
little as 10 years before this "tipping point" for global warming was
reached, adding a rise of 0.8 degrees had already been reached with
further rises already locked in because of the time lag in the way
carbon dioxide -- the principal greenhouse gas -- is absorbed into the
atmosphere.

The IPCC said yesterday that the effects of this rise are being felt
sooner than anticipated with the poorest countries and the poorest
people set to suffer the worst of shifts in rainfall patterns,
temperature rises and the viability of agriculture across much of the
developing world.

In its latest assessment of the progress of climate change, the body
said: "If warming is not kept below two degrees centigrade, which will
require the strongest mitigation efforts, and currently looks very
unlikely to be achieved, the substantial global impacts will occur,
such as species extinctions, and millions of people at risk from
drought, hunger, flooding."

Under the scale of risk used by IPCC, the words "very unlikely" mean
there is just a one to 10 per cent chance of limiting the global
temperature rise to two degrees centigrade or less.

Professor Martin Parry, a senior Met Office scientist and co-chairman
of the IPCC committee which produced the report, said he believed it
would now be "very difficult" to achieve the target and that
governments need to combine efforts to "mitigate" climate change by
reducing CO2 emissions with "adaptation" to tackle active consequences
such as crop failure and flooding.

Speaking at the Royal Geographical Society, he said: "Ten years ago we
were talking about these impacts affecting our children and our
grandchildren. Now it is happening to us."

"Even if we achieve a cap at two degrees, there is a stock of major
impacts out there already and that means adaptation. You cannot
mitigate your way out of this problem... The choice is between a
damaged world or a future with a severely damaged world."

The IPCC assessment states that up to two billion people worldwide
will face water shortages and up to 30 per cent of plant and animal
species would be put at risk of extinction if the average rise in
temperature stabilises at 1.5C to 2.5C.

Professor Parry said developed countries needed to help the most
affected regions, which include sub-Saharan Africa and major Asian
river deltas with improved technology for irrigation, drought-
resistant crop strains and building techniques.

Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, said that 2015 was the
last year in which the world could afford a net rise in greenhouse gas
emissions, after which "very sharp reductions" are required.

Dr Pachauri said the ability of the world's most populous nations to
feed themselves was already under pressure, citing a study in India
which showed that peak production of wheat had already been reached in
one region.

Campaigners said the IPCC findings brought added urgency to the EU's
efforts to slash emissions. John Sauven, executive director of
Greenpeace, said: "The EU needs to adopt a science-based cap on
emissions, ditch plans for dirty new coal plants and nuclear power
stations that will give tiny emission cuts at enormous and dangerous
cost, end aviation expansion and ban wasteful products like
incandescent lightbulbs."

Plus two degrees: the consequences

Arica: Between 350 and 600 million people will suffer water shortages
or increased competition for water. Yields from agriculture could fall
by half by 2020 while arid areas will rise by up to 8 per cent. The
number of sub-Saharan species at risk of extinction will rise by at
least 10 per cent.

Asia: Up to a billion people will suffer water shortages as supplies
dwindle with the melting of Himalayan glaciers. Maize and wheat yields
will fall by up to 5 per cent in India; rice crops in China will drop
by up to 12 per cent. Increased risk of coastal flooding.

Australia/New Zealand: Between 3,000 and 5,000 more heat-related
deaths a year. Water supplies will no longer be guaranteed in parts of
southern and eastern Australia by 2030. Annual bleaching of the Great
Barrier Reef.

Europe: Warmer temperatures will increase wheat yields by up to 25 per
cent in the north but water availability will drop in the south by up
to a quarter. Heatwaves, forest fires and extreme weather events such
as flash floods will be more frequent. New diseases will appear.

Latin America: Up to 77 million people will face water shortages and
tropical glaciers will disappear. Tropical forests will become savanna
and there will be increased risk of coastal flooding in low-lying
areas such as El Salvador and Guyana.

North America: Crop yields will increase by up to 20 per cent due to
warmer temperatures but economic damage from extreme weather events
such as Hurricane Katrina will continue increasing.

Polar regions: The seasonal thaw of permafrost will increase by 15 per
cent and the overall extent of the permafrost will shrink by about 20
per cent. Indigenous communities such as the Inuit face loss of
traditional lifestyle.

Small islands: Low-lying islands are particularly vulnerable to rising
sea levels with the Maldives already suffering land loss.

Copyright 2007 Independent News and Media Limited

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From: New York Times, Sept. 16, 2007
[Printer-friendly version]

ONE ANSWER TO GLOBAL WARMING: A NEW TAX

By N. Gregory Mankiw

In the debate over global climate change, there is a yawning gap that
needs to be bridged. The gap is not between environmentalists and
industrialists, or between Democrats and Republicans. It is between
policy wonks and political consultants.

Among policy wonks like me, there is a broad consensus. The scientists
tell us that world temperatures are rising because humans are emitting
carbon into the atmosphere. Basic economics tells us that when you tax
something, you normally get less of it. So if we want to reduce global
emissions of carbon, we need a global carbon tax. Q.E.D.

The idea of using taxes to fix problems, rather than merely raise
government revenue, has a long history. The British economist Arthur
Pigou advocated such corrective taxes to deal with pollution in the
early 20th century. In his honor, economics textbooks now call them
"Pigovian taxes."

Using a Pigovian tax to address global warming is also an old idea. It
was proposed as far back as 1992 by Martin S. Feldstein on the
editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. Once chief economist to
Ronald Reagan, Mr. Feldstein has devoted much of his career to
studying how high tax rates distort incentives and impede economic
growth. But like most other policy wonks, he appreciates that some
taxes align private incentives with social costs and move us toward
better outcomes.

Those vying for elected office, however, are reluctant to sign on to
this agenda. Their political consultants are no fans of taxes,
Pigovian or otherwise. Republican consultants advise using the word
"tax" only if followed immediately by the word "cut." Democratic
consultants recommend the word "tax" be followed by "on the rich."

Yet this natural aversion to carbon taxes can be overcome if the
revenue from the tax is used to reduce other taxes. By itself, a
carbon tax would raise the tax burden on anyone who drives a car or
uses electricity produced with fossil fuels, which means just about
everybody. Some might fear this would be particularly hard on the poor
and middle class.

But Gilbert Metcalf, a professor of economics at Tufts, has shown how
revenue from a carbon tax could be used to reduce payroll taxes in a
way that would leave the distribution of total tax burden
approximately unchanged. He proposes a tax of $15 per metric ton of
carbon dioxide, together with a rebate of the federal payroll tax on
the first $3,660 of earnings for each worker.

The case for a carbon tax looks even stronger after an examination of
the other options on the table. Lawmakers in both political parties
want to require carmakers to increase the fuel efficiency of the cars
they sell. Passing the buck to auto companies has a lot of popular
appeal.

Increased fuel efficiency, however, is not free. Like a tax, the cost
of complying with more stringent regulation will be passed on to
consumers in the form of higher car prices. But the government will
not raise any revenue that it can use to cut other taxes to compensate
for these higher prices. (And don't expect savings on gas to
compensate consumers in a meaningful way: Any truly cost-effective
increase in fuel efficiency would already have been made.)

More important, enhancing fuel efficiency by itself is not the best
way to reduce energy consumption. Fuel use depends not only on the
efficiency of the car fleet but also on the daily decisions that
people make -- how far from work they choose to live and how often
they carpool or use public transportation.

A carbon tax would provide incentives for people to use less fuel in a
multitude of ways. By contrast, merely having more efficient cars
encourages more driving. Increased driving not only produces more
carbon, but also exacerbates other problems, like accidents and road
congestion.

Another popular proposal to limit carbon emissions is a cap-and-trade
system, under which carbon emissions are limited and allowances are
bought and sold in the marketplace. The effect of such a system
depends on how the carbon allowances are allocated. If the government
auctions them off, then the price of a carbon allowance is effectively
a carbon tax.

But the history of cap-and-trade systems suggests that the allowances
would probably be handed out to power companies and other carbon
emitters, which would then be free to use them or sell them at market
prices. In this case, the prices of energy products would rise as they
would under a carbon tax, but the government would collect no revenue
to reduce other taxes and compensate consumers.

The international dimension of the problem also suggests the
superiority of a carbon tax over cap-and-trade. Any long-term approach
to global climate change will have to deal with the emerging economies
of China and India. By some reports, China is now the world's leading
emitter of carbon, in large part simply because it has so many people.
The failure of the Kyoto treaty to include these emerging economies is
one reason that, in 1997, the United States Senate passed a resolution
rejecting the Kyoto approach by a vote of 95 to zero.

Agreement on a truly global cap-and-trade system, however, is hard to
imagine. China is unlikely to be persuaded to accept fewer carbon
allowances per person than the United States. Using a historical
baseline to allocate allowances, as is often proposed, would reward
the United States for having been a leading cause of the problem.

But allocating carbon allowances based on population alone would
create a system in which the United States, with its higher standard
of living, would buy allowances from China. American voters are not
going to embrace a system of higher energy prices, coupled with a
large transfer of national income to the Chinese. It would amount to a
massive foreign aid program to one of the world's most rapidly growing
economies.

A global carbon tax would be easier to negotiate. All governments
require revenue for public purposes. The world's nations could agree
to use a carbon tax as one instrument to raise some of that revenue.
No money needs to change hands across national borders. Each
government could keep the revenue from its tax and use it to finance
spending or whatever form of tax relief it considered best.

Convincing China of the virtues of a carbon tax, however, may prove to
be the easy part. The first and more difficult step is to convince
American voters, and therefore political consultants, that "tax" is
not a four-letter word.

==============

N. Gregory Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard. He was an
adviser to President Bush and is advising Mitt Romney, the former
governor of Massachusetts, in the campaign for the Republican
presidential nomination.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

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