Greenhouse Effect

It is likely that an intensification of Earth's greenhouse effect would have large climatic and ecological consequences. Clearly, any sensible strategy for managing the causes and consequences of changes in the ggreenhouse effect will requir substantial reductions in the emissions of CO₂ and other RAGs.

It is important to recognize that any strategy to reduce these emissions will require great adjustments by society and economies. Because such large quantities of CO₂ are emitted through the burning of fossil fuels, there will be a need to use different, possibly new, technologies to generate energy, and there may be a need for large decreases in total energy use. The bottom line, of course, will be a requirement to add considerably smaller quantities of RAGs to the atmosphere. Such a strategy of mitigation will be difficult, especially in industrialized countries, because of the changes required in economic systems, resource use, investments in technology, and levels of living standards. The implementation of those changes will require enlightened and forceful leadership.

Under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program, various international negotiations have been undertaken to try to get nations to agree to decisive actions to reduce their emissions of RAGs. The most recent major agreement came out of a large meeting held in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. There, most of the world's industrial countries agreed to reduce their CO₂ emissions to 5.2% below 1990 levels by the year 2012. The United States, which has about 5% of the world's population but produces 24% of its CO₂ emissions, signed the Kyoto protocol in 1998 (that is to say, its ambassador to the United Nations signed the plan) but never ratified it as a binding treaty; shortly after taking office in 2000, President George W. Bush repudiated the protocol entirely. (China, with about 23% of the world's population, is the second-biggest CO₂ producer, at 14% of total emissions.)

A complementary way to balance the emissions of RAGs would be to remove some atmospheric CO₂ by increasing its fixation by growing plants, especially through the planting of forests onto agricultural land. Similarly, the prevention of deforestation will avoid large amounts of CO₂ emissions through the conversion of high-carbon forests into low-carbon agro-ecosystems.

The development and maintenance of ecosystems that store large quantities of carbon to offset industrial emissions would require very large areas of land. These carbon reserves would preclude other types of economically important uses of the land. This strategy would therefore require a substantial commitment by society; however, so would any other possible means of decreasing greenhouse gases, and so would a decision to do nothing at all (or to keep researching the problem indefinitely, which amounts to much the same thing). There are no easy solutions to problems of this type and magnitude.