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John Holdren on Climate Change

Recent anomalies in regional weather patterns have focused attention on the potential catastrophic effects of global warming. Warming temperatures could affect ecosystems in a myriad of ways -impacting oceans, animals, and coastlines. John Holdren is Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School, director of the School's Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy, and the immediate past President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also a contributor to a recently released report on climate change issued by the U.N. Foundation.

Q: In the recent U.N. report you helped prepare, there is a warning that the earth could be nearing a 'tipping point' in climate change. What are the most salient warning signs and what will be the potential environmental consequences if this problem is not addressed now?

Holdren: It's clear that climate is not only changing but it's changing more rapidly than most scientists expected even a few years ago. We're seeing an increase in the frequency of major floods, droughts, and wildfires and in the intensity of tropical storms. All of these phenomena have been linked persuasively to global climate change. The rate of sea level rise worldwide has doubled from the average rate during the 20th century. There are a variety of reasons for thinking that the rapidity and danger of climate change will continue to increase.

We need to worry about impacts of climate change on agriculture around the world; we need to worry about its impacts on health, as the geographic ranges of certain pathogens and vectors of disease expands; and we need to worry about the potential for tipping points in the climate, where change becomes much more rapid than what has been experienced so far. Such possibilities include a chance of increases in sea level that might reach multiple meters per century. If all of the ice in Greenland were to disappear, that in itself would produce about 23 feet of sea level rise. If we were to lose the ice in the west Antarctic ice sheet along with Greenland, the increase in sea level would be about 40 feet. Nobody knows at present how long it would take for that sea level rise to occur in a rapidly warming world. It might take tens of centuries; it might take only a few. If the latter turned out to be the case, we could see sea level rise reaching 10 or 15 feet in this century.

Q: The report calls for immediate action to address the challenges posed by global climate change. What are the most significant policy recommendations put forth in the report?

Holdren: The new report for the United Nations by the Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change is distinguished from those of most other high-level advisory bodies in having made policy recommendations at all. Most of the reports that are solicited from the scientific community, including that of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, are actually forbidden from making policy recommendations. But this group was invited to advise the UN Commission on Sustainable Development and the Secretary General on what should actually be done and what the UN should be promoting.

The key recommendations include setting a worldwide target for the amount of climate change that civilization is prepared to accept and then agreeing on reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases around the world consistent with staying within that target. We recommend in the study that the world should not go beyond a global average temperature increase of 2-to-2.5 degrees Celsius above the 1750 level.

This is a tremendous challenge for the world's energy system. At the same time, as we emphasized in the UN report, it is an opportunity as well as a challenge. It's an opportunity to put the world's energy system on a sustainable basis and to do the same for the management of the world's forests, both of which would bring many benefits beyond mitigation of climate-change risks. There is a particularly compelling set of economic opportunities in energy-technology innovation to replace the unsustainable approaches to energy supply on which we rely so heavily today, with benefits in improved urban air quality, reduced acid rain, and increased energy security as well as in avoiding wrecking the climate.

The report gave a lot of emphasis to solutions that have this 'win-win' character-approaches to reducing the risks of climate change in ways that bring other economic and environmental benefits. A specific example is improving the fuel economy of passenger vehicles around the world, which not only reduces carbon dioxide emissions but also reduces the automotive smog that plagues so many of the world's major cities and reduces dependence on imported oil, which is a major problem for the United States, for China, and for many other countries.

The other key aspect of the report's recommendations was that there is as much emphasis on adaptation (steps to cope with the extent of climate change that cannot be avoided) as to mitigation (steps to reduce how much climate change occurs). Indeed, the subtitle of the report was 'Avoiding the unmanageable and managing the unavoidable.' The first part of formulation means taking the mitigation steps that would enable the world to avoid exceeding a temperature increase greater than 2-to-2.5 degrees Celsius, and the second part means taking the adaptation steps needed to make the impacts of an increase of 2-2.5 degrees Celcius manageable. Examples of such adaptation measures include reducing the vulnerability of our cities to sea level rise and intense storms and changing agricultural practices in a manner that enables us to continue to grow enough food despite the warming of the planet.

Q: Though industrialized western nations currently produce the majority of harmful greenhouse gases, one of the looming problems for environmental impact in general and global climate change in particular is accelerating industrial development in countries such as China and India. How can these countries be enticed into taking action to limit greenhouse gases and to confront the threats posed by global climate change?

Holdren: Many people in developing countries have long held the view that climate change is a problem that up until now has been created mostly by the industrialized countries, and that, therefore, the industrialized countries will need to take the lead in addressing it. This principle was actually embodied in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that was signed and ratified by the United States in 1992 and has been ratified altogether by something like 185 countries. So we and the other industrialized countries actually signed off long ago on the proposition that we need to go first in taking steps to address the problem. Ultimately, though, the developing counties-China, India, Mexico, Brazil, and the rest of the developing world-will have to join a global approach to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, because the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from those countries are every year becoming a larger and larger contributor to the global total.

The question, therefore, is a valid one. When are we going to get China, India, Mexico and Brazil into a global cooperative framework in which serious measures by industrial countries to reduce the offending emissions (which it must be admitted are not yet happening in the United States) are followed after not too large a delay by the imposition of such measures in these less developed countries? I believe that this will happen more quickly and more easily than most people currently suppose. The reason is that these developing countries are increasingly recognizing the harmful impacts that climate change is having today on their own societies, and those impacts are only going to grow. In China, for example, it is now well understood that the glaciers on the Tibetan plateau that feed the great Chinese rivers are melting at an absolutely frightening rate as a result of global climate change. The disappearance of those glaciers is going to mean aggravation of the cycle of flood and drought that has always plagued the great Chinese river basins. The Chinese scientific community and the Chinese leadership recognize that these harmful impacts are already occurring, and this is rapidly changing their attitude about the climate change problem. They now realize that climate change is so damaging to their own interests that they're going to have to join in the solution by reducing their own emissions of greenhouse gases, because this is not a problem that can be solved by the industrial nations by themselves.

Q: How can and should the United States assume a leadership position in the fight against global warming in the years moving forward?

Holdren: Up until now, the United States has been lagging more than leading in the global response to the disruption of global climate by human-produced greenhouse gases. The principal manifestation of this has been our refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol to the U.N. Convention on Climate Change. The Kyoto Protocol was a modest first step toward the emissions reductions that will eventually be required if we are to prevent the climate from careening into a completely unmanageable regime. It was flawed in a variety of ways (as most treaties are), but moving forward with it and working to fix it on the fly would have been a far more statesmanlike move for the United States than the unceremonious rejection that was the Bush administration's preference.

We're now approaching a second round in the global approach to addressing climate change: the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, and already the nations of the world are meeting to talk about what to do in the post-Kyoto world of 2012 and beyond. This is now an opportunity for the United States to make a transition from being a laggard to being a leader. The United States should be in the forefront of forging an agreement with the other countries of the world on how rapidly we and they together are going to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions after 2012 and how specifically we are going to do it. The United States should embrace before 2012 a national approach to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions that includes either a carbon tax or an emissions cap implemented through tradable emissions permits (the so-called cap and trade approach) in a form strong enough to generate a major deflection from the business as usual trajectory of emissions growth.

Q: You have mentioned that we may have reached a 'political tipping point' in the effort to begin addressing the real challenges posed by greenhouse gas emissions. Does that give you reason for optimism?

Holdren: I think the political landscape of climate has been changing very rapidly in the United States over the last few years, and it has happened as a result of a convergence of several factors.

One of those factors is the drumbeat of new science-the fact that virtually every week there is a new report indicating that climate change is occurring more rapidly and more dangerously than had previously been expected: fasting melting of glaciers, faster thawing of permafrost, faster disappearance of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, faster movement of species as they are being pushed northward and upward in altitude as a result of climate change.

That drumbeat of science has had an effect on public and policymaker perceptions about the realty and urgency of this problem, and it has been reinforced by the everyday experience of people that the climate is changing around them. People are noticing that the summers are hotter, that the winters are not as cold, that the growing season starts earlier and ends later than it did before. People are noticing that plants they're familiar with are no longer present where they used to be because the geographic distribution of the plants has been altered under climate change. And those perceptions have been reinforced, in turn, by watching on TV the climate changes that other people are experiencing.

Yet another reinforcing factor has been the Al Gore film, 'An Inconvenient Truth,' which recently won an Oscar as the best documentary film of the year, and has been seen by millions of people all over the world. It's a very powerful film, and it is scientifically sound, explaining to people how and why the climate is changing and what kinds of things we have to start doing about it.

In addition, the attitude of the business community has been changing, and that's been a very important part of these converging factors that are really starting to generate a political tipping point. Some of the biggest and most successful corporations in the United States-General Electric, DuPont, Alcoa, Duke Energy-are now calling upon the U.S. federal government to take action to make mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It's an extraordinary thing having these companies calling on the federal government, in effect, to regulate them. I think it's a bit like the plastic thermometer in the turkey popping up to tell you it's done. And we have important parts of the religious community coming out in favor of taking action to protect the climate on grounds of stewardship of the creation.

So we've had all of these factors coming together and producing, I believe, something close to a political tipping point in this country. I believe the current Congress will pass climate legislation of a more serious nature than anything we've seen up until now. I think it's unclear whether or not President Bush will sign such legislation, but it may be hoped that he might actually do so. And if he doesn't, I think it is virtually inevitable that the next administration will do so: the next president of the United States, whether that person is a Republican or Democrat, is going to embrace serious measures to address climate change in the United States, because there really is no other sensible choice.

Q: Along with the broad acceptance that climate change is indeed happening, new skeptics are coming along saying that even if governments and international institutions begin now to respond to the challenges posed by global climate change, it is already too late to prevent many of its catastrophic impacts. How do you respond to that concern?

Holdren: I sometimes say that there are three stages of skepticism. The first stage is when people tell you that you're wrong and they can prove it. The second stage is when they tell you you're right but it doesn't matter, that is, that the problem is not going to amount to much. And the third stage is when they tell you it matters but it's too late to do anything about it. Alas, one does see some people these days making a transition from the first or second stage of skepticism about climate change to the third stage, where they are saying it's real and it's dangerous but it's too late to do anything about it that's going to matter much.

I do not believe that it is too late to do anything about it, and indeed, the major thrust of the recent report to the United Nations by the Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change is that there is a lot we can do about it-both on the mitigation front and the adaptation front-and that many of these things will bring subsidiary benefits in reduction of other environmental problems and accelerating our progress toward a sustainable prosperity for everyone on the planet. But we do need to start now.

The most important message that people need to understand is that there is huge benefit in getting going on a serious approach to reducing the amount of climate change we will have to endure in the future and in taking steps to minimize the adverse impacts that climate change brings with it. If we start now, if we start taking serious action in the next 5-to-10 years to change the business-as-usual trajectory into a trajectory that will protect the climate, we have the opportunity to avoid the most difficult, most unmanageable, and in some cases perhaps catastrophic effects of climate change.

It's thus immensely important that we muster the societal will, that we take advantage of the virtual tipping point in attitudes in both the public and the corporate domain about this issue to move forward to address it. I really have a lot of hope that we will in fact manage to do that.

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