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TODAY Friday 25 July 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: Climate Chess: Arkansan Opening

It is always salutary to learn how one's work fits into the larger scheme of things. This morning, National Public Radio featured an excellent report by Richard Harris on yesterday's White House meeting of prestigious scientists talking about climate change. "Global warming hasn't been in the news much recently," Harris began, "mostly because there hasn't been that much to report."

It makes a body feel just a bit peripheral, if you know what I mean, to hear that one's obsession has been playing itself out on the margins of civic life. Of course one is aware, in strictly cognitive terms, that one's obsession is not widely shared, but the power of the obsession is largely derived from the belief that it is important. Hugely important, actually. And so sometimes the distance between the importance one attaches to the obsession and the importance afforded it by the popular media is so great that one wonders if one comes across like one of those deranged guys who claim that aliens are sending radio signals about the extinction of human life through a special frequency broadcast through their dental fillings.

But if Harris is right, yesterday may signal the beginning of a period when more than one-tenth of one percent of the population actually thinks about climate change as an issue of public policy. The President reiterated what he told the United Nations earlier this month: that the government of the United States will support specific, "binding" targets for greenhouse gas reductions, but only after a public education process that allows the American public to understand why such targets are desirable. Bill Clinton knows that anything negotiated at the Kyoto conference this December will have to be ratified by the US Senate, and he knows that oil, coal, and automotive lobbies are already spending considerable sums on an education process of their own. Domestic opinion is up for grabs, and it is all to the President's credit that he is trying to win it over systematically.

Yesterday's symposium, reported Harris, was the first in a series of public events in which the Administration will try to attract media attention to the science and consequences of climate change. There will be town meeting-style regional events, more scientific symposiums, conferences with economists and technologists, all culminating in a big October gathering in which we'll hear how market forces can be harnessed in the service of "realistic" climate change policies that will serve the long-term growth of the American economy and not really hurt at all (except a little, maybe) in the short run. Fair enough.

Logically enough, the President's opening gambit was with Big Name Science -- Nobel laureates and distinguished others who outshine the academically lackluster mavericks promoted by the fuel industries. Scientists well known by climate obsessivists -- Henry Kendall, Jane Lubchenco, John Holdren, Stephen Schneider -- spoke to cameras and microphones on what we know about global warming and what might ensue if we don't modify it. Kendall thought people in the tropics would suffer the harshest consequences; many of them would by necessity become "environmental refugees" seeking asylum in temperate-zone countries. Lubcehenco concentrated on losses of plant species in the United States itself, from grasses in the Midwest to Sugar Maple trees in New England. Holdren described the need to emphasize energy conservation and renewable resources.

It will be interesting to learn today just how much news coverage the scientists will receive. At nine o'clock this morning I only know that NPR and the Wall Street Journal thought the meeting newsworthy and that The New York Times did not. Well, whatever. It's just comforting to know that, for the next six months, at least, editors sometimes will actually have to wrestle with decisions about whether and how to cover our heretofore private obsession.

TODAY ON THE SITE

There's good new material on the science, politics, and diplomacy of climate change available now from Leonie Haimson in our In The Trenches section. Keep a scorecard as we count down to Kyoto.

Recent "Today" columns:

7/24: Top and Bottom
7/23: Smart Exxon
7/22: Climate Chess
7/21: Don't Know Much About Conservation
7/18: All Aboard
7/17: Downward and Outward Mobility
7/16: A Muggy Day on The Hill
7/15: Plug for Planet Ark
7/14: Follow Me
7/11: Blood Sports

To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.