Thiele: Climate Change and Global Warming Are Increasingly Dangerous Threats

Climate change and global warming are very real and advancing problems that need to be addressed.

While a misinformation campaign financed by powerful special interests has tried to cast doubt on the science behind these environmental threats, it’s important to note that 97 percent to 98 percent of researchers in the field agree that global warming is man-made, according to the National Academy of Sciences.

Climate change refers to the issue that the Earth is getting warmer in some areas, but cooler in others. It threatens to impact the sustainability of our water supply, cause significant changes in our agriculture and create drastic weather like severe floods, extended heat waves and record-setting storms — all of which can have devastating effects on our communities.

In 2010, the Pentagon released a report stating that climate change could become a security threat that imperils American lives. Hand-in-hand with climate change is the problem of global warming. It occurs when many of the sun’s rays and the heat brought into the atmosphere by pollutants like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane get trapped, causing temperatures to climb worldwide.

And while it may not be a story every night on the evening news, global warming isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. Over the past 50 years, the average global temperature has increased at the fastest rate in recorded history, with the 10 hottest years on record having all occurred since 1990. As a result, glaciers melt, sea levels rise, hurricanes and other tropical storms become stronger and less fresh water becomes available as the temperatures climb.

Recently, Tropical Storms and Lee devastated communities across the state and the threat of flooding caused mandatory evacuations in New York City. Humans are greatly accelerating this process by burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests. Coal-burning power plants are the largest U.S. source of carbon dioxide pollution — they produce 2.5 billion tons every year. Automobiles, the second largest source, create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually.

And while the Earth’s overall temperature is increasing, climate change explains the drastic cold periods that some parts of the Earth have and will experience. The circulation of the world's oceanic currents also works to regulate the global climate. It does so by transporting heat carried by ocean currents, which together form the “great ocean conveyor.” Europe has typically been kept warm by this circulation, but new evidence suggests that much colder winters are on the horizon. Instead of the regular warm winds coming from the Atlantic Ocean’s currents, there are now cold northerly Arctic winds coming down, moving through much of Europe.

Worldwide efforts were made to address global warming in 1997 through the Kyoto Protocol, an international environmental treaty that aimed to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, which was signed and ratified by 191 nations. Former President Bill Clinton signed the protocol in 1998. But in 2001, while nations across the globe began gearing up for the necessary changes, the United States sat idly by, led carelessly by former President George W. Bush, who ensured we were the only nation that refused to ratify the protocol. Then, in March 2001, the Bush administration withdrew the United States from the treaty. This further hindered and damaged the United States’ stance and efforts toward scaling back greenhouse gas emissions and for nearly a decade the Bush Administration continued to ignore this issue, sweeping it under the rug, warning that global warming was “just hot air.”

It wasn’t until 2010 that the U.S. joined the United Nations Climate Change Conference, held in Cancun, Mexico. Although only minimal advances were made, it helped lay the foundation for greater change in the future. Keeping the momentum moving in the right direction, the Environmental Protection Agency imposed its first regulations related to greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States on Jan. 2, 2011. New York must do its part to help slow the effects of global warming.

Earlier this year, the Assembly passed legislation I supported to combat this issue. The first would establish greenhouse-gas limits and a greenhouse-gas reporting system (A.5346) and the second would enact the “New York State Healthy and Green Procurement Act” (A.6366-A).