Ross Gelbspan
author, The Heat is On and Boiling Point, www.heatisonline.org

Ross Gelbspan

More features:

You’re getting warmer
The Kyoto Accord began the race to halt global warming.On its 10th anniversary, why are we barely past the starting gate?

Chill out
Skeptical environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg questions the Kyoto Protocol’s effectiveness

Kyoto: 10 years warmer
The story in charts and graphs

The Ice Man
When Al Gore and other global warming experts want to come in out of the cold, they turn to Boulder’s Konrad Steffen

What is needed is a new Kyoto Protocol that reflects the urgency and magnitude of the challenge: a rapid global transition to noncarbon energy sources in the next 30 years. One approach might involve three elements: In industrial countries, withdraw the roughly $250 billion a year in subsidies for coal and oil and put those same subsidies behind clean energy sources. Create a fund, estimated at about $300 billion a year, to transfer clean energy to developing countries. All developing countries would love to go solar, but most can’t afford it. The fund could be financed by a tax on international air travel, carbon taxes in the north or a tiny tax of a quarter-penny per dollar on international currency transactions. Develop a regulatory mechanism that would require every country, starting at its current baseline, to increase its fossil-fuel efficiency by 5 percent per year. That means every country would produce the same amount next year with 5 percent less carbon fuel or produce 5 percent more with the same amount of carbon fuel. Since few economies grow at 5 percent for very long, emissions reductions would outpace long-term economic growth (for details, see "Solutions" at www.heatisonline.org.)

To incorporate these mechanisms would generate millions of new jobs, especially in developing countries. It would begin to turn impoverished nations into trading partners. It would jumpstart the renewable-energy industry into being a central driving engine of growth for the global economy.

Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
Co-authors, Break Through: From The Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility

Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger

Kyoto failed for reasons having nothing to do with the absence of U.S. involvement. The developed nations that ratified the agreement saw their emissions go up, not down, by 4 percent between 2000 and 2004. Even if Kyoto was perfectly implemented, the emissions reduced would be one-seventh the amount of the emissions China alone will produce over the next three decades.

Kyoto was based on the wrong models of past efforts to regulate pollution. A better model is the creation of the European Union after World War II through shared investments in coal and steel. A post-Kyoto effort should bring down the price of clean energy as quickly as possible through massive public-private investments into technology innovation and infrastructure. Together the U.S., Europe and Japan should invest $100-200 billion per year, which could stimulate $60-120 billion in private capital. This commitment would bring down the price of clean energy while strengthening economic ties between these countries. To achieve this politically, the next president must sell the agenda as the only way to free ourselves from oil while establishing American leadership and creating jobs in the fast-growing and high-tech clean-energy markets.

Sarah Susanka
Architect and author, the Not So Big House series and The Not So Big Life, www.notsobig.com

Sarah Susanka

As someone who has done a significant amount of inner work, as well as work in the world of architecture and design, I’m very much aware that things are not what they appear to be. We see the world as something outside ourselves that needs to be fixed. Yet when we listen to the words of mystics and sages of all ages, and when we study the findings of today’s scientists, we come to understand that there is in fact no separation between our individual human bodies and the world. We are all interconnected and part of one extraordinary movement of consciousness. What’s more, the part and the whole mirror one another. So to change the world, we must truly do what Mahatma Gandhi said: "We must be the change we wish to see in the world."

As long as we focus on a world separate from ourselves and try to fix it without attending to our own individual imbalance, planetary balance will continue to elude us. So, although I believe that Kyoto signifies a very important recognition of the role we play collectively, we have yet to see that it is our individual role in becoming ever more present and aware in our own lives. That holds the key to the shift we are seeking.

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg
Senior editor, www.GreenOptions.com; founder, www.Sustainablog.org

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg

It’s tempting to focus on the fact that the U.S. government still hasn’t signed on to the Kyoto Protocols, and thus conclude that we haven’t made much progress. Despite the federal government’s very slow movement on the issue, though, I think we’ve come quite far. Ten years ago, few would have imagined that a Republican governor would sign off on the first greenhouse-gas emissions reduction program for his state, or that companies like Wal-Mart, Duke Energy and General Electric would be lobbying Congress for regulation of carbon emissions.

We’ve got much farther to go, but I’m optimistic that the United States will fully join the international effort to combat global climate change. The general public, the business community and state and local governments "get it." It’s hard to imagine that the next U.S. president and Congress will be able to not act decisively without paying a heavy political price.

Brian Nowicki
California climate policy director, Center for Biological Diversity, www.biologicaldiversity.org

Brian Nowicki

When the Kyoto Protocol was initiated 10 years ago, there was good reason to be seriously concerned about the impacts of climate change on the world’s ecosystems. Since then, science has provided increasingly specific and disturbing projections, and we have started seeing the impacts to the world’s wildlife and habitats. The decline in the Arctic sea ice is directly impairing the ability of polar bears to hunt. Pikas adapted to high mountain weather are losing lower elevation populations. Checkerspot butterflies along the U.S. Pacific Coast are losing southern populations. A wide array of plants and animals are facing the stresses that come from earlier springs, more hot days and seasonal droughts. In the past 10 years, it has become increasingly clear that global climate change not only threatens a wide array of plants and wildlife, but also threatens the integrity of entire ecosystems. If the world’s biological diversity is to survive the next 100 years, we not only need to make every effort to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we also need to take serious measures to protect species and ecosystems from the continued warming we have already committed to.

Faiz Shakir
Research director, Center for American Progress, www.americanprogress.org

Faiz Shakir

In the years since Kyoto, the public cries for taking action to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions are now deafening. To respond to the climate crisis and transform our energy economy, we need presidential leadership to curb this nation’s oil usage, cap and cut carbon-dioxide emissions, and increase investment in renewable energy. While the Bush Administration dithers and delays, leadership in addressing this looming disaster has emerged from two dozen U.S. states and the European Union.

Alex Steffen
Executive editor, www.worldchanging.com

Alex Steffen

In recent years, we have finally come to understand what a peril the climate crisis actually represents. Now we need to understand two more realities. The first is that climate change is only one aspect of a wider sustainability crisis. All good thinking is now holistic thinking. We cannot afford to suffer from "carbon blindness" and ignore the many ways in which our current economic model destroys our planet’s natural systems, perpetuates poverty and stifles democracy. The second is that we have the capacity to build a different model of sustainable prosperity, one which can allow many more people to live wealthier, healthier and happier lives, while dramatically reducing our ecological impacts. In order to do that, we need to unleash new technologies and social innovations, bring forward new policies (including a much more aggressive system of carbon pricing), encourage widespread entrepreneurship and begin redesigning our civilization. A bright green future can be ours, if we’re ready to change our thinking and act quickly.

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