National Geographic

plentiful and cheap in many parts of the world, andthere is every reason to believe that both will beconsumed by industry so long as it pays to do so.”The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changewas established in late 1988, after a variety of factorshad pushed the greenhouse efect into the spot-light. That year there was severe drought and heatin the United States and vast fires in the Amazonrain forest and in Yellowstone National Park. Theoutline of a solution had been forged just one yearearlier as the world’s nations agreed on the Mon-treal Protocol, which set steps to eliminate certainsynthetic compounds imperiling the atmosphere’sprotective ozone layer.The crystallizing moment came on June 23, inunnerving Senate testimony. James E. Hansen—aclimate scientist who’d turned his attention fromstudying the searing conditions on Venus to Earth’shuman-changed atmosphere—concluded bluntlythat “the greenhouse efect has been detected andis changing our climate now.”``````MY JOURNALISTIC JOURNEY to learn about climatechange science, impacts, and related energy choicesbegan in earnest later that month in Toronto, at thefirst World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere.It’s never stopped, weaving from the North Pole tothe White House, from solar-tech labs and nuclearplant fuel pools to the Vatican. Details changed, butin many ways the main issues remain roughly as Iand other journalists found them in 1988.That October, my Discover magazine cover storytouched on the flooding threat to Miami, the poten-tial amped-up power of hurricanes, China’s predictedemissions surge, the vulnerability of California’ssnowpack and thus its water supply, and more. Italso described vexing uncertainties in warming pro-jections that remain today. It ended with this quotefrom Michael B. McElroy, then, as now, a HarvardUniversity professor: “If we choose to take on thischallenge, it appears that we can slow the rate ofchange substantially, giving us time to develop mech-anisms so that the cost to society and the damage toecosystems can be minimized. We could alternativelyclose our eyes, hope for the best, and pay the costwhen the bill comes due.”That warning probably sounds familiar. Scientists,climate campaigners, and concerned politicians havebeen making similar statements ever since. TheirEMBARK | THE BIG IDEAIN 1988 A VARIETY OF FACTORS—INCLUDING SEVERE DROUGHTAND HEAT AND VAST FIRES INPARTS OF THE WORLD—HADPUSHED THE GREENHOUSEEFFECT INTO THE SPOTLIGHT.``````PHOTO: STUART PALLEY``````warnings have not kept emissions from increasing.Glen Peters, a scientist at the Center for InternationalClimate Research in Oslo, Norway, charted the riseof the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere fromthe year 1870—and found that nearly half that risehas come from human emissions in the past 30 years.Plenty is happening with renewable energy tech-nologies, with soaring growth in solar and wind sys-tems and in performance of the batteries necessaryto keep lights on when the sun is down and the airis still. But the world remains more than 85 percentreliant on fossil fuels to satisfy its thirst for energy.Gains in energy eiciency and renewable energy havebeen swamped by rising demand for fossil energyas poverty ebbs. In the U.S. and much of Europe,low-carbon nuclear power is in retreat as communi-ties, recalling past scares, press to close aging plants,and high costs hinder the development of new ones.``````18 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC