Scientists step up call for strong action on climate

LOS ANGELES — In a change from its cautious approach in the past, the National Academy of Sciences on Wednesday called for taxes on carbon emissions, a cap-and-trade program for such emissions or some other strong action to curb runaway climate change.

Such actions, which would increase the cost of using coal and petroleum are necessary because "climate change is occurring, the Earth is warming ... concentrations of carbon dioxide are increasing, and there are very clear fingerprints that link (those effects) to humans," said Pamela Matson, of Stanford University, who chaired one of five panels organized by the academy at the request of Congress to look at the science of climate change and how the nation should respond.

The three reports issued Wednesday provide the broad outlines for a U.S. response to climate change; two more reports are to come.

"This is the most comprehensive report ever on climate change," said atmospheric scientist Ralph Cicerone, president of the academy, the nation's most prestigious scientific body. The reports outline, "Why the U.S. should act now to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and why we should have a national strategy to adapt to the inevitable," he said.

Robert Fri, who chaired one of the three panels producing the climate reports, said, "We really need to get started right away. It's not opinion, it's what the science tells you."

Fri was acting Environmental Protection Agency chief under President Nixon and until recently on the board of American Electric Power, a major producer of carbon dioxide. "The country needs both a prompt and a sustained commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions," he said Wednesday.

Among other things, the reports recommend that a central agency be in charge of the response, possibly a greatly strengthened U.S. Global Change Research Program. They also outlined a series of potential ways to adapt to inevitable changes, such as shifting vulnerable populations away from coasts and finding ways to protect the limited water supplies in the Southwest.

The conclusions of the new reports generally reflect those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in 2007, but reflect a greater urgency because committee members had an additional five years of research to draw on, Matson said. As a consequence, for example, the academy panels concluded that ocean levels could rise by up to 5 feet by the end of the century, compared with the IPCC estimate of a foot and a half increase.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA reported this week that 2009 was the warmest year worldwide in history, reflecting the belief of most scientists that the situation will continue to worsen.

Perhaps the most contentious part of the reports will be the panel's recommendations for carbon emissions. "We focused primarily on carbon dioxide because it is responsible for so much of the problem," Fri said.

The panel recommended that the United States restrict its carbon emissions to a total of 170 billion to 200 billion tons of greenhouse gases from 2012 to 2050, which would represent as much as an 80 percent reduction of carbon compared with current projections.

"That's a very challenging task," Fri said. "At the current rate of 7 billion tons per year, we would use up the allotment well before 2050," he said. The cap-and-trade idea, which is supported by the Obama administration, has been proposed for several years in Congress but never passed the Senate. It would set overall limits on carbon-dioxide pollution, but would allow companies to pollute more by paying for it and buying pollution credits from cleaner companies.

Last year, the House approved a cap-and-trade bill, but it stalled in the Senate as health-care legislation took center stage. A new version, that doesn't use the cap-and-trade phrase but has similar characteristics, was introduced last week. Lawmakers have pledged a floor vote on the bill this summer.

The national academy is an independent organization chartered to give the federal government advice on science and technology. Being elected as an academy member is considered a major honor for a scientist.

Material from The Associated Press and McClatchy Newspapers is included in this report.