On a high-profile and bi-partisan fact-finding tour in Alaska and
Canada's Yukon territory, Senators John McCain, a Republican, and
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic senator for New York, were confronted
by melting permafrost and shrinking glaciers and heard from native
Inuit that rising sea levels were altering their lives.
"The question is how much damage will be done before we start taking
concrete action," Mr McCain said at a press conference in Anchorage.
"Go up to places like we just came from. It's a little scary." Mrs
Clinton added: "I don't think there's any doubt left for anybody who
actually looks at the science. There are still some holdouts, but
they're fighting a losing battle. The science is overwhelming."
Their findings directly challenge President George Bush's reluctance
to legislate to reduce America's carbon emissions. Although both
senators havetalked before of the need to tackle global warming, this
week's clarion call was perhaps the clearest and most urgent. It also
raises the prospect that climate change and other environmental issues
could be a factor in the presidential contest in 2008 if Mrs Clinton
and Mr McCain enter it. Mrs Clinton and Mr McCain, who represents
Arizona, are among the leading, and the most popular, likely contenders.
That they chose Alaska as the stage from which to force global
warming on to the American political agenda was not a matter of chance.
In many ways, this separated US state is the frontline in the global
warming debate. Environmentalists say the signs of climate change are
more obvious there than perhaps anywhere else in the US.
Dan Lashof, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defence Council,
a respected Washington-based group, told The Independent: "People in
Alaska are starting to freak out. The retreat of the sea ice allows the
oceans to pound the coast more, and villages there are suffering from
the effects of that erosion. There is permafrost melting, roads are
buckling, there are forests that have been infested with beetles
because of a rise in temperatures. I think residents there feel it's
visible more and more, more than any other place in the country."
President Bush's administration has repeatedly questioned the
evidence of global warming and the contribution of human activity to
any shift. Mr Bush, who in 2001 refused to ratify the Kyoto treaty on
global warming weeks after he took office, has repeatedly been accused
of doing nothing to enforce tighter controls on emissions of carbon
dioxide and other "greenhouse gases". But this summer, the US National
Academy of Sciences - and the scientific academies of the other G8
nations as well as Brazil, China and India - issued a statement saying
there was strong evidence that significant global warming was happening
and that "it is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can
be attributed to human activities".
They called on world leaders to recognise "that delayed action will
increase the risk of adverse environmental effects and will likely
incur a greater cost". Mrs Clinton, who must first win her re-election
to the US senate next year if she is to enter the 2008 White House
race, said at the press conference that she had spoken to scientists as
well as native Alaskans during the trip.
She said that, flying over the Yukon, she saw forests devastated by
spruce bark beetles, believed to be increasing at an unprecedented rate
because of warmer weather. She also talked of what a 93-year-old woman
at a fish camp at Whitehorse told her. The woman said she had been
fishing there all her life but now fish have strange bumps on them.
"It's heartbreaking to see the devastation," Mrs Clinton said. Mr
McCain, Mrs Clinton and Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and
Susan Collins of Maine, also went to Barrow, the northernmost city in
the US. There, they spoke to scientists and Inupiaq Inuit. They also
saw shrinking glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park.
Mr McCain - with Senator Joe Lieberman - is behind proposed
legislation that would require power-generating companies to reduce
carbon emissions to their 2000 levels. Mr Graham, a Republican, said he
had been moved by what he had seen. "Climate change is different when
you come here, because you see the faces of people experiencing it. If
you go to the people and listen to their stories and walk away with any
doubt that something's going on, you're not listening."
Mrs Collins, a Democrat, was even more convinced. She said the
evidence in Alaska represented the "canary in the mine shaft of global
warming crying out to us to pay attention".
On a high-profile and bi-partisan fact-finding tour in Alaska and
Canada's Yukon territory, Senators John McCain, a Republican, and
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic senator for New York, were confronted
by melting permafrost and shrinking glaciers and heard from native
Inuit that rising sea levels were altering their lives.
"The question is how much damage will be done before we start taking
concrete action," Mr McCain said at a press conference in Anchorage.
"Go up to places like we just came from. It's a little scary." Mrs
Clinton added: "I don't think there's any doubt left for anybody who
actually looks at the science. There are still some holdouts, but
they're fighting a losing battle. The science is overwhelming."
Their findings directly challenge President George Bush's reluctance
to legislate to reduce America's carbon emissions. Although both
senators havetalked before of the need to tackle global warming, this
week's clarion call was perhaps the clearest and most urgent. It also
raises the prospect that climate change and other environmental issues
could be a factor in the presidential contest in 2008 if Mrs Clinton
and Mr McCain enter it. Mrs Clinton and Mr McCain, who represents
Arizona, are among the leading, and the most popular, likely contenders.
That they chose Alaska as the stage from which to force global
warming on to the American political agenda was not a matter of chance.
In many ways, this separated US state is the frontline in the global
warming debate. Environmentalists say the signs of climate change are
more obvious there than perhaps anywhere else in the US.
Dan Lashof, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defence Council,
a respected Washington-based group, told The Independent: "People in
Alaska are starting to freak out. The retreat of the sea ice allows the
oceans to pound the coast more, and villages there are suffering from
the effects of that erosion. There is permafrost melting, roads are
buckling, there are forests that have been infested with beetles
because of a rise in temperatures. I think residents there feel it's
visible more and more, more than any other place in the country."
President Bush's administration has repeatedly questioned the
evidence of global warming and the contribution of human activity to
any shift. Mr Bush, who in 2001 refused to ratify the Kyoto treaty on
global warming weeks after he took office, has repeatedly been accused
of doing nothing to enforce tighter controls on emissions of carbon
dioxide and other "greenhouse gases". But this summer, the US National
Academy of Sciences - and the scientific academies of the other G8
nations as well as Brazil, China and India - issued a statement saying
there was strong evidence that significant global warming was happening
and that "it is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can
be attributed to human activities".