The Other Green Party

It ain't easy determining who's Green.

by Mary F. Patel

Everybody complains about the climate. But does anybody do anything about it? The reality of human-caused global warming is becoming the prevailing wisdom and, judging by the environmental forums that mayoral candidates are attending and the position papers they're issuing, the discussion is having a local impact.

Earlier this month, Mayor John Street outlined six proposals to make the city green, including making the Philadelphia International Airport the largest user of wind energy of any airport, purchasing 22 hybrids for the city car fleet, making sure that the unions would allow the new Comcast high-rise to use waterless urinals, and joining with other cities under the Clinton Climate Initiative to bargain for energy-efficient products.

Gov. Ed Rendell has long been environmentally friendly, with the nation's first waste-coal-to-diesel plant (in Schuylkill County), the state's Energy Harvest Grant Program and Renewable Agricultural Energy Council and the expansion of the state's Alternative Fuels Incentive Grant Program to his credit.

But the most visible and greenest political figure is Al Gore.

The former vice president is now outshining the sun since he won an Oscar for his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and is now busy coordinating global Live Earth concerts this summer with major rock stars, while he is being drafted to run for president.

It would seem that if you're not with the green, then you must work for an oil company.

However, while there seems to be a popular surge in sympathy for the environment and growing consensus among scientists that global warming is man-made, there is still a political debate fueled by a handful of noisy skeptics who gain notoriety from being the devil's advocate.

Take, for example, Robert Giegengack, a geology professor at Penn, who has been receiving a great deal of publicity lately. He was profiled last month in an article in Philadelphia magazine that discussed his views and teachings that global warming is not an imminent threat.

In an interview with this reporter, Giegengack describes himself as a flaming liberal.

He is not employed by an oil company but some of his research papers have been funded by Chevron U.S.A. and the Dakhleh Trust, of which Shell Oil is a sponsor. Giegengack said he would gladly take more money from oil companies if he could, but at present he doesn't have any offers. Often academic researchers, like himself, have to find grant money to fund their own research since the schools often won't pay.

He added that he thinks that accepting oil money would not influence his research in any way and that he believes in full disclosure of funding sources. "In fact, it's a policy here at Penn," he said.

Giegengack thinks Gore's documentary is inaccurate and politicizes an issue that should be left to scientists.

But isn't the issue political? Seth Shulman, a journalist and author of the recent report "Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco's Tactics to 'Manufacture Uncertainty' on Climate Change," for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said, "As former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moyihan famously put it, we are each entitled to our own opinion. But no one is entitled to his own facts. Global warming is, like so many other issues, a vital political issue that is based on complex scientific data and analysis," said Shulman. "There is a clear bright line here that holds for all technical political issues. We need the best scientific analysis we can get. We need to know if the earth is warming and to what extent human activity is responsible."

Beyond that, Giegengack said he thinks Gore's suggestions of buying special lightbulbs, cutting back on energy use and writing to Congress will make no difference long-term. Giegengack freely admits that global warming is a problem, but thinks that it is so far away from doing any real damage that it is not an immediate cause of concern.

"Smoking tobacco, unsanitary water supplies and nuclear weapons are a bigger threat," he said.

Giegengack's solution to global warming is to drastically increase the price of fuel worldwide so people — including the enormous populations of China and India — will use less. And even those effects wouldn't be seen for many decades.

So whom to believe?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just issued their report on climate change on Feb. 2 with the conclusion that global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased as a result of human activities since 1750 and that the increased carbon dioxide has warmed the globe.

Giegengack agrees with the report but said it offers no solutions.

So why is Giegengack so newsworthy?

With many scientists in agreement on the issue, it will always be the dissenters, no matter how few in number, who will get the ink and their 15 minutes of fame.

(rcpatel@aol.com)