Environment America is the new home of U.S. PIRG’s environmental work.
Statement of Emily
Figdor
U.S. PIRG Federal Global Warming
Program Director
“We commend Senator Bingaman for working to build
support for action on global warming. Unfortunately, his new bill fails to
deliver the pollution reductions science shows are needed in the next 10 years
to stave off the most dangerous impacts of global warming for future
generations.
Senator Bingaman’s weak pollution-reduction targets fly
in the face of the sobering conclusions reached by the U.N. Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change and leading U.S. scientists about how to prevent the
worst impacts of global warming from becoming unstoppable. (See below for resources on the science.)
To prevent dangerous global warming, the United States
must halt increases in global warming emissions now, cut emissions by at least
15 to 20 percent by 2020, and slash emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050.
The rest of the world must act as well.
The science demands ambitious goals, and meeting these
goals won’t be easy. But they are the minimum acceptable response to the
threat posed by global warming. To protect our environment, our economy, and
future generations, we can’t settle for less.”
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U.S. PIRG is the
federation of state Public Interest Research Groups. State PIRGs are non-profit,
non-partisan public interest advocacy
organizations.
Science
Resources
-To limit the rise in global average temperatures to
about another 2 degrees F – the rough threshold beyond which dangerous impacts
from global warming become unstoppable – the IPCC concluded earlier this year
that global emissions must peak no later than 2015 and decline by
50 to 85 percent below 2000 levels by 2050 (emphasis added). (IPCC,
2007).
-NASA climate scientist James Hansen, who first warned
Congress of the potential impacts of global warming in the 1980s, has argued
that the earth’s climate is nearing a crucial “tipping point” that, if passed,
would lead to “practically a different planet.” “We have at most ten years –
not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the
trajectory of global greenhouse emissions.” (Hansen,
2006)
