Voter's Survival Kit: Seven Things You Need to Know About Climate Change

Climate change seems to be falling off the radar in this election campaign, which says more about the nature of the campaign than about the issue itself. Realistically, you can't deal with the country's energy needs without factoring in global warming, and the next president and Congress are going to have to cope with both.

Both John McCain and Barack Obama have proposals out there on climate change, but the big problem for many voters is that the debate is so complicated, both in a scientific sense and an economic one. There are so many competing claims that it's hard to keep things straight.

So, in Public Agenda's ongoing effort to sum up the debate for voters who just walked in, we've come up with seven key points to get you up to speed. Our Voter's Survival Kit on this topic, "Is it Getting Warm in Here?", goes into additional background on the issue and also lays out several different alternatives for addressing it. Remember, politicians can't be experts on everything, either, and they're often working off "options memos" and "talking points" written up by their staff. There's no reason why you shouldn't have the same advantage.

Here’s what you need to know to catch up with this argument:

"Greenhouse gases" like carbon dioxide come from the kinds of fuel we use most – namely, oil (which is mostly used for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel) and coal (almost all of which is used to produce electricity). Since people in the U.S. and around the world are burning more of these so-called fossil fuels, greenhouse emissions have also increased – they’re already 35 percent above what they were before the Industrial Revolution.

The Earth is getting warmer – global temperatures have risen a full degree Fahrenheit in the last century. And the warming trend is speeding up, with seven of the eight hottest years recorded occurring since 2001. An overwhelming majority of scientists have come to believe these two facts are connected, that human activities, especially the use of fossil fuels that give off carbon dioxide, are the major cause of this warming trend.

The potential impact is of global warming is nothing to sneeze at. A degree or two of global warming might seem minor, but it’s definitely not. Melting polar ice and glaciers cause coastal flooding in places thousands of miles away. This can devastate communities, especially in poorer countries. Crops that once thrived can fail causing economic upheaval. Miserable insects and diseases flourish in places that didn’t have them before. Many scientists also predict an increase in extreme weather -- fiercer hurricanes, tornados, and flooding, -- not to mention many more really bad summer heat waves.

We can slow down this warming trend by cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions, but the impact probably can’t be stopped or reversed. In other words, it’s a question of how much temperatures rise, not whether they rise. But the less they rise the easier it’ll be to cope.

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we’ll need to look for alternative fuels and ways to use fossil fuels as efficiently as possible. If you get 50 miles per gallon when you drive, you’ll do less environmental damage than if you only get 20 miles per gallon. Less fuel used, fewer emissions.

It helps to focus on which fuels produce greenhouse gases and which don’t. Oil and coal, yes. Nuclear, solar and wind power, no. Natural gas, which is also a fossil fuel, does produce some greenhouse gas emissions, but it’s not nearly as damaging as the big two.

As a country, we’re also going to have to adapt to the likely impacts of climate change, including extreme weather, crop changes and new diseases. We’re also going to have to adapt to reduce greenhouse gases and get our energy from cleaner sources. The question is how, exactly, that happens.

How do we know this? Here are our sources:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2007 Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers; U.S. Climate Change Science Program, Analyses of the Effects of Global Change on Human Health and Welfare and The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Climate Change Site; U.S. Energy Information Administration, Energy Basics 101