Earth Equity News

Are Emission Targets Ever Really 'Science-Based'?. By Ken Johnson, Grist, March 12, 2009. "Last month, Senator Barbara Boxer proposed six principles for climate legislation, the first of which was: 'Reduce emissions to levels guided by science to avoid dangerous global warming.' The National Call to Action on Global Warming, announced last week by a coalition of fifty environmental and public-interest groups, is more specific. Its first stated objective is the following: 'Establish Science-Based Pollution Reduction Targets. Cut total, economy-wide global warming emissions by at least 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and by at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050'... And whatever Senator Boxer and Congress do, they are not going to mandate science-based targets sufficient to 'avoid dangerous global warming' -- that threshold has evidently already been crossed. The objective reality is that climate legislation is and always has been driven primarily by politics and cost-consciousness, and only secondarily by scientific realities. But does it do any harm to pretend that policies are 'science-based'? Yes, it does... The pretense lulls us into a self-deceptive sense of security, thinking that no effort or expense need be expended to surpass mandated caps or targets because their 'scientific basis' ensures 'environmental certainty.'"