by Kathy Read (NAPSA)—After a decade of contentious debate over global warming—and the extent of human contribution to it—sound science finally is stepping into the fray to give us an effective path forward. Stanford University has anSecWelem nounced a collaboration of some of min AM the best scientific and engineering PT minds in academia and private labs to identify commercially viable energy technologies that can both power our future and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Called the Global Climate and Energy Project (G-CEP), the effort will be led by Stanford but involve other distinguished universities and research institutions in North America, Europe and Asia as well. The timing of the project could not be more propitious. Leading demographers project that the Earth’s population will increase to 7.5 billion humansover the next two decades—a 21 percent increase over the estimated 6.2 billion now occupying the planet. Without an abundant supply of new, cleaner, and affordable energy it will be impossible to feed and house the additional 1.2 billion people—let alone heat and light their homes, power their electric appliances and factories, and provide them with personal and mass transit, quality healthcare and safe drinking water. The Global Climate and Energy Project (G-CEP) will be funded with an estimated $225 million over the next decade by a numberof global energy and technology companies, including ExxonMobil and General Electric. The research andall of its conclusions, however, will be independently developed by Stanford, which was picked to lead the project because it has top-ranked experts in all of the relevant academic disciplines. If G-CEP performs as well the world will be well-served. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions— principally carbon dioxide—will go along way in defusing the controversy over global warming that has roiled the international scientific community in recent years. Proponents of the theory that man-madepollution is a chief contributor to global warming have relied on a United Nations report based on computer models whose worst-case scenarios forecast the Earth’s temperature will rise by 8 to 10 degrees over the next century. Skeptics, however, have suggested that avid environmentalists are using these reports to railroad the United States and other industrialized nations into signing the Kyoto Treaty on climate change. The treaty excludes China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico—the world’s fastest growing emitters of greenhouse gasses and would force the U.S. to cut back energy consumption by about 30 percent from present levels—a reduction that could send the country into a long-lasting depression. The Stanford project—by promoting the cleanup of older energy sources and the development of newer more benign ones— is America’s best bet for a healthy environment and a healthy economy. It deserves the wholehearted support of all those—both here and abroad—whothink of themselves as global citizens. * Kathy Read is an independent Washington journalist and the former publisher of The Wilson Quarterly.
