By DAVE GRAM, AP
updated
Wed, Feb 15, 2012 06:08 PM
With Vermont still working to recover from Tropical Storm
Irene's torrential rains and flooding, environmental activist and
writer Bill McKibben went before a panel of state lawmakers on
Tuesday to say the storm was at least partly the product of climate
change and a likely harbinger of a troubled future.
McKibben, a Ripton resident and scholar in residence at Middlebury
College, said Irene was one of many signs that the climate is
deteriorating more rapidly than predicted when he wrote "The End of
Nature," the first major book on climate change, in 1989.
"We didn't know how fast or how hard this would pinch," McKibben
said of what was predicted for climate change 23 years ago. "The
story of the past 20 years and even the last three or four years is
that it is pinching much harder and faster than even the most dire
predictions" would have indicated.
McKibben told the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee that
Irene fit "precisely with what the climatologists have been telling
us to expect. It was not an unbelievable windstorm as it swept up
the East Coast. But over the waters of New York and New Jersey it
encountered record sea surface temperatures ... This allowed it to
soak up enormous amounts of moisture, most of which it dropped on
Vermont."
The committee's chairman, Rep. Tony Klein, D-East Montpelier, said
he had invited McKibben to speak to the panel in part as a pep
talk. Vermont's environmental movement has frayed recently with
disagreements over support for large wind, solar, biomass and other
renewable energy projects, he said.
"The most poorly sited renewable project is better than a new
fossil fuel (burning) plant," Klein said. His message for committee
members, he said in an interview later, was "Don't let folks derail
you from what the real issue is" - climate change.
Irene, which hit Aug. 28, was a rainstorm of historic proportions
in the state. Nearly eight inches fell in some areas. Flooding was
widespread, resulting in six deaths in the state. More than 500
miles of roadway and more than 200 bridges were damaged or
destroyed. Thousands were evacuated from their homes.
McKibben said that Vermont has gone from about 80 percent open land
- mostly farms - and 20 percent forest in the 19th century to the
reverse today. Since forest floors are good absorbers of water, the
state should have been more resistant to flooding now than earlier
in its history. That's why Irene's fury should be so striking,
McKibben said.
"If you do set a new record it should come by a millimeter," he
said. "We were setting in places one-day rainfall records 25 and 30
percent higher than we'd ever recorded before."
And Vermont is far from alone, McKibben said. A planet 1 degree
warmer than 40 years ago means water evaporates more readily in
arid areas and then is deposited in wetter areas at levels greater
than historical norms.
He pointed to droughts last year in Texas and Oklahoma and floods
in Pakistan and Central America as examples of climate disruption.
A drought in Russia in 2010 meant the world's third-largest grain
exporter was unable to export any corn or wheat that year, McKibben
said, triggering price spikes in those commodities of up to 60
percent.
"We think we've added a couple hundred million people to the rolls
of the malnourished and severely hungry around the world as a
result," he said.
McKibben, who has gained notice lately as leader of the protests
against the now-stalled Keystone XL pipeline project to bring
Canadian tar sands oil to the Texas coast, said near-term progress
on protecting the climate is not likely given the current political
climate in Washington. He also said it is difficult for states
acting alone to have much of an impact, because atmospheric carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases don't recognize political
boundaries.
But he praised the committee for its work on a bill that, if
passed, would require the state's power companies to get more of
their electricity from renewable sources, and said states might be
able to lead by example.
Watching recent congressional debates over the Keystone pipeline
was "not an edifying spectacle," McKibben said. "It's a reminder of
how lucky we are to have a Legislature working on a human scale to
solve real problems here in Vermont."
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