A Little Historical Perspective

Let’s step back and get a little historical perspective on climate change.

In 1965, the President’s Science Advisory Panel said: “Carbon dioxide is being added to the Earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. This will modify the heat balance of the atmosphere to such an extent that marked changes in climate, not controllable through local or even national efforts, could occur.”

25 years later, NRDC joined with the City of Los Angeles to sue the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over the climatic impacts resulting from a rollback in fuel economy standards. This was the first case on climate change. In its ruling, the D.C. Circuit Court supported the science of climate change. "[N]o one, including [the federal government], appears to dispute the serious and imminent threat to our environment posed by a continuation of global warming," the court’s decision said, and "[n]o one disputes the causal link between carbon dioxide and global warming.” That was 1990.

Yet today – almost 45 years later – our federal government has still not taken the kind of action needed. And until about a year ago, the government even participated in a systematic distortion of climate change science. As a result, we have delayed action on climate change by years, if not decades.

Let’s be clear here – there is no debate on the science of climate change. There is an overwhelming consensus that average global temperatures are increasing as a result of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. We shouldn’t argue about the science of climate change any more than we argue about the science of gravity.