The Future is Now

At the beginning of February, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its latest report stating that it is now "unequivocal" that most of the warming we have observed over the last 50 years is the result of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, our dependence on oil imports from foreign nations has grown inexorably to more than 60 percent of our daily consumption.

We are headed for an unsustainable overheating of the planet, and we are buying oil at an exorbitant rate to do it. In fact, we are helping to fund terrorism by our own unwillingness to get serious about the efficiency of our automobiles, buildings, appliances and electronic devices.

In the 110th Congress, we must act fast to confront these challenges. While the Pentagon mandates repeated duty extensions for our troops serving in Iraq, the administration refuses to mandate policies at home that can free us from our oil addiction and lead us to a more sustainable energy path. The public wants action, our children deserve action and, for the first time in many years, we have a speaker of the House who has pledged action. It is time to embrace a new future.
Global warming is the most serious challenge our planet faces. The greenhouse gases that we have already emitted commit us to a dangerous and unprecedented level of warming. The question is whether or not we are going to take the action needed to stop, stabilize and reduce future emissions in order to stay out of a climate "red zone" that would bring dramatically rising sea levels, extreme droughts, massive flooding and intense tropical storms and hurricanes more powerful than Katrina and Rita.

For the past 12 years, the Republican Congress has stifled debate and prevented action to address this issue. In the absence of federal leadership, the responsibility fell to state and local leaders to address global warming, working in partnership with our allies abroad. The public outcry around the country, and the concern of forward-looking business leaders, forced this conversation out into the open despite federal indifference.

My own state of Massachusetts has joined with eight other Northeastern states in a regional program to freeze and then reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Out West, the governors of five states have also recently signaled their intention to join together to reduce emissions. And more than 300 mayors have signed a climate protection agreement signaling their commitment to working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their cities. These are but a few examples of the tremendous groundswell of public support for ambitious goals and programs to address the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming.

To capture this moment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has now created a bipartisan, 15-member Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming to elevate the visibility of these critical issues and to hold the hearings, conduct the investigations and provide the recommendations for action that have been absent for the past 12 years. The Democratic chairmen of the legislative committees in both the House and the Senate are holding their own eye-opening hearings, which previous Republican chairmen would not allow. This new commitment to action in the Congress goes to the heart of the sustainability of the planet and the security of our future energy supplies.

As chairman of the new select committee, I intend to do everything I can to keep the public focus on these looming crises and to maintain a climate for political action that matches the challenges we face. We must start evaluating what we do according to three criteria:

1. Does it reduce the danger of global warming by limiting the emissions of CO2 and other heat-trapping gases?
2. Does it reduce our dangerous addiction to oil consumption?
3. Does it restore America's leading role in job creation and future-oriented technological innovation?

Global warming and oil dependence are twin weaknesses that are testing our nation's capacity to respond boldly and effectively. We continue to be the source of a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and a quarter of the world's daily consumption of oil. There is no doubt that we have the technology, the ingenuity and the experience to address these problems with the urgency required.

Our allies and our enemies are waiting for us to act. Will we reclaim our leadership role in the world or will we continue to go it alone? In the end, we are either going to meet this challenge together or suffer the consequences together. We are either going to solve this problem or we are going to destroy the planet. The time to act is now.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is chairman of the newly created House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

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