EU in the Media

Washington Delegation Press Room

On An Ohio Farm, Seeking Solutions to Global Warming

John Bruton

Cleveland Plain Dealer, Thursday, August 31, 2006

A field in the middle of Ohio may not seem a likely place to find the European Union's ambassador to the United States. But that's exactly where I plan to be this morning.

The field in question, close to Circleville, belongs to Bill Richards. In the 1970s, he began planting corn and soybeans without tilling the soil. Working alongside his three sons, he discovered this no-till method meant they spent less time planting their fields. It also meant a smaller release of carbon from the soil. Fewer and smaller tractors were needed to do the work, so they spent less on fuel. Over the years, Richards' family farm has become a success story: He has reduced the cost of labor, equipment and fuel while improving his soil quality and overall crop yields. As someone who grew up on a farm in Ireland, I can truly appreciate how his inventiveness led him to make more money while also improving the environment.

So what does Richards' field have to do with the EU? Much more than you might think. It is a piece of an important puzzle that we are trying to solve: How do we fight climate change and its disastrous consequences?

There's no doubt about it: The world's weather really is changing. If the recent spate of 100-degree days wasn't enough, the National Academy of Sciences says the Earth is hotter now than it has been for at least 400 years - maybe for as many as 2,000. According to NASA, 2005 was the Earth's warmest year in a century, with the three preceding years not far behind. Climatologists say the warmer weather results in everything from the formation of more hurricanes in the United States to the melting of Greenland's ice cap. These changes have global consequences, potentially devastating ones. Were global temperatures to rise by five degrees in the next century, the level of the sea would be 80 feet higher than today, putting Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Washington, D.C., under water within the lifetimes of our grandchildren. In Ohio, wildlife would suffer tremendously as high water temperatures in lakes and streams degrade water quality and increase evaporation.

Our release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere has contributed greatly to the alarming rise in temperature. The EU recognized this as early as 1990, when we committed ourselves to stabilizing our emissions of carbon dioxide at the 1990 level by the year 2000. We succeeded, and through our commitments under the Kyoto Protocol we have set even more ambitious goals for ourselves as we continually strive to reduce emissions. The EU, which today accounts for 14 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, will have reduced that figure to around 8 percent by 2050. Since 2000, we have launched more than 30 initiatives to address climate change, including research and development on energy efficiency and alternative renewable energy sources such as wind, sun, water and even waste. Our efforts range from getting big factories to reduce their emissions to what we as individuals can do to make a difference in our daily lives. We have demonstrated that proactive climate policies produce results and that they do not necessarily endanger economic growth.

But global warming is an issue affecting the entire world and, as such, requires global action. Unfortunately, many have still not grasped the magnitude of the challenge, and the response from policy-makers globally has been lacking as a result.

The United States is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, accounting for more than a fifth of the total. Yet, a recent Pew Research Center survey showed that less than a fifth of Americans are really worried about global warming, while almost 50 percent worry little or not at all. A recent Discovery Channel documentary cited a poll showing almost a third of Americans admitting they "don't know" if temperatures are increasing or whom to believe on the issue, with a further 13 percent believing global warming is just media hype.

We Europeans cannot begin to address the challenges we face without the United States. American dynamism, inventiveness and technology make it a key partner for the EU. With the future of the global village at stake, we can achieve far more by working together and learning from each other. That is why I'm visiting the Richards' farm. I hope more Americans will follow Bill's example and take action. It's high time we moved on from asking whether we have a problem to discussing what we do about it.

Bruton is the European Union's ambassador to the United States.

"EU/US Cooperation on the Issue of Climate Change and the Future for Alternative Forms of Energy," Ambassador John Bruton, Head of the Delegation of the European Commission to the United States, Ohio State University, 31 August 2006