Spring Break
Climate change heats up foreign affairs panel discussion
Leaders in environmental fields spoke to students about the impending dangers of climate change, debated whether it's still possible to reverse the process
Issue date: 3/13/08
Two scientists dominated a panel discussion on climate change Tuesday, debating the reversibility of a possible climate crisis.
During the question and answer portion of Conversation and Sustainability: The Impending Climate Crisis, a part of this year's Foreign Affairs Symposium, Thomas Lovejoy and Terry Maple disagreed on people's responsibility to energy conservation.
Maple, Director of the Palm Beach Zoo, said that climate change could be solved without cutting energy use or changing one's lifestyle.
He claimed that existing and emerging technologies could be used to produce enough energy to meet consumption.
Lovejoy, president of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, disagreed.
"Too much CO2 is going up [in the air]," he said. "We may have done it already. A third of Florida might end up underwater."
Preventing climate change "cannot be done" without reducing the amount of CO2 the world emits, he said.
Maple also accused China of having greater CO2 emissions than the United States and said that they had to be stopped. Lovejoy was quick to disagree and pointed that this was not per capita, and the United States has the greatest responsibility to stop climate change.
The first speaker of the evening, Lovejoy discussed a number of climate change examples, ranging from the shrinking of the ice sheets to the changing migratory patterns of checkerspot butterflies.
"The data are statistically robust, and it is clear nature is on the move everywhere in the world," he said.
In the near future, temperatures will continue to rise even if total carbon dioxide emissions are cut to zero, he predicted.
He warned a 2.5 degree rise in temperature would lead to massive "diebacks" in the Amazon and other rainforests, decreasing the planet's ability to absorb CO2 and exacerbating the problem.
Public officials tend to underestimate the problem, and there is a serious potential for a two-foot rise in sea level, which would place parts of America's major cities underwater, according to Lovejoy.
During the question and answer portion of Conversation and Sustainability: The Impending Climate Crisis, a part of this year's Foreign Affairs Symposium, Thomas Lovejoy and Terry Maple disagreed on people's responsibility to energy conservation.
Maple, Director of the Palm Beach Zoo, said that climate change could be solved without cutting energy use or changing one's lifestyle.
He claimed that existing and emerging technologies could be used to produce enough energy to meet consumption.
Lovejoy, president of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, disagreed.
"Too much CO2 is going up [in the air]," he said. "We may have done it already. A third of Florida might end up underwater."
Preventing climate change "cannot be done" without reducing the amount of CO2 the world emits, he said.
Maple also accused China of having greater CO2 emissions than the United States and said that they had to be stopped. Lovejoy was quick to disagree and pointed that this was not per capita, and the United States has the greatest responsibility to stop climate change.
The first speaker of the evening, Lovejoy discussed a number of climate change examples, ranging from the shrinking of the ice sheets to the changing migratory patterns of checkerspot butterflies.
"The data are statistically robust, and it is clear nature is on the move everywhere in the world," he said.
In the near future, temperatures will continue to rise even if total carbon dioxide emissions are cut to zero, he predicted.
He warned a 2.5 degree rise in temperature would lead to massive "diebacks" in the Amazon and other rainforests, decreasing the planet's ability to absorb CO2 and exacerbating the problem.
Public officials tend to underestimate the problem, and there is a serious potential for a two-foot rise in sea level, which would place parts of America's major cities underwater, according to Lovejoy.
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