ACTING ON THE WEATHER

Climate change is as international as Arctic people joining with tropical islanders to protect their homelands from the effects of greenhouse gases and as local as Maine maple syrup makers testifying before the Legislature that their season is starting much earlier, likely to their detriment. Officials from the state Department of Environmental Protection today will recognize both the local and global effects of climate change when they announce 55 steps Maine can take as part of its agreement with other Northeastern states and Maritime Canada to substantially reduce the harmful pollutants that are causing the Earth’s temperature to rise.

The Arctic-Tropics proposal comes from the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), which sees similarities in the risks to low-lying tropical islands from rising sea levels and to the Arctic, warming at twice the pace of the planet generally. More locally, Robert S. Smith, president of the Maine Maple Producers Association, testified last year before the Legislature that, “Warmer climate patterns could shorten the season for tapping trees, decreasing the amount of syrup we could actually produce.” He worries too that with fewer cold spring nights followed by warm days, the trees won’t run as well and that weather changes could push the growing range of sugar maples north.

Losses to business because of climate change are difficult to quantify, but insurers certainly have seen the costs that climate changes can bring. The rest of the world has too, and whatever critics think of the Kyoto agreement its provisions are being implemented and U.S. companies are preparing to meet new standards. U.S. companies that want to do business in Europe and elsewhere are adopting tougher pollutant standards; it’s time governments here do too.

Some of the steps planned in Maine will cost money; many will save it by creating efficiencies. Whether each of the 55 is crucial will be seen over time, but given the rising evidence of climate change and the responsibility of all governments to help solve the problem, Maine must be willing to act decisively against this threat.

Were Maine to take these steps on their own, they wouldn’t amount to much beyond good intentions. But combined with more populous regions, and with similar coordinated measures on the West Coast, they are the proper local response to a worldwide problem. Maine’s goals, set out in legislation last year, are the region’s goals: Greenhouse gas reductions to 1990 levels by 2010, 10 percent below that by 2020 and, long term, significantly below that, perhaps as much as 75 percent. These are ambitious goals at a time when Congress cannot pass more modest ones.

How to get there has always been the trick, and the answer this time is gratifyingly something more than good intentions and a reliance on technologies yet to be invented. With the advice of various groups around Maine, such as the Maine Global Climate Change LLC, the DEP has examined such issues as expanding the use of more efficient vehicle, increased use of biomass and improvements in siting power-generation facilities to take advantage of energy lost through steam. It also looked at voluntary programs to cut carbon through forest sequestration and trading carbon allowances with other states.

Washington should be reaching out to other nations to address climate change in a comprehensive manner equal to the scale of the threat, but that is not likely to happen, so states have begun taking action on their own. Maine is a small state, but it too should be aggressively pursuing means to limit the high-level of carbon emissions that are changing the planet in dangerous ways.