Global Warming: Ready For Your Carbon Close-Up?

Forget South Beach, the diet whose namesake may one day succumb to rising seas. Lose the obsession with carbohydrates. Nowadays, everybody is into carbon reduction, shrinking the global-warming emissions we generate in our daily lives. The fate of our earth—not just our waistlines—stands on the scales. The planet, on average, is 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit warmer today than during the 20th century. This February's U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the work of over 2,000 scientists, determined that there was a 90 to 95 percent likelihood that global warming is man-made and that temperatures and sea levels will rise for centuries. Last year was the hottest on record in the U.S., notes meteorologist Jeffrey Masters, Ph.D. And, Masters warns, "we can expect a sea level rise of maybe a foot or two from the [melting] Greenland Ice Sheet this century." Climate change is harming not only wildlife and habitat, from polar bears to coral reefs, but the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that global warming may currently account for the deaths of as many as 150,000 people annually. Hurricane Katrina fits a pattern in which more extreme storms are being fuelled by a warmer Atlantic, according to two 2005 studies.

Fortunately, as our carbon calculator shows, individual actions by consumers can add up to measurable progress, and footprint reduction is rapidly spreading in the industrial sector, as well. On the legislative front, the new Congress is drafting bills to reduce emissions (see "Take Action" sidebar, right).

Action is vital given the risks posed by higher temperatures, from extreme weather events (storms, droughts, floods) to more air pollution, water- and food-borne diseases and insect- and rodent-borne diseases, as discussed in the September 2006 Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). While warmer winters may temporarily help the poor by reducing heating bills, in the long term, illnesses, displacement and other effects will hurt them disproportionately. "Katrina is a prime example [of the reality] that those who are most vulnerable are most affected by global warming events," says Heather Cooley, M.S., research associate at the Pacific Institute. A review in the March 11, 2006, Lancet calculated that half of the 30,000 deaths during the 2003 heat wave in Europe can be attributed to man-made warming. China's National Institute for Environmental Health and Engineering estimates that every year heat-related stroke and heart attack kills between 225,000 and 890,000 Chinese.