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This year, Al Gore, the Man Who Was Almost President, received a stunning vindication from the Nobel Committee for his Paul Revere campaign about global warming. "The Earth has a fever, and the fever is rising," Gore said in his Nobel lecture in Oslo, Norway, in December as he accepted the Peace Prize, which he shared with the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion -- and a third -- and a fourth -- and the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing distress, is that something basic is wrong. We are what is wrong, and we must make it right."
In 2007, even the United States stopped asking for a second opinion. The Bush administration now agrees that global warming is a threat. But all the plaudits heaped on Gore couldn't move the United States to, in Gore's words, "make it right." The United States remains the only industrialized nation not to endorse the goals of the Kyoto Protocol; Australia, the other big holdout, belatedly ratified the treaty's goals in December. Not coincidentally, Australia has recently been plagued by serious drought. But the United States, where the governor of drought-ridden Georgia held a prayer vigil in November in hopes of inspiring rain, was still not swayed. At the international climate talks in Bali, Indonesia, this December, the Bush administration refused to agree to any mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, giving developing giant China cover to avoid any such restrictions itself.
Yet there are tantalizing signs that the American people are not waiting for the Bush administration to leave power to start taking steps to address the "planetary emergency" that Gore warns about. A Senate committee passed the first legislation that would impose mandatory limits on greenhouse gases. Although the bill may not make it to the president's desk, it's a sign that meaningful climate legislation is on the horizon. In the meantime, action is occurring at state and local levels. To date, some 725 U.S. mayors, representing 25 percent of the U.S. population, have signed a pledge to reduce greenhouse gases by 2012. In August, Illinois became the 26th state to require that some of the state's electricity come from renewable sources. And in October, Kansas became the first state to refuse a permit for a new coal-fired power plant because of the threat it would pose to public health and the atmosphere.
Frustration abounds in the scientific community. The IPCC's latest dire report, released in November, made bleaker projections than ever, yet climate scientists fear that the world's simply not heeding their alarm. More than 200 scientists were so fed up that in December they signed a petition calling for the world to take drastic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050. In his Nobel lecture in Oslo, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, warned that unchecked warming could bring massive ice melting in Greenland and disappearing rainfall in many tropical areas. Yet he reminded the world that the worst threats can still be ameliorated: "The implications of these changes, if they were to occur, would be grave and disastrous," he said. "However, it is within the reach of human society to meet these threats." It looks like the United States -- and the world -- will have to wait for the next American president to begin to meet them.
With the price of oil inching near $100 a barrel, Americans searched for new ways to save gas and the atmosphere. Many drivers kicked the SUV habit and switched to smaller cars. As of September 2007, 16 percent of cars sold this year were diminutive compacts, including the likes of the Honda Fit and the Mini Cooper, up from 13.8 percent in 2002, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association.
While hybrids remain a fraction of the overall car market, this year they continued to gain popularity. Automakers reported an 82 percent increase in hybrid sales this year, compared with last. (That's not counting General Motors, which doesn't break out hybrid sales from others.) Toyota, makers of the popular Prius, saw a 109 percent increase in hybrid sales this November, compared with last. Finally, the Bush administration got in on the act, signing a new energy bill that raises the fuel-efficiency standard for car fleets from today's 25 mpg to 35 mpg by 2020.
Those who dream of driving without guilt -- or at least with less guilt -- are tricking out their hybrids to go farther with even less gas. This year, the number of so-called "plug-in hybrids" on the road, which get over 100 miles per gallon, quadrupled as corporate fleets and utilities, and even some individuals, experimented with enhancing their hybrids. Plug-ins are hybrid cars that have been converted, at a cost of some $10,000, to plug into a conventional electric socket and gather juice from the grid.
"The plug-in car is the only car that gets cleaner as it gets older, because the grid is getting cleaner," says Felix Kramer, founder of CalCars.org, a nonprofit that promotes the vehicles. Advocates believe that Toyota could sell a plug-in version of the Toyota Prius for just $3,000 extra, although the leading hybrid automaker currently has no plans to do so. General Motors plans to release a plug-in hybrid Saturn Vue in 2009 and the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt in 2010.
The race is on to build cars that sip even less fuel. A group of engineering students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol
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