Judging from President Bush’s speeches and the policies his administration supports, you would think that he doesn’t care at all about sustaining or even protecting the biosphere. You’d be absolutely right, but you might be surprised to find out how many people agree with him — they’re just a little more subtle than he is.

The Bush Administration has shown again and again that it is more than willing to sacrifice the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, along with the health of our ecosystems and communities and the well-being of our children, all for the sake of political power and corporate control. But the Bush Administration isn’t the first one to neglect basic ecological and social concerns, and it’s not just the United States that acts like this.

A good example is global warming. Almost all of our ecological issues are on a global scale now, and global warming is one of our most pressing ones. It is associated with the "greenhouse effect," which occurs when carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are emitted, trapping heat within the atmosphere. A certain amount of carbon dioxide is naturally meant to be in the air, and as humans and other species exhale it, forests consume it. Humans exceeded that natural amount a long time ago, and now we’ve put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than it can handle and the Earth is definitely warming up.

If we continue we could face potentially devastating consequences, like rising sea levels, dry regions becoming deserts, serious damage to crops, damage to ecosystems, and loss of species diversity. If the current global warming trend is not stopped, we will literally be bringing upon ourselves ecological and social catastrophe all over the Earth.

Carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, is emitted when fossil fuels are consumed. Most of our energy comes from fossil fuels, and we consume a lot of it. (The rest of our energy comes from nuclear power, which has its own major problems). We consume energy all the time, so that means that we’re emitting dangerous amounts of carbon dioxide all the time. In addition, almost all of our cars and trucks also emit a lot of carbon dioxide.

The United States is the leading emitter of carbon dioxide, followed by the European countries, Russia, Japan, and Canada. The seven wealthiest countries emit almost six times as many tons of carbon dioxide per person than the rest of the world combined emits per person.

In an attempt to slow down the global warming trend, the international Kyoto Protocol was developed in 1997. Its purpose was to establish in the industrialized countries legally binding reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to below 1990 levels by 2012. In early 2001, there were many unresolved issues in the negotiations because the non-European countries were trying to make loopholes in the treaty.

Then in March 2001, the Bush Administration declared that the Kyoto Protocol was "fatally flawed" and announced that it was unilaterally pulling out of the treaty. Bush said that the climate treaty was flawed because it would have a negative economic impact on the United States and because it did not include developing countries like China and India. By pulling out of the treaty, Bush seriously hurt its potential effectiveness.

In early June this year, in response to growing criticism, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a Climate Action Report. In this report, the Bush administration admits for the first time that human actions are mostly to blame for the recent global warming, and that the burning of fossil fuels is the main culprit.

The report recommends adapting to inevitable changes, but it called for no rapid response. It called only for voluntary measures, with the goal that the growth of greenhouse gas emissions would be slowed, not even stopped, let alone reduced to 1990 levels, which were already far too high.

Even these empty recommendations made conservatives and the energy and automobile industries nervous. So two days after the report was released, President Bush distanced himself from it. Japan ratified the watered-down Kyoto Protocol that same day, and Bush made sure to say that he still opposed it. He had to reassure his corporate sponsors that they could continue to rapidly destroy the atmosphere and endanger Americans and the whole planet with impunity.

It’s important to be aware that the corporate-sponsored politicians in the other wealthy countries are almost as destructive as President Bush. Japan and Canada would agree to the Kyoto Protocol only if they were allowed to trade emission permits with other countries that had already reduced emissions, which amounted to being rewarded for watching trees grow.

The only reason that European countries supported the treaty is that they only agreed only to the European Union reducing emissions as a whole. Most EU member countries have really increased their carbon dioxide emissions, but it just happened that in the early 1990s Germany and England shifted away from high-carbon coal sources, which only temporarily decreased carbon emissions.

To bring this back to Pittsburgh, there are many ways that people anywhere can reduce carbon emissions. We can switch from fossil fuels to clean renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power, we can conserve energy by consuming it more efficiently and by just using less of it, and we can stop cutting down all our forests.

Many local environmental activists have been organizing around these same issues, and more and more people are getting involved. For example:

PennFuture’s Green Power Project makes it possible for anybody to switch to renewable energy.

Activists at Carnegie Mellon University have persuaded their administration to buy 5 percent of their electricity from a new wind farm in Fayette County.

Members of the Allegheny Sierra Club are opposing the construction of the Mon-Fayette Toll Road, which would fuel urban sprawl and disrupt the neighboring communities.

Allegheny Defense Project activists are working on campaigns to end commercial logging and oil and gas drilling in the Allegheny National Forest.

These are just a few examples of many groups working on these sorts of issues.

Many student groups at the University of Pittsburgh, CMU, and Chatham College are linking local issues with a global perspective. For example, many groups, like Students in Solidarity and Environmental Committee at Pitt, Earth at CMU, and Green Horizons and the Rachel Carson Institute at Chatham, are organizing around issues related to ecologically sustainable development.

Sustainable development basically requires that everyone together consumes resources and produces waste in such a way that every member of every community and ecosystem can live peacefully with their basic needs fulfilled, and everyone in the future can also live in the same way. Sustainable development links many environmental issues, and it’s impossible to achieve it without understanding that environmental problems are intimately linked to economic conditions and problems of social justice. Not surprisingly, the Bush administration is not at all committed to sustainable development.

Many groups are also starting to link together in global justice campaigns. Activists are working together to oppose the World Trade Organization and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), as well as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The policies of these organizations are heavily influenced by the interests of the U.S. Treasury Department and powerful transnational corporations, and this is obvious in their disregard for environmental standards and workers’ rights and their emphasis on fossil fuels.

Fast Track authority for President Bush would help his push for the FTAA, and Alliance for Progressive Action activists are organizing to pressure our local politicians to oppose it.

There are many active grassroots environmental organizations in Pittsburgh, in addition to those mentioned here, but there are a few important problems that they are only beginning to address. These are problems that afflict environmental groups across the country, but in order for these groups to be truly effective, it’s critical that they deal with them.

Except for anarchist and socialist groups, many environmental organizations do not address the issue of class. Some environmentalists believe that their values transcend capitalist society and the class struggle, and others are unaware that class is a major problem. We cannot avoid the fact that an ecological movement that ignores class and other social inequalities can only postpone environmental problems while reinforcing the dominance of global capitalism, which is inherently ecologically destructive.

A related problem is that many environmental groups are not diverse in their membership or in the issues they address. Since environmental problems are linked to labor issues, feminist issues, anti-racism issues, LGBT issues, and peace issues, environmental organizations should be equally diverse.

When women overseas don’t have access to family planning services, that’s an environmental issue. Without it, poverty and overpopulation get worse and these make environmental problems worse. When the "drug war" in Colombia results in the destruction of crops that farmers need to support their families, that’s an environmental issue. When a poor, black community is surrounded in smog and contaminated water, that’s an environmental issue.

Environmental issues, social issues, and economic issues are all connected. All kinds of communities and ecosystems are constantly being attacked from all directions. It only makes sense that we work together as a movement to oppose these attacks and fight for global justice. Many organizations in Pittsburgh are starting to do that, and there are plenty of places for us to participate.

If you have questions or comments, or if you want more information about local environmental organizations, contact Ramin at ras38@pitt.edu.