Global climate change is very real and is already starting to affect our lives in profound ways. The last 10 years have been the warmest on record and there is scientific consensus that global climate change will have dramatic effects; the only question is, how dramatic? The Washington Post ran a front page story on how the leading international scientific climate research group has said that 30 percent of all species will be extinct by 2050 at our current rate of global warming. The emission of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels is the leading cause of global warming and our dependence on them is proving ever more dangerous. The international community has pulled together to face this issue but despite unprecedented steps toward global action, this administration has pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, which is the leading international agreement for curbing emissions. The Kyoto protocol is a UN agreement, and the U.S. withdrawal was a major blow to its ability to create meaningful international agreements. The United States produces more than 36 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases and has only five percent of the world’s population. This has alienated the international community and confirmed the double standard the U.S. uses for its foreign policy.

In the absence of leadership on a national level, there has been a growing movement to implement the Kyoto Protocol on a local level. The Kyoto Protocol calls for a reduction in emissions to seven percent below the level of 1990 emissions by 2010. Students have called for these standards to be applied to educational institutions across the U.S. and have met with great success. Lewis and Clark was the first college to meet the Kyoto Protocol last year and Cornell, the University of Colorado and Carleton will soon be meeting these standards. Oberlin has called for a carbon-neutral campus by 2020.

Why have these students met with such success on this issue? Along with the environmental gains from these movements, there are pressing economic reasons to meet these standards. Growing fuel prices and increasing consumption have led to exponential growth in energy costs, making movements to curb energy use increasingly important in this time of budget cutting and tuition increases. Revolutions in renewable energy generation have made investing in it the least-cost option over even coal. The question here is not whether we can afford to meet the Kyoto Protocol; it is whether we can afford not to.

Can we do this here at Macalester College? Minnesota is a leader in both renewable energy generation and energy conservation programs. St. Paul is currently running an aggressive emissions reduction project and recently built a pioneering high efficiency co-generation power plant. The University of Minnesota saves $600,000 a year from recent conservation measures. Carleton is building a 1.6 megawatt wind turbine—160 times larger than ours. We can build on these pioneering measures to find a way to reduce the million dollars we spend on energy that ends up producing toxins that pollute our water, poison our air and ruin our climate.

Because of our commitment to internationalism, we should also uphold landmark international agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol. We will be providing leadership on this issue and demonstrating to the international community that the unilateral policies adopted by the Bush administration do not represent all of the U.S. Our commitment to multiculturalism should press us to protect the cultures and peoples across the world threatened by global climate change and the destruction of species and habitat.

These points barely scratch the surface of the reasons why we should meet the Kyoto Protocol and engage in a debate of how we take responsibility for our emissions on the global community. I call upon the entire college to examine this issue and ask ourselves if now is the time to act. If not now, when?