US Senators Say Global Warming Obvious in Far North

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http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/081805EA.shtml

 

US Senators Say Global Warming Obvious in Far North

By Yereth Rosen

Reuters

 

Thursday 18 August 2005

 

Anchorage, Alaska - Fresh from visits to Canada's Yukon Territory

and Alaska's northernmost city, four U.S. senators said Wednesday that

signs of rising temperatures on Earth are obvious and they called on

Congress to act.

 

" If you can go to the Native people and listen to their stories

and walk away with any doubt that something's going on, I just think

you're not listening, " said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South

Carolina.

 

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Hillary

Clinton of New York told reporters in Anchorage that Inupiat Eskimo

residents in Barrow, Alaska, have found their ancestral land and

traditional lifestyle disrupted by disappearing sea ice, thawing

permafrost, increased coastal erosion and changes to wildlife habitat.

 

Heat-stimulated beetle infestation has also killed vast amounts of

the spruce forest in the Yukon Territory, they said.

 

Such observations provide more ammunition in the fight for a bill,

co-sponsored by McCain and Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman, to cap

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, McCain said. That bill has repeatedly

failed to pass the Senate.

 

" People around the country are going to demand it, " McCain said.

" It's the special interests versus the people's interest. "

 

The United States is the biggest emitter of heat-trapping carbon

dioxide, which many scientists have linked to global warming.

 

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate

Environment and Public Works Committee, has dismissed global warming

as a hoax and questioned scientific evidence supporting rising

temperatures.

 

The White House has warned that mandatory caps on greenhouse gas

emissions could stunt U.S. economic growth. President Bush supports a

voluntary plan for industry to cut greenhouse gas output.

 

The senators said they were headed Tuesday for a visit to Kenai

Fjords National Park in Seward, where the National Park Service has

been tracking retreating glaciers.

 

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