The Kyoto Accord began the race to halt global warming. On its 10th anniversary, why are we barely past the starting gate?

I remember so well the final morning hours of the Kyoto conference. The negotiations had gone on long past their scheduled evening close, and the convention-center management was frantic - a trade show for children's clothing was about to begin, and every corner of the vast hall still was littered with the carcasses of the sleeping diplomats who had gathered in Japan to draw up a first-ever global treaty to curb greenhouse-gas emissions. But when word finally came that an agreement had been reached, people roused themselves with real enthusiasm - lots of backslapping and hugs.

A long decade after the first powerful warnings had sounded, it seemed that humans were finally rising to the greatest challenge we'd ever faced.

The only long face in the hall belonged to William O'Keefe, chairman of the Global Climate Coalition, otherwise known as the American coal, oil, and car lobby. He'd spent the week coordinating the resistance - working with Arab delegates and Russian industrialists to sabotage the emerging plan. And he'd failed. "It's in free fall now," he said, stricken. But then he straightened his shoulders and said, "I can't wait to get back to Washington where we can get things under control."

I thought he was whistling past the graveyard. In fact, he knew far better than the rest of us what the future would hold. He knew it would be at least another decade before anything changed.

Ten years warmer: The important physical-world reality to know about the 10 years after Kyoto is that they included the warmest years on record. All of the warmest years on record.

In that span of time, we've come to understand that not only is the globe warming, but also that we'd dramatically underestimated the speed and the size of that warming. By now, the data from the planet outstrips the scientific prediction on an almost daily basis.

Earlier this fall, for instance, the melt of Arctic sea ice beat the old record. Beat it in mid-August, and then the ice kept melting for six more weeks, losing an area the size of California every week. "Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts," the headline in the New York Times reported. And they were shaken by rapid changes in tundra-permafrost systems, not to mention rain-forest systems, temperate-soil carbon-sequestration systems, oceanic-acidity systems.

We've gone from a problem for our children to a problem for right about now, as evidenced by, oh, Hurricane Katrina, California wildfires, epic droughts in the Southeast and Southwest. And that's just the continental United States. Go to Australia sometime: It's gotten so dry there that native Aussie Rupert Murdoch recently announced that his News Corp. empire was going carbon neutral.

The important political-world reality to know about the 10 years after Kyoto is that we haven't done anything.

Oh, we've passed all kinds of interesting state and local laws, wonderful experiments that have begun to show just how much progress is possible. But in Washington, DC, nothing. No laws at all. Until last year, when the GOP surrendered control of Congress, even the hearings were a joke, with "witnesses" like novelist Michael Crichton.

And as a result, our emissions have continued to increase. Worse, we've made not the slightest attempt to shift China and India away from using their coal. Instead of an all-out effort to provide the resources so they could go renewable, we've stood quietly by and watched from the sidelines as their energy trajectories shot out of control: The Chinese now are opening a new coal-fired plant every week. History will regard even the horror in Iraq as one more predictable folly next to this novel burst of irresponsibility.

A hint of a movement: If you're looking for good news, there is some.

For one thing, we understand the technologies and the changes in habit that can help. The last 10 years have seen the advent of hybrid cars and the widespread use of compact fluorescent light bulbs. Wind power has been the fastest-growing source of electric generation throughout the period. Japan and then Germany have pioneered with great success the subsidy scheme required to put millions of solar panels up on rooftops.

Even more important, a real movement has begun to emerge in this country. It began with Katrina, which opened eyes. Al Gore gave those eyes something to look at: His movie made millions realize just what a pickle we were in. Many of those, in turn, became political activists.

Earlier this year, six college students and I launched stepitup07.org, which has organized almost 2,000 demonstrations in all 50 states. Last month, the student climate movement drew 7,000 hardworking kids from campuses all over the country for a huge conference. We've launched a new grassroots coalition, 1sky.org, that will push both Congress and the big Washington environmental groups.

All this work has tilted public opinion - new polls actually show energy and climate change showing up high on the list of issues that voters care about, which in turn has made the candidates take notice. All the Democrats are saying more or less the right things, though none of them, save John Edwards, is saying them with much volume.

The race of all time: Now it's a numbers game. Can we turn that political energy into change fast enough to matter?

On the domestic front, the numbers look like this: We've got to commit to reductions in carbon emissions of 80 percent by 2050, and we've got to get those cuts underway fast - 10 percent in just the next few years. Markets will help - if we send them the information that carbon carries a cost. Only government can do that.

Two more numbers we're pushing for: zero, which is how many new coal-fired power plants we can afford to open in America, and 5 million, which is how many green jobs Congress needs to provide for the country's low-skilled workers. All that insulation isn't going to stuff itself inside our walls, and those solar panels won't crawl up on the roofs by themselves. You can't send the work to China, and you can't do it with a mouse: This is the last big chance to build an economy that works for most of us.

Internationally, the task is even steeper. The Kyoto Accord, which we ignored, expires in a couple of years. Negotiations begin this month in Bali to strike a new deal, and it's likely to be the last bite at the apple we'll get - miss this chance and the climate likely spirals out of control.

We have a number here, too: 450, as in parts-per-million carbon dioxide. It's the absolute upper limit on what we can pour into the atmosphere, and it will take a heroic effort to keep from exceeding it.

This is a big change: even 10 years ago, we thought the safe level might be 550. But the data is so clear: The Earth is far more finely balanced than we thought, and our peril much greater. Our foremost climate scientist, NASA's James Hansen, testified under oath in a courtroom last year that if we didn't stop short of that 450 red line, we could see the sea level rise 20 feet before the century was out. That's civilization-challenging. That's a carbon summer to match any nuclear winter that anyone ever dreamed about.

It's a test, a kind of final exam for our political, economic, and spiritual systems. And it's a fair test, nothing vague or fuzzy about it. Chemistry and physics don't bargain. They don't compromise. They don't meet us halfway. We'll do it or we won't. And 10 years from now, we'll know which path we chose.

Bill McKibben, a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, is an author and environmentalist who frequently writes about global warming. McKibben's essay was commissioned by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. Approximately 30 AAN member papers will be publishing the essay this week.

States are going it alone

There's been a frustrating lack of action at the federal level when it comes to greenhouse gas regulations. There is no national cap on carbon emissions and lawmakers have taken only baby steps to wean the country off heavily polluting fossil fuels.

So what's a state to do? New York, California, and a host of others are unwilling to ignore the void created by this federal paralysis. Instead, they've pushed ahead with their own environmental agendas, with New York and California leading major greenhouse-gas reduction initiatives.

In the 1990's, California enacted strict vehicle-emissions standards and other states soon followed. New York is spearheading the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a coalition of northeastern states from Maine to Maryland to impose limits on power-plant emissions through a cap-and-trade system.

There's a lot New York can do on its own, too. There are simple actions individual residents can take, such as replacing standard light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, better insulating their homes, or limiting trips in cars. (Over the weekend, Congress did come to an agreement on stricter fuel mileage standards for autos, though critics will inevitably argue that standards need to be higher still.)

Immediate conservation measures will result in the quickest payoff, says Hugh Mitchell, who co-chairs the state Sierra Club's Global Warming Committee. "It's not going to solve the whole problem, but at least it's going to start us on the right direction," he says.

More substantial actions could come from New York State and RGGI is a good example. From the plan's implementation in 2009, the focus will be on stabilizing the amount of power-plant emissions. Beginning in 2015, there will be a 2.5 percent yearly cut in the cap, continuing through 2019.

"Getting the program up and running in New York is a key piece of a greenhouse- gas reduction strategy," says David Gahl, air and energy program director for Environmental Advocates of New York."We've got to get this done and we've got to get it done quickly."

New York generates less greenhouse gas than Texas or California, but it's still one of the highest-producing states. It contributes 4 percent of the nation's carbon dioxide, based on U.S. Energy Department data. In 2003, the last year for which data is available, New York generated 214 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That's a 13-year increase of six metric tons.

It's critical for New York to cut back on greenhouse-gas emissions. And there has been some movement in the public and private sectors to do that. The state has adopted policies that emphasize renewable energy. By 2015, 15 percent of New York's electricity must be produced by renewable means - solar, wind, biomass, or hydroelectric generation, for example. The Sierra Club, however, calls for 20 percent of the state's electricity to come from renewable resources by 2020, Mitchell says.

The state has adopted California's new vehicle-emissions standards which require automakers to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. They have until 2009 to begin making reductions.

California has special legal standing that allows it to set stricter air standards, provided the EPA issues a waiver. Other states can then choose to adopt those standards. California passed its regulations last year, but the EPA has stalled on the waiver decision. Earlier this month, California, backed by a New York-led coalition of 14 states, sued the agency in an attempt to compel a decision.

There are conservation efforts at all levels of government. Many of the traffic signals in Monroe County use L.E.D. lights, which help reduce consumption of electricity. In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg backs plans for a 30-percent reduction in the city's emissions by 2030. Moves to cut down on downtown traffic, incorporate hybrid vehicles into the taxi fleet, and planting green roofs on buildings should be commended, Mitchell says.

Landfills, including Mill Seat and High Acres in Monroe County and Seneca Meadows in Waterloo, have started capturing gas generated by decomposing waste to power electric generators. That, says Mitchell, keeps the landfill gas from escaping into the atmosphere. Landfill gas has a high content of methane and other greenhouse gases.

Those initiatives are just a start, say environmental activists. More needs to be done.

New York needs to make RGGI a top priority, Gahl says. Right now, the state Department of Environmental Conservation is holding public hearings on the plan. (A hearing is scheduled for 1 p.m. December 13 at the DEC Region 8 office in Avon.)

Part of the state's efforts to cut power plant-generated greenhouse gases should involve a moratorium on dirty coal power plants, Mitchell says. The coal industry says plants could capture carbon dioxide and bury it, but environmentalists and experts worry the technology may not be sound and carbon dioxide could still seep into the atmosphere.

Pressure from politicians and the public is building against coal plants. In September, Senator Charles Schumer urged RG&E to rebuild its coal-fired Russell Station plant as a natural gas-powered facility. The company agreed.

The state should set targets for reducing all its greenhouse gas production and then develop a comprehensive plan to accomplish that, Gahl says. The state should also, he says, revamp laws that prohibit businesses with renewable power sources - solar cells or wind generators, for example - from selling excess power. There are matching bills in the Senate and Assembly that, if passed, would allow businesses with solar panels to sell unused electricity. Already, homes and some farms are allowed to sell unused electricity generated through renewable means.

Updated building codes and green building standards could help promote widespread energy conservation, Gahl says. Even new lighting standards would help. An Assembly bill would require bulbs sold in New York to be at least as efficient as compact fluorescent bulbs, Gahl says. The bill has no Senate counterpart.

One state isn't going to stop global warming. But New York can at least take action so it doesn't make the problem worse. If all states come to that realization, then there will be changes for the better.

"The crisis is really here now," Mitchell says.