If Marylanders want to fight global warming, they're going to have to sweat. They may have to pay more for electricity, throw out their inefficient air conditioners, drive smaller cars and accept new nuclear reactors.
Such an unprecedented shift might seem almost un-American, in its rejection of SUV's and embrace of a long-feared power source. And it could end up more of a political statement than an action that could actually save Baltimore's waterfront from flooding.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently launched his state on an unprecedented program to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020, and Maryland lawmakers are debating whether to follow.
Meanwhile, Texas is racing to build 17 new coal-fired power plants before the Democrats who now control Congress can impose limits on carbon dioxide. The new Lone Star smokestacks would churn out 2.6 times more CO2 than the California plan would eliminate, according to the Sierra Club. Not to mention the bad air rising from China and India - which have joined the U.S., the world's biggest polluter, in refusing to cut global warming gases.
So why should Maryland politicians sweat? Why should they step out on a limb and inflict discomfort on local voters that people in Shanghai and San Antonio don't feel?
State Sen. Paul G. Pinsky, a Democrat from Prince George's County, said the only way to force the federal government to act is for a growing number of states, including Maryland, to follow California instead of Texas.
"The rest of the world isn't going to act on climate change until the major perpetrators - including us - start walking the walk, instead of just talking the talk," said Pinsky, chairman of the Maryland Senate environmental matters subcommittee. "Then some of the less developed countries will start being responsible. Remember, Shanghai is on the coast, too. So they also will be under pressure to act" on global warming and the rising sea levels caused by climate change, he said.
Pinsky and House Majority Leader Kumar P. Barve, a Democrat from Montgomery County, introduced a bill last week called "The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006." The law would require Maryland to follow California's mandate that all industries cut their emissions of greenhouse gases by a quarter over 13 years, bringing them back to 1990 levels.
The enforcement mechanism would be determined by an Office of Climate Change to be created within the Maryland Department of the Environment. Most likely it would be a cap-and-trade system that would impose pollution limits on all businesses, but make carbon dioxide credits a commodity that could be sold or swapped. The result would be that industries that want to exceed the pollution limits would have to pay penalties to cleaner businesses, such as firms that build wind turbines.
Pinsky admits that the bill is a long shot this year, with less support than another measure to limit greenhouse gases, the so-called "clean cars" legislation that has been endorsed by Gov. Martin O'Malley and leaders of the Senate and House. This law is more limited, focusing only on cars and light trucks, which produce about a quarter of the gases that scientists have concluded cause global warming.
But Pinsky said momentum is growing for more sweeping action, with new scientific evidence of climate change and Congress debating federal legislation.
Pinsky has a track record of success, as a lead sponsor of Maryland's Healthy Air Act, which passed by a wide margin last spring after failing twice in previous years. This law aims to cut pollution from coal-fired power plants by more than two-thirds, including a 10 percent reduction in global warming gases by 2018. Power plants generate about a third of greenhouse gases, with the rest coming from other businesses, homes, farms and other sources.
"We want to create incentives for clean energy, because dirty energy is going to kill all of us - particularly all of us who live in Maryland, where we have many areas that will be under water in 30, 40 or 50 years," said Pinsky.
The passage of both the clean cars bill and the Global Warming Solutions Act might be a step in the right direction, but they would not come close to stopping climate change. If the whole world followed Maryland and California in approving similar legislation, it would only provide a fraction of the more than 70 percent reductions in greenhouse gases by 2050 that many scientists say would be necessary to stabilize the Earth's atmosphere.
Jeffrey R. Holmstead, assistant administrator for air programs at the Bush administration's Environmental Protection Agency from 2001 to 2005, said following California's model would hurt the economy without helping the environment.
"It doesn't matter if a gas is emitted in Baltimore or Beijing, it has a uniform effect throughout the globe," said Holmstead, who now represents the power industry. "So it's possible that a city or state could impose very costly restrictions on its own industries, and yet accomplish very little or nothing."
Daniel Kirk-Davidoff, an assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic science at the University of Maryland, College Park, said that the effect of greenhouse gases on the climate is clearly a global issue, not unique to Maryland.
"But Maryland is a bit special because we're on the coast, and we have a huge shoreline - that makes us particularly vulnerable to changes," he said. "Compared to a lot of environmental problems we've focused on, it's a huge problem."
The burning of coal and oil has thickened the layer of greenhouse gases that insulate the earth and trap heat. Global average temperatures have risen about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the last century, and are expected to rise another 4.5 degrees over the next.
Maryland's climate could grow as balmy as South Carolina's, altering farming and ecosystems in the Chesapeake region. More than 30 species of birds, including the Baltimore oriole, may be forced out of state by the heat, according to a report by Environment Maryland, an advocacy group.
Warmer temperatures globally are melting glaciers and swelling the oceans. A three-foot rise in sea levels over the next century would devour a football field's width of shore along low-lying areas of the Eastern Shore, and worsen storm-surge flooding in Baltimore and other coastal cities, Kirk-Davidoff said. Warmer waters could spur more intense hurricanes.
Thirteen islands in the Chesapeake Bay have already been swallowed by rising sea levels, and Maryland loses about 260 more acres of coastal land each year.
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Among the barriers in the way of Maryland cutting its global warming gases is the state's reliance on coal to generate electricity.
The state is home to nine coal-fired power plants, which make about half of the state's electricity. About 28 percent of the state's electricity comes from nuclear power, 7 percent from oil, 4 percent from natural gas, 3 percent from hydroelectric and 2 percent from other renewable sources.
In an effort to meet California's goal of a 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gases, Maryland could cut consumption of coal in half. In theory, this power could be supplied instead by 1,240 wind turbines, each almost 400 feet tall. Wind power produces no air pollution.
But three proposals to build more than 100 turbines in Western Maryland haven't been able to get off the ground, in part because the developers have failed to get agreements with power distribution companies.
Gregory V. Carmean, executive director of the Maryland Public Service Commission, said replacing coal plants with windmills would be impossible, because wind isn't reliable enough. "Coal generation is base-load generation, it operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, while wind operates when the wind blows," said Carmean. "Wind doesn't even register on our chart as resource, because it's intermittent."
Bethany M. Gill, spokeswoman for the commission, said Maryland's dependence on coal makes it different than California, which has no coal-fired power plants. "It's not really practical for Maryland," she said of California's greenhouse gas law.
Carbon dioxide from the state's coal-fired plants could perhaps be captured and injected underground, but that's in the experimental phases.
Maryland could shift from coal to natural gas, which produces less global warming pollution. But this cleaner fuel costs more than three times as much, would send electricity prices higher and require the construction of a new pipeline from the Gulf of Mexico, according to Constellation Energy, the state's biggest power company.
Maryland could replace some of its coal-fired power plants with nuclear reactors, which emit no greenhouse gases. Constellation is discussing the possibility of adding two more reactors at its quarter-century-old Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Southern Maryland. Their extra capacity could, in theory, replace two-thirds of the state's coal-fired plants.
But nuclear power has its own problems, notably the storage of spent fuel rods. Radioactive waste has been piling up in cement casks at Calvert Cliffs and other power plants, as the federal government has failed to keep a promise to open a central repository in Nevada.
Mike Tidwell, an author and climate change activist, suggests that conservation alone could allow Maryland to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by more than a quarter by 2020. He noted that Europeans consume about half the electricity, per capita, as Americans.
Marylanders should drive hybrid cars, insulate their homes, replace their old refrigerators and air conditioners with more efficient "Energy Star" models, switch to fluorescent light bulbs and turn off the lights when they're not needed, Tidwell said. The government should offer loans to help people buy more efficient appliances, he said.
"Conservation and efficiency gains are the core feasible strategy for solving global warming, no doubt about it," Tidwell said.
But cutting back on power usage would require a reversal of the upward trend in America since World War II, as consumers have demanded ever larger houses and more gadgets. The U.S. Department of Energy predicts electricity consumption will rise by about 20 percent by 2020 - not fall, as activists would like.
John Quinn, lead engineer for Constellation Energy, said conservation could trim Maryland's increase in electricity consumption from 20 percent to about 10 percent by 2020. But that's a far cry from the 25 percent drop that California envisions.
"Everybody has a new iPod and everyone has big-screen TV's and everyone now seems to have external lights on their homes," Quinn said. "I don't know how you stop it. ... "
tom.pelton@baltsun.com