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Scientists, an activist, a politician and a lobbyist weigh in on the complex global warming debate.
Watch the quicktime video clips or read what they have to say.
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Dr. Patrick Nunn, Professor of Oceanic Geosciences, University of South Pacific, Fiji
If we cut emissions now, if we cut emissions over the next 10 years, hopefully towards the end of the next century, then levels of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere will go down. It's not going to have much effect on people in the next 20 or 30 years. We're talking about our grandchildren and their children; we're talking about creating a world which is a good place for them to live in so they don't look back at our generation and think that was the generation that used up all resources and left us with a wasteland.
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Jennifer Morgan, Climate Policy Officer, World Wildlife Fund
The United States could be impacted quite severely from global warming. For example, the state of Florida, the Keys, the coral reefs, places where millions of Americans go each year for vacations could be inundated....Places on the East Coast, the Chesapeake Bay, could be inundated if we continue to pollute the way we've been polluting. I don't think that reducing greenhouse gasses in the United States has to be painful, but there have to be changes that are made. And those changes need to be done in the United States by making us more efficient.
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Glenn Kelly,
Executive Director & CEO, Global Climate Coalition
The economic impact is going to be very severe. What does that mean? That means job loss. That means several million jobs lost. It also means higher costs for basic goods and services like home heating expenses, electric utility expenses, car gasoline prices, bus fares. The ripple effect goes all the way through the economy and touches every household in America.
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Dr. Steve H. Schneider, Climatologist, Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University
When somebody tells you it's going to cost a whole lot of money to get off coal, and they point to all the unemployed coal miners, they're not pointing out how many people are going to make money in the high technology, natural gas, combined cycle power plants, how many people are going to make money in the wind machines and in the solar machines, how many people are going to make money in the new fuel cell cars. So what you're really doing is you're not costing the economy very much, you're redistributing the winners and losers.
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Mark Hambley
U.S. Special Negotiator on Climate Change, U.S. Dept. of State
To take on the target of reductions they [the islanders' demand for a 20 percent reduction in emissions] had anticipated would basically have caused us such a severe impact on our economy, it would have plunged the world into recession. That's just not a realistic target for us to undertake. We cannot do that.
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