On the Move to Outrun Climate Change

Though President Bush has said that human activity has contributed to climate change, he has consistently rejected the idea of imposing mandatory curbs on carbon dioxide emissions.

In an interview shortly after this month's congressional elections, James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the country would be better off setting a voluntary goal -- such as increasing the use of renewable fuels -- than dictating industrial greenhouse-gas emission levels.

"Setting a reasonably ambitious target and then exceeding it is a good way to make reasonable progress," Connaughton said.

The Bush administration has outlined a strategic plan that calls for developing technology that would reduce carbon dioxide pollution. It now spends $3 billion a year on energy research and development. But when adjusted for inflation, this money is a fraction of what the federal government spent in the past. Researchers such as Reuel Shinnar and Francesco Citro, two chemical engineers at the Clean Fuels Institute at the City College of New York, estimate the country would have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year to make the transition to a carbon-free society.

From the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Northwest, the effects of global warming -- along with the responses of animals, people, businesses and bureaucracies -- are being woven into the fabric of everyday life.

On Cape Sable, on the far southwestern edge of Florida, boaters, sportsmen and scientists have watched as a rising sea level has transformed a freshwater marsh into a portion of the sea.

Where there had been saw grass, the distinctive vegetation of the Everglades, there are now mangrove trees, which thrive in salt water and open water. Redfish inhabit areas that once had been wetland. The endangered bird named after the area, the Cape Sable seaside sparrow, has fled northward.

Using historic photos and tidal gauge records, University of Miami professor Harold Wanless, chairman of the geology department, has studied the changes. Between the sinking of the land and the rise of the seas since the 1930s, the relative water level has risen nine inches, he said.

"Freshwater marshes on Cape Sable are now evolving into more or less open marine waters," he said. "We're not talking about global warming as something that will happen in the future. Its happening right now. All the king's horses and all the king's men won't be able to put Cape Sable together again."

In the high country of western Montana, ski resort manager Tom Maclay is trying to outrun climate change by persuading the U.S. Forest Service to lease 12,000 acres across Carlton Ridge and Lolo Peak. The land, which lies above property he owns, would allow his resort to reach a top elevation of 9,100 feet.

Maclay is well aware how climate change is transforming his business and how nearby resorts have suffered from a lack of snow in recent years. At nearby Glacier National Park, the U.S. Geological Survey quantifies the change, noting that there has been a 73 percent decline since 1850 in the area of the park covered by glaciers. Many smaller glaciers are now gone, it says, and larger ones have shrunk by about two-thirds.

Maclay and his resort's chief executive, Jim Gill, are negotiating with snowmaking manufacturers who are asking for tens of millions of dollars for their services.

"Now with the snowline creeping up the hill, it's tougher and tougher for the areas that are struggling at the margins to keep their base areas full of snow," Gill said. "If you don't have a good snowmaking operation, you're not going to be able to compete."

In the Pacific Northwest, which depends far more on hydroelectricity than any region of the country, research findings on global warming from the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group have prompted utilities, federal agencies and regional planning groups to convene brainstorming sessions in the past year.

They are looking at possible ways of mitigating power shortages as the summer flows of the region's rivers decline -- a result of less snow in the mountains and early melt.

For decades, the Pacific Northwest has had a surplus of power to send south to California during hot summer months. But if Northwest rivers run low as summers get hotter, the region could end up competing with California for power, said John Fazio, a senior power systems analyst for the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, a regional planning group.

"More and more, global warming is becoming a serious part of the planning process," said Fazio.

Eilperin reported from Missoula, Mont. Staff writer Peter Whoriskey in Miami contributed to this report.