Planetary Ruin

The crowd that nearly filled Virginia Tech’s 3,000-seat Burruss Hall Auditorium to hear environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak probably had an idea about what he thought of the Bush administration before he took the podium.

Some of Kennedy’s books were on sale in the auditorium lobby, including his most recent — “Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy.”

But early on in a rambling speech Monday night that lasted more than an hour, the son of a 1960s Democratic icon made it clear that he wasn’t critical of Bush because of his political affiliation.

He was critical of him, he said, because Bush has implemented policies and circumvented the law in order to enrich his donors at the expense of thousands of lives and America’s environmental future.

“You can’t talk honestly about the environment today … without being critical of the president,” he said.

The speech capped a day of discussion and events that were part of Tech’s Dean’s Forum on the Environment. The event was designed to stimulate conversation and showcase the university’s latest research and activity on environmental issues. Tech trails many universities in areas such as sustainability and environmentally friendly policies but is in the process of implementing several initiatives that could close the gap.

Kennedy, whose speech was titled “Our Environmental Destiny,” is a member of several national environmental organizations. He’s president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, a grass-roots advocacy group dedicated to preserving water and protecting it from pollution. He’s also senior attorney for the National Resources Defense Council and chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper organization.

The university paid $20,000 for his visit. This was the second trip to Virginia Tech in three years for Kennedy, who visited Blacksburg in March 2004 as part of a symposium series on smart growth in the New River Valley.

While he pointed out good work and sound perspectives from past Republican and Democratic presidents Monday, he labeled the Bush administration the worst in history when it comes to the environment. To make his point he outlined a litany of what he sees as Bush’s offenses — from rolling back environmental regulations to dropping lawsuits to naming lobbyists for oil, timber and utility companies to head federal organizations designed to curb environmental abuse.

But Kennedy’s attacks weren’t reserved for Bush. He criticized what he called a “negligent and indolent press” for perpetuating the idea that there’s still a debate about global warming despite overwhelming scientific evidence that it is real. He went after scientists — he called them “biostitutes” — hired by big oil and big coal who churned out reports for pay after decades of not publishing anything.

And while he said he loathed partisanship and said the worst thing that could happen to environmentalism would be for it to become the province of one political party, Kennedy fired a few more zingers at the Republicans. The one that drew the most laughter was in reference to a study done by the University of Maryland after the 2004 presidential election showing how misinformation affected the way people voted.

“Eighty percent of Republicans are just Democrats who don’t know what’s going on,” he said.

But aside from a few cracks, Monday’s speech had a somber tone and warned of what today’s actions could mean for future generations, not to mention the current one.

“We’re living in a science-fiction nightmare in this country … because somebody gave money to a politician,” he said.

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A panel of scientists has presented the United Nations a detailed plan for combating climate change. VOA’s correspondent at the U.N. Peter Heinlein reports the strategy involves reaching a global agreement on a temperature ceiling.

A group of 18 scientists from 11 countries is calling on the international community to act quickly to prevent catastrophic climate change.

In a report requested by the United Nations and partially paid for by the privately funded U.N. Foundation, the panel warns that any delay could lead to a dangerous rise in sea levels, increasingly turbulent weather, droughts and disease.

The report was issued three weeks after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that global warming is real and caused in large part by human activity. But unlike the IPCC report, this latest document makes policy recommendations.

Panel member John Holdren of Harvard University says the world must be mobilized immediately to avoid catastrophe. “Climate change is real, it’s already happening, it’s already causing harm, it’s accelerating and we need to do something about it, and we need to do something about it seriously, starting now. Our specific conclusions are that if the world were to go past the point of an increase above pre-industrial temperatures greater than 2 to 2.5 degrees Celsius, we would be in a regime where the danger of intolerable and unmanageable impacts on well-being would rise very rapidly,” he said.

The panel’s recommendations include a series of steps to cut the rate at which temperatures are rising. Chief among them are a global agreement on an acceptable ceiling for temperature rise and finding ways of adapting to cope with the damage already done.

Holdren, however, says even these measure will achieve very little unless they are accompanied by a global tax on greenhouse gas emissions. “We don’t think ultimately society will get it right in terms of the full range and scope of activities needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, until there is an additional incentive in the form of a price on greenhouse gas emissions, either through a carbon tax or a cap and trade approach,” he said.

The United States is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses, but is not a party to the cap and trade system contained in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Nevertheless, the Bush administration has set a target of cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 18 percent by 2012, and is spending $3 billion a year on climate change research.

Peter Raven, the head of the Sigma Xi Scientific society and co-author of the latest report, says success in limiting the effects of global warming will require private sector leadership, and a combined effort by the U.S. and the international community. “The private sector is doing a very good job, and kind of leadership we’re calling for from the United Nations and international organizations and the kind of leadership the United States is moving towards will both be key ingredients in that,” he said.

A U.N. spokesman says Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is considering calling a summit meeting on climate change later this year. Environmental activists are calling on Mr. Ban to play a leading role in the process of negotiating a successor to the Kyoto agreement, which expires in 2012.

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Former Vice President Al Gore could pay a visit to the University in the near future to receive an honorary degree for his work in climatology.   University President Bob Bruininks spilled the beans at the February Board of Regents meeting, saying that “two of our colleges are working with Vice President Gore to provide, we hope, an honorary doctorate.”

Gore has been in the news lately for his 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” about global warming. University spokesperson Daniel Wolter said since Gore is an expert in the subject, several colleges at the University have expressed interest in inviting Gore to speak on campus.

“He’s in the news and is a legitimate expert on a pressing issue of global concern, climate change, so this level of interest is understandable,” Wolter said. “However, no plans have been set and it’s unlikely that would occur this spring.”

Gore spokesperson Kalee Kreider said she did not believe Gore has received information about an honorary doctorate from the University and wouldn’t comment further.

Wolter said the University is still interested in hosting Gore and will “continue to look into the matter.”

One way to lure him to campus would be with an honorary doctorate, which he would likely receive in person.

The University gives out several honorary degrees each year in three categories: humane letters, laws and sciences. Candidates cannot be University employees and must be nominated by a current faculty or staff member or a University alumnus or alumna.

University Senate Administrator Vicky Courtney said the honorary degree process is supposed to be totally confidential. In fact, the announcement of an honorary doctorate is not usually made until after the candidate accepts, she said.

“If somebody turns us down, it’s an embarrassment to the University,” Courtney said.

Courtney, who is in charge of coordinating honorary degrees, would not comment on the possibility of the Gore doctorate, but did say the “process is in the most absolute confidential stages.”

Media relations employees at the College of Biological Sciences, the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences and the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs said they were unaware of the honorary doctorate, although Wolter said faculty at the Humphrey Institute might be involved.

Some students at the University are in support of the doctorate for Gore, including University DFL President Shannon Mitchell.

The bipartisan work he did after he ran for office, she said, including his documentary, is deserving of the award.

“He’s a leader in an area we all need to be very concerned with,” she said.

Ingrid Scantlebury, a first-year political science student, agrees with Gore’s work but doesn’t feel the University should award him a degree for it.

“It’s mainly a publicity thing,” she said.

Scantlebury said if anyone else had made the same documentary, the University probably wouldn’t recognize him or her.

“People will pay more attention because of who he is.”

The University has given 223 honorary degrees to date. Past recipients include Yanni, Charles Schultz, Sandra Day O’Connor and Hillary Clinton.

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Temperatures will be above normal in most parts of the United States through March, spelling a mild end to the winter heating season, private forecaster WSI Corp. said on Monday.

After deep cold in late January and into February that spiked demand for heating oil and natural gas, March temperatures will average above normal in all regions of the country except part of the South, WSI said.

“The warmer March outlook should help to keep gas inventories at or above the five-year average,” WSI said in a press release.

April will average warmer than normal in the Northeast and the Northwest, but cooler than normal in the middle of the country, WSI said in the release.

Winter weather can have significant impact on world oil prices by altering demand for heating fuels. A recent spell of frigid temperatures in the United States that began in late January pushed crude prices back near $60 a barrel.

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Continuing flight delays and cancellations led to angry confrontations on Friday night between JetBlue Airways and its passengers, prompting the airline to cancel 266 flights scheduled for the weekend.

JetBlue has been struggling to recover from an ice storm on Wednesday in the eastern United States that stranded hundreds of passengers. The airline, which is the biggest carrier at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, has canceled at least 861 flights since the storm; the 133 flights canceled each day over the weekend represent 23 percent of its schedule, the airline said.

“It was turning from an operational problem to a safety and security problem for our workers,” a JetBlue spokeswoman, Jenny Dervin, said yesterday. “We canceled late departures, upset more customers, met overnight and said, ‘This has just got to stop.’ ”

Irving Fain, a New Yorker who said that his 6:05 p.m. flight Friday from J.F.K. to San Diego was delayed many times and then canceled at about 10:30 p.m., described a scene at gate 16 in the JetBlue terminal with angry passengers crowding around the gate podium, a gate agent calling security, and then passengers and a security officer exchanging heated words.

“It was really a disaster,” said Mr. Fain, who is 26 and works for a radio station. “Passengers screaming, ‘We pay your salary.’ The security guy screaming back. Fifteen minutes into this ruckus, they finally canceled the flight.”

Ms. Dervin of JetBlue said that scenes like the one described by Mr. Fain “happened at a number of gates and at the baggage claim, too.”

The cancellations raise new questions about whether JetBlue’s management is equal to its ambitions. Early last year, after fuel prices had wiped out profit at the airline, it was forced to curtail an aggressive delivery program for new planes and focus more on making its existing operations run more smoothly.

On Friday afternoon, JetBlue’s chief executive, David G. Neeleman, acknowledged that he should have canceled more JetBlue flights on Wednesday to avoid stranding for more than six hours hundreds of passengers on nine planes that could not get to the gates at J.F.K. In an interview, Mr. Neeleman said of the spillover of delays to Friday: “Day three: unforgivable.”

JetBlue said early yesterday that it had scrapped 133 of nearly 600 scheduled flights for both yesterday and today because of a shortage of flight attendants. It essentially grounded its entire fleet of 26 Embraer 190s, which are 100-seat planes, and moved any available flight attendants from those planes to its fleet of bigger Airbus 320s.

That grounded all flights to and from Austin, Tex.; Bermuda; Charlotte, N.C.; Columbus, Ohio; Houston; Jacksonville, Fla.; Nashville; Pittsburgh; Portland, Me.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; and Richmond, Va.

Ms. Dervin, the JetBlue spokeswoman, said that the airline called all of its pilots and flight attendants on Friday afternoon to determine where they were and how many hours of flight time they had left under government work rules, and simultaneously was patching together a new full schedule for the weekend.

“Sometime in the afternoon, it just fell apart,” she said. “The folks running the operation are just exhausted. We said, ‘Let’s stop the madness.’ ”

Some additional cancellations are likely, Ms. Dervin said, and delays of up to two hours were also continuing yesterday.

JetBlue said that customers whose flights had been canceled would receive full refunds or credits and could rebook their flights any time through May 22.

Mr. Fain, the New Yorker who never got to San Diego, said his surfboard, checked for his flight, still had not shown up early Saturday afternoon. He added that he would not fly JetBlue again.

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