Gainesville’s feed-in tariff program is limited to 4 megawatts of solar PV each year. The program is already fully subscribed through 2015 — a 24-megawatt commitment.Photo courtesy U.S. NREL

Feed-in tariffs (FITs) guarantee that anyone who generates electricity from a renewable energy source — whether they are a homeowner, small business, or large electric utility — is able to sell that electricity into the grid and receive long-term payments for each kilowatt-hour produced. Payments are set at pre-established rates, often higher than what the market would ordinarily pay, to ensure that developers earn profitable returns.

The FIT is credited for the rapid deployment of wind and solar power among world renewable energy leaders Denmark, Germany, and Spain this past decade. Similar policies have since been adopted by many other countries, leading the FIT to become the most prevalent tool for promoting renewables.

In North America, its adoption has been relatively slow. As public support for renewable energy increases, however, more governments are adopting FIT policies — often as a complement to the widely used Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) that require utilities to purchase minimum amounts of renewable electricity.

Several U.S. states and Canadian provinces began serious consideration of the FIT last year. More than a dozen states, one province, and numerous municipalities have since implemented some form of FIT.

“We’ve reached a tipping point where a feed-in tariff is no longer such an odd idea for America,” said Paul Gipe, the author of several books on wind energy and a FIT advocate. “In fact, it’s the best idea for rapid development of the massive amount of renewable energy that’s needed now.”

Renewable energy projects have often struggled to gain the confidence of investors, a problem the FIT policy addresses by ensuring that anyone with a sun-drenched roof or windy backyard may receive funding for a set period of time, normally 15-20 years.

“A lot of the charm of the feed-in tariff is solid, take-it-to-the-bank security and confidence for the investing community,” said U.S. Representative Jay Inslee, a sponsor of legislation that would establish a nationwide FIT, at a Washington, D.C. briefing earlier this month. “You get access to what is very difficult to get right now: financing.”

Not all FIT policies are created equal. The North American programs enacted to date often limit the level of economic incentive, the project size, and the renewable energy source, compared to large-scale programs enacted in Europe. Small-scale renewable energy advocates are praising FIT programs approved this year in Gainesville, Florida; Vermont; and Ontario as examples that North America should follow.

Gainesville, Florida

Florida, the Sunshine State, is blessed with bountiful solar resources to support renewable electricity. In the northern city of Gainesville, the municipal utility has helped ratepayers purchase their own solar panels since 1997. The program has partially financed some 40,000 watts of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, but until recently there was no incentive for homeowners to install the panels properly.

“We weren’t getting energy bang for the buck,” said John Crider, an engineer with Gainesville Regional Utilities’ strategic planning department. “People could get the rebate check and put their solar panel in the shade.”

Last year, Assistant General Manager Ed Regan visited Germany, the world’s leader in grid-connected solar PV, on a trip coordinated with the Solar Electric Power Association. Impressed by Germany’s FIT policy, Regan convinced the Gainesville City Commission to approve the first FIT for solar PV in the United States. The utility promised that solar providers who signed up for the program before 2011 would earn $0.32 per kilowatt hour for 20 years, an estimated 4-6 percent return on investment.

“We assume, as time goes on, it will be cheaper to buy and install solar equipment,” Crider said. “The rate we pay goes down as well, to keep the return ideally constant.”

The utility, which is otherwise reliant on coal and natural gas for its power generation, wanted to be sure that electricity costs would not increase more than 1 percent due to the FIT, Crider said. The decision led the utility to limit the program to 4 megawatts total of solar PV each year. The program is already fully subscribed through 2015 — a 24-megawatt commitment. Before the Gainesville program, the entire state of Florida had installed 2.5 megawatts of solar electricity capacity.

The FIT gained the city’s support mostly to boost the local economy. More than 220 companies in Florida produce, sell, or install solar PV products, according to the Apollo Alliance, a San Francisco-based organization that champions “green jobs” nationwide.

“Our primary motive is not to get the cheapest energy and keep profits high for investors, because we don’t have investors,” Crider said. “For the municipality, we have a larger vision…. Create a local, thriving marketplace for local solar providers.”

Vermont

With two-thirds of Vermont’s electricity contracts set to expire in 2012, the state was in a position this year to change its energy portfolio. Meanwhile, Vermont was far from its 2025 goal of 25-percent renewable energy — renewables were supplying less than 10 percent.

The state offered a “net-metering” program that allowed residents to feed renewably generated electricity into the grid, offsetting some or all of their electric bills. Hundreds of small-scale systems resulted, but these combined to meet a mere 0.02 percent of the state’s electricity load.

“We were trying to alter the entire energy paradigm, but we were on a very slow trajectory,” said Andrew Perchlik, executive director of Renewable Energy Vermont.

The net-metering program did not allow participants to turn a profit, a problem given that small-scale power generation projects required the same costly permits as commercial power plants. Too few Vermonters had reason to participate.

Legislators had considered adopting a FIT, but the policy lacked grassroots support until a new coalition of business leaders, environmentalists, and utility executives formed a renewable energy consensus. The group met before the state’s politicians convened in January and settled on the framework of what would become Vermont’s first FIT, which they call a “standard offer.”

“Increasingly, utilities are realizing that customers are asking for renewable energy. In the long run, it will be less expensive than the alternative,” said Robert Dostis, a former state House of Representatives energy chairman who now directs external affairs for Green Mountain Power. “By being at the table, we were able to contain the enthusiasm of some of the renewable energy advocates and have them understand the rate impact of some of their ideas.”

The legislature settled on a 50-megawatt program that limited individual projects to 2.2 megawatts each. Starting in January 2010, 20-year contracts will be available for developers of large- and small-scale wind, solar, and biogas power projects.

Opponents said the public would reject the idea of paying more for renewable energy projects — the highest rate, $0.30 per kilowatt-hour of solar energy, far exceeded the $0.04 many ratepayers were being charged at the time. “That was not the case at all,” Perchlik said. “Some 80 percent wanted renewable energy, and they were willing to pay 5 percent more.”

The energy bill cleared the Democrat-controlled legislature easily. In May, Republican governor Jim Douglas allowed the bill to become law despite his concerns about it. He said the FIT “fails to recognize the current viability of renewable energy in a competitive setting and will needlessly increase costs to Vermont consumers so as to subsidize this one favored business sector.”

Although program specifics have yet to be finalized, Vermonters are expressing growing interest. Dostis predicts that the program will fulfill its 50-megawatt limit by 2012. “I think this is really going to propel development,” he said.

Ontario

During the 2007 provincial campaign, Ontario’s Liberal party promised it would close every coal-fired power plant across the province by 2014. Premier Dalton McGuinty said the plant closures would benefit human health and meet half of the party’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gases 15 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Following the election, the Liberal party secured 71 of the Legislative Assembly’s 107 seats. Despite clear political support, shuttering 18 percent of the province’s power source is no easy feat. The Liberals had already pledged to close the coal plants during their previous term, only to push back their own deadline.

Since 2006, the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) began offering a FIT system that provided 20-year payments of 11 Canadian cents (US$0.09) per kilowatt-hour for small-scale hydro, wind, and biomass power projects, and 42 Canadian cents (US$0.34) for solar projects. More than 1,000 megawatts of projects were installed during the first year, but renewable energy advocates criticized the payments, particularly for solar energy, as too small.

In March, the province announced that its proposed Green Energy and Green Economy Act would establish a revised FIT modeled after Germany’s. The bill set payments for on-shore, off-shore, and community-based wind power; rooftop PV and ground-mounted PV power; small hydropower; and various biomass power options. Payments would depend on the project size for each technology.

The proposal was instantly applauded by renewable energy supporters. “The Green Energy Act is the most progressive renewable energy policy in North America in three decades,” said Gipe, who advised the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association. “There was a decision to pay what it costs to develop renewable energy. It’s clear to the public, transparent to everyone.”

An OPA-conducted survey found 150 developers who were interested in the new FIT and were willing to construct 15,000 megawatts of electric capacity — enough to produce the equivalent of 20 percent of Ontario’s electricity consumption.

Gipe also solicited support from Ontario’s farmers, whom he advised would be eligible to receive payments for wind turbines on their property.

“I went to every farm group I could,” Gipe said. “This is an opportunity to revitalize the Ontario economy … not just to revitalize the rural economy, but the entire industrial economy of Ontario.”

The proposal was approved in May. It now stands as the most generous FIT policy in North America.

This article is a product of Eye on Earth, Worldwatch Institute’s online news service. For permission to reprint Eye on Earth content, please contact Juli Diamond at jdiamond@worldwatch.org.

Sarah Palin, U.S. vice presidential candidate, may be an influential actor in Congressional efforts to pass climate change legislation.

Photo Courtesy State of Alaska.

When comparing the U.S. presidential candidates’ green credentials, both contenders support greater action to address climate change through a cap on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. While Republican candidate John McCain’s reduction targets are more modest than the promises of Democrat Barack Obama, either candidate should offer a significant shift from the largely stalled policies of the current administration.

Among the vice presidential candidates, however, the choices offer significant contrasts in ideology and policy. Democrat Joe Biden supports action that reflects the stance taken by Senator Obama. Meanwhile, Republican nominee Sarah Palin has stated that she does not believe global warming to be human-caused — a stark difference from her running mate Senator McCain.

As the country’s second-in-command and president of the Senate, the next U.S. vice president could become a crucial player in attempts to pass a sweeping climate change bill through the Congress and reach a diplomatic solution on a new international climate change agreement. During her two years as Alaska’s governor, Palin has moved forward efforts to assess the impact of climate change on her state, yet reports indicate that she has resisted, and at times subverted, scientific evidence that would support increased environmental protection in response to climate change.

Palin’s stance on climate change is summarized in an August interview with conservative magazine Newsmax. In response to a question about her “take on global warming,” Palin said, “A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one, though, who would attribute it to being man-made.” Neither Palin’s communications director nor the McCain campaign responded to requests for clarity on her views of whether recent climate change is human-caused — a trend that has been affirmed by international scientific consensus.

Despite her reported questioning of the human hand behind climate change, Palin did establish a Climate Change Subcabinet last year to review potential adaptation and mitigation strategies for Alaska. “Some scientists tell us to expect more changes in the future. We must begin to prepare for those changes now,” Palin said when establishing the subcabinet.

While Alaska has passed no legislation to reduce its emissions, Palin has authorized $13 million to relocate or improve erosion control for six indigenous communities in areas most vulnerable to coastal erosion caused by melting permafrost and rising sea levels. Erosion and flooding affect about 86 percent of 213 Alaska Native villages, according to a 2003 U.S. Government Accountability Office report [PDF].

Michael Black, co-chair of the subcabinet and deputy commissioner for Alaska’s commerce department, said Palin’s personal views have not influenced the activities of the subcabinet. “I never heard her address that issue in front of any of these gatherings,” he said. “Whether [climate change] is related to carbon emissions or a natural phenomenon is less relevant than what its impacts are.”

Larry Hartig serves as Alaska’s environmental conservation commissioner and oversees the subcabinet. He previously worked as a lawyer securing environmental permits for industry groups, including his former employer Alyeska Pipeline Service Company. He was unavailable for comment.

Palin’s most controversial environmental action as governor has been her opposition to listing the polar bear on the U.S. Endangered Species list. Officially designating the polar bear as “threatened” would create significant legal hurdles for oil and gas development in Arctic Alaska and could restrict Native subsistence hunting. Alaska’s budget is supported largely by revenues from energy development in the state.

Last month, the Palin administration sued the U.S. Department of Interior to overturn its May preliminary ruling to list the species as threatened. In response to nine U.S. Geological Survey studies [PDF] predicting that two-thirds of the world’s polar bear species — and all of Alaska’s — will disappear by mid-century due to ice loss, Palin described the studies as “highly speculative and questionable” and insisted that U.S. polar bear populations are stable. In a January New York Times op-ed, she wrote, “My decision is based on a comprehensive review by state wildlife officials of scientific information from a broad range of climate, ice and polar bear experts.”

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s lead biologist for marine mammals, Robert Small, and two other state biologists also reviewed the USGS studies. Their analysis differed significantly from the Palin administration’s. “Overall, we believe that the methods and analytical approaches used to examine the currently available information supports the primary conclusions and inferences stated in these nine reports,” Small wrote in an e-mail.

The e-mail was uncovered by University of Alaska marine conservation professor Rick Steiner through a federal Freedom of Information request. Steiner says the message reveals that Palin opposed the polar bear listing even before she reviewed the science. “She came into office and a few days later she opposed federal listing of the polar bears. Obviously they want to protect oil and gas revenues in the state budget,” Steiner said. “I think that bodes pretty poorly about how science will be reviewed if the McCain/Palin ticket were to prevail.”

Since Palin entered the presidential campaign last month, she has contributed to Republican calls for additional drilling in the Arctic Ocean and in the Alaska-based Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. McCain has long opposed drilling in ANWR, and his selection of Palin has led some commentators to suggest he may change his mind.

But on issues from climate change to drilling, campaign energy advisor James Woolsey insists McCain will not budge. “On a number of issues, such as climate change, John McCain has had well developed views over the years … I see no reason why that would be departed from,” said Woolsey, the former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Other climate change-related measures by the Palin administration have included joining the Western Climate Initiative, a regional cap-and-trade program, as an observer, and opposing a multi-state lawsuit against the Bush administration that sought to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

  Reprinted with Worldwatch Institute’s permission.

—–

In May 1989, a few months after NASA scientist James Hansen declared that global warming had arrived, he would provide another testimony to clarify the risks of future climate change.

But before Hansen could make his presentation to Sen. Al Gore’s subcommittee, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget intercepted the testimony and rewrote its conclusion. According to the revised copy, the cause of climate change was still unknown. NASA headquarters said Hansen could accept the changes or not testify, he later recalled.

It was not the first OMB revision of a Hansen testimony. This time, he decided, would be different. Hansen notified Gore that his testimony did not reflect his actual opinion, which led Gore to frame the hearing’s questions to reveal the OMB edits. It was the lead story on all major television networks that night.

Twenty years after Hansen’s 1988 landmark testimony, the U.S. government remains largely in a state of denial about the urgency of global climate change. Yet Hansen remains a source of reason, despite government efforts to silence him and industry campaigns to obscure his research.

“Hansen has a real intense inner light,” says Rafe Pomerance, president of Clean Air Cool Planet. “What’s someone who sees the future to do? Keep his mouth shut? Hansen’s not going to do that.”

While Hansen espoused confidence about the science of climate change, few other scientists were willing to make such clear predictions. In its initial 1990 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, composed of leading climate scientists from around the world, merely questioned whether anthropogenic climate change was occurring. Meanwhile, the coal, oil, and automotive industries unleashed a propaganda campaign to dispute the science of climate change.

The industry-funded Global Climate Coalition spent tens of millions of dollars to raise doubts about the evidence for climate change and to minimize the potential consequences. During the 1990s, the group managed to reshape media coverage of human-induced climate change from fact into theory by recruiting a handful of skeptical scientists who were paid to speak with the press and public. “It sowed confusion and doubt into the public that is now irremediable,” says Spencer Weart, a climate change historian at the American Institute of Physics.

These efforts helped derail U.S. climate legislation in the 1990s and complicated efforts to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty that most industrial countries adopted to limit their greenhouse gas emissions. When George W. Bush became president in 2001, he quickly rejected the Kyoto Protocol and brought to a halt serious discussion of climate policy in the United States.

Hansen remained relatively quiet during those years and instead focused on his research. That quickly changed when he delivered a speech (PDF) to the American Geophysical Union in December 2005. In addition to announcing that the year would prove to be the hottest on record, Hansen warned that the rise in sea levels was evidence that humans were causing global climate instability. “Jim took a step beyond that usual dissonance in the scientific community. He said ‘six to eight feet increase in sea level, I call that dangerous, don’t you?’” says Rick Piltz, director of Climate Science Watch, a watchdog program of the Government Accountability Project.

The speech, which received widespread media attention, led White House-appointed NASA administrators to silence Hansen and other scientists. The White House Council on Environmental Quality, influenced by ExxonMobil lobbyists, singled out scientists who had worked in the Clinton administration, such as former IPCC chair Robert Watson, who could be “removed from their positions of influence,” according to a released memo. American Petroleum Institute attorney Philip Cooney was appointed chief-of-staff of the CEQ. He would repeatedly edit government reports on climate change in an effort to lessen the certainty of the science.

At NASA, orders authorized by administration-appointed public relations officers “reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science,” an agency investigation stated recently. Climate scientists were not allowed to conduct media interviews without prior approval. Hansen had to remove the 2005 temperature data from NASA’s website. Even Hansen’s daily schedule suddenly required prior consent.

Hansen decided he had seen enough. He sent an email in January 2006 about the NASA constraints to New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin, who first uncovered the restrictions. During an interview on the CBS program 60 Minutes, Hansen said, “In my more than three decades in the government I’ve never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public.”

Federal scientists, from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other agencies have since acknowledged that their climate findings were also being repressed. “[Hansen] did a great deal to help unmask the Bush administration’s collusion with the global warming disinformation campaign,” said Piltz, who helped expose the White House when he publicly resigned from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. “He’s a bit like a lone wolf. Nobody can tell him what to say or what to do. They made a mistake when they tried to mess with him.”

Today Hansen rallies openly for drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. He writes personal letters to governors urging them not to approve new coal-fired power plants in their states. He decries the increased role of fossil fuel lobbyists in American politics — once testifying to Congress (PDF) that NASA’s mission had apparently become to “protect special interests’ backside.”

Above all, Hansen has continued to produce groundbreaking research. He and eight of the world’s leading climate scientists will soon publish a paper arguing that total atmospheric greenhouse gases must be reduced to 350 parts per million — not 450, which many scientists have long stated — to avoid “irreversible catastrophic effects.”

Over the past 20 years, supporters have lauded Hansen as a visionary scientist and a brave public servant. At a time when the United States has refused to act on climate change, Hansen has jolted the nation awake. Will the country — and its new leader — heed his advice? He says the world cannot wait another 20 years.

—–

An unprecedented heat wave gripped the United States in the summer of 1988. Droughts destroyed crops. Forests were in flames. The Mississippi River was so dry that barges could not pass. Nearly half the nation was declared a disaster area.

The record-high temperatures led growing numbers of people to wonder whether the climate was being unnaturally altered.

Meanwhile, NASA scientist James Hansen was wrapping up a study finding that climate change, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, appeared inevitable even with dramatic reductions in greenhouse-gases. After a decade of studying the so-called greenhouse effect on global climate, Hansen was prepared to make a bold statement.

Hansen found his opportunity through former Sen. Tim Wirth (D-Colo.), who chose to showcase the scientist at a Congressional hearing. Twenty years later, the hearing is regarded as a turning point in climate science history.

To build upon Hansen’s announcement, Wirth used the summer’s record heat to his advantage. “We did agree that we should figure out when it’d be really hot in Washington,” says David Harwood, a legislative aide for Wirth. “People might be thinking of things like what’s the climate like.”

They agreed upon June 28. When the day of the hearing arrived, the temperature in the nation’s capital peaked at 101 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). The stage was set.

Seated before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, 15 television cameras, and a roomful of reporters, Hansen wiped the sweat from his brow and presented his findings. The charts of global climate all pointed upward. “The Earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements,” he said. “There is only a 1 percent chance of an accidental warming of this magnitude…. The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.”

Hotter-than-usual summers in cities like Washington, D.C., or Omaha, Neb., were becoming more frequent each year, Hansen told the committee. Between 1950 and 1980, the likelihood of such heat waves was 33 percent. In the late 1980s, the probability was somewhere between 40 and 60 percent. By the 1990s, it was as much as 70 percent.

Hansen also presented maps of estimated global temperatures for years between 1986 and 2029. “In any given month, there is almost as much area that is cooler than normal as there is area warmer than normal,” he said, pointing to maps of the 1980s. “A few decades in the future, as shown on the right, it is warm almost everywhere.”

Until Hansen’s testimony, the science of climate change was considered tentative at best. But, “the scientific evidence is compelling,” Wirth announced at the hearing. “The global climate is changing as the Earth’s atmosphere gets warmer.”

Other senators also reacted with calls for action. Senator Dale Bumpers of Arkansas said there was an “obligation to take very dramatic action.” The committee chairman, Louisiana Senator Bennett Johnston, recalls that he was struck by Hansen’s confidence. “There was a real kindling of curiosity and desire to learn more about this issue,” Bennett says.

The next day, The New York Times published a story about Hansen’s statements on its front page. “Global Warming Has Begun,” the headline read.

Climate change awareness had shifted. Surveys conducted in the months after Hansen’s testimony found that 68 percent of respondents had heard about the greenhouse effect, a big jump from the 38 percent who said the same in 1981. Politicians reacted, too. By the end of 1988, 32 climate-related bills had been introduced in Congress.

But Hansen was not the only predictor of the future that day. Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) entered the hearing late and admitted he had not read the testimonies. Yet as the meeting wrapped up, he forecasted the future of climate change politics with eerie accuracy. “It seems that we as a people, and probably peoples all over the world, are very skeptical to move in areas such as this until we either have a disaster or we have absolute concrete proof,” he said.

All the climate bills introduced that year went nowhere. In the coming decades, an unprecedented industry-led campaign to smear climate science would confuse much of the public and stall a U.S. climate solution.

While Hansen would later find more — and stronger — proof that his testimony’s predictions were true, attempts from the White House to silence his results would also intensify.

Hansen refused to remain silent.

—–

The speakers at a Washington, D.C., climate rally this past Earth Day, April 22, showcased the range of the modern environmental movement. They included an activist who engaged in a hunger strike, an outspoken preacher from the Hip Hop Caucus, and a folk duo that performed, “Unsustainable,” a parody of Frank Sinatra’s “Unforgettable.”

Yet it was a comparatively dry, 20-minute scientific presentation that brought the crowd to its feet. The speaker, introduced as a “climate hero,” was James Hansen, a long-time scientist with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Hansen is not a revolutionary by character. He is a mild-natured man who speaks with a soft, Midwestern tone. Raised in southwest Iowa, the fifth child of tenant farmers, Hansen would later commit his life to studying computerized climate models. With human-induced climate change now widely regarded as the greatest challenge of this generation, Hansen is considered a visionary pioneer.

Theories of climate change first surfaced more than a century ago. But it was Hansen who forever altered the debate on climate change 20 years ago this month.

On June 23, 1988, in the sweltering heat, Hansen told a U.S. Senate committee he was 99 percent certain that the year’s record temperatures were not the result of natural variation. It was the first time a lead scientist drew a connection between human activities, the growing concentration of atmospheric pollutants, and a warming climate.

“It’s time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here,” Hansen told reporters.

Scientists first expressed concern about possible climate change more than a decade before Hansen’s testimony. The most-publicized report came from the National Academy of Sciences in 1977. It warned that average temperatures may rise 6 degrees Celsius by 2050 due to the burning of coal.

Around the same time, Hansen, a space scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, began studying the effect of greenhouse gases on climate. His first paper on the subject, published in the journal Science (PDF) in 1981, predicted that burning fossil fuels would increase global temperatures by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 degrees Celsius) by the end of the 21st century.

The incoming Reagan administration responded to Hansen’s predictions by cutting funding for GISS. But Hansen, encouraged by former Friends of the Earth president Rafe Pomerance, continued to raise the issue. “It was truly important for him to be heard. The issue had no traction at that point,” said Pomerance, now president of Clean Air Cool Planet.

Al Gore, then a young member of Congress, began organizing some of the first Congressional hearings on climate change in the early 1980s, which featured Hansen’s input. As more studies suggested a link between burning fossil fuels and climate change, the media gave the issue greater coverage throughout the decade. But in 1986, two separate polls found that most Americans (55 percent) still had not heard about the greenhouse effect.

Sen. Tim Wirth (D-Colo.) was aware of the growing evidence of climate change, in part from his constituents at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s Aeronomy Laboratory, both based in Colorado. He wanted to make a difference.

Meanwhile, the United States in 1988 was suffering from a terrible drought. Wirth knew that if he arranged a hearing that drew a link between the present weather conditions and a trend of global warming, it would generate considerable media attention.

Wirth’s legislative assistant, David Harwood, called Hansen for his input. Hansen responded that the observed temperatures were warmer beyond the range of natural variability. The year 1988 was on pace to be the warmest on record. “I didn’t know much, but I knew that was significant,” Harwood recalls.

Plans for a groundbreaking hearing were under way. Hansen would soon become the leader of climate science in a warming world.