Entergy and the Environment

Why Entergy Supports Action to Limit the Risks

In order to appreciate what’s at stake in the climate change debate and how it stands to impact individual families, it’s important to understand the science behind climate change and why many consider it the greatest challenge of recent times.

Beginning with the Industrial Revolution and due to a tremendous growth in fossil fuel consumption, humans have been putting CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate that far exceeds Earth’s ability to remove it and place it back into oceans and carbon sinks. As a result, scientists say the carbon dioxide cycle today is out of balance. During the 20th century Earth’s surface temperature rose 0.6 degrees Celsius. Though the rise seems small, according to climate scientists it likely represents an extraordinary rate of change compared to changes in the previous 10,000 years.

As the world’s use of energy grows, CO2 emissions grow even higher. Compounding the effect, 50 percent of today’s CO2 emissions stay in the atmosphere for 30 years, and the remainder for hundreds to thousands of years. As a result, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased from pre-industrial levels to a level that far exceeds the natural range of the previous 650,000 years. The last time this much CO2 was released into the atmosphere was 55 million years ago, which resulted in the world’s oceans warming by 5 to 8 degrees Celsius.

Following the Industrial Revolution, temperatures started to rise, as did the level of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.

Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reflect and trap heat radiation that would otherwise pass out of Earth’s atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change linked the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases to three specific climate effects: increasing temperatures, rising sea levels and reductions in land ice and snow cover.

Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reflect and trap heat radiation that would otherwise pass out of Earth’s atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change linked the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases to three specific climate effects: increasing temperatures, rising sea levels and reductions in land ice and snow cover.

Without greenhouse gases the earth would not be habitable because it would be too cold; however, too much of a concentration of greenhouse gases would cause the planet to overheat.

Entergy believes the world must achieve a pathway to stabilizing the temperature increase at no more than 2 degrees Celsius, and that it is imperative that legislation be created to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at 450 parts per million. Many experts say the only way to meet this target is to begin emission reductions by 2015 with the ultimate goal of 85 percent (below 2005 levels) by 2050, which is exactly what the Entergy-supported American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (Waxman-Markey bill) entails.

Although the ultimate effects of climate change aren’t certain, there is substantial risk in doing nothing. The effects of global climate change could be catastrophic for employees, their families and to future generations. The company’s service area and the Gulf Coast are particularly vulnerable to the risk of continued sea level rise, given the uphill battle already being fought to combat subsidence and the loss of coastal wetlands.

The IPCC predicts an increase in sea levels of 3 feet by 2100 due to thermal expansion of the ocean. The areas shaded in red would be underwater.

Predictions for temperature increases range from 1.8 degrees (best case) to 8 degrees Celsius by 2100 if no action is taken to slow the current growth in global CO2 emissions. The thermal expansion of the oceans due to increased sea temperatures can be estimated, but the key unknown is the rate at which the land ice in Greenland and Antarctica will melt. The water contained in those glaciers represents approximately 39 feet of sea level equivalent. Even a fraction of that “melt” would be catastrophic.

Scientists believe climate change will also affect the basic elements of life for people around the world such as access to water and food production. Hundreds of millions of people could suffer hunger, water shortages and coastal flooding as the world warms.

The ramifications of global climate change, while uncertain, paint a devastating portrait of an unsustainable world. What the United States does now is critical to eliminating or at least reducing the possibility of catastrophic outcomes for future generations.

Investments made today to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will reduce the cost of adaptation in the future. The notion of a no-cost, “do-nothing” option contradicts a key principle in business and life: probability diminishes in importance as the risk of disastrous consequences rises. If the world waits to act, climate change could be abrupt and impervious to any last-ditch, 11th-hour heroics.