HOW TO SAVE THE PLANET FROM RECYCLING TO PLANTING TREES TO DRIVING HYBRID CARS, IT SEEMS GOING GREEN IS THE THING TO DO - BUT WILL YOU DO YOUR SHARE?

Byline: BRENT HOPKINS

Staff Writer

In the future, a spring ski trip to Mammoth could find no snow. California zinfandel grapes could shrivel into raisins. Zuma Beach could become Zuma Seafloor.

On the first Earth Day, celebrated 37 years ago, global warming was not a hot topic. People drove big V-8 cars, burned their leaves in their yards and tossed out their bottles and newspapers.

Recycling was for hippies, and future technology would solve whatever problems came along.

Today, people drive hybrids, tote their bottles and cans to the recycling bin and nod approvingly as Al Gore hefts his Oscar for spreading the word of a world growing warmer.

Environmentalism has become somewhat hip, and global warming -- or its less-politically loaded cousin, climate change -- has entered popular consciousness like never before.

But scholars warn that's not enough.

"Global warming is not a problem of tomorrow," said Amy Luers, a climate scientist with the nongovernmental policy group Union of Concerned Scientists. "It's a problem of today."

Luers' group projects that the average temperature in California will rise about 1to 2.3degrees Fahrenheit in the next few decades no matter what. If we cut down on emissions, the temperature will still continue to go up another 3to 5.5degrees by the end of the century.

But if we only curb emissions somewhat, the temperatures are predicted to rise by about 5.5to 8degrees by 2100. And if we continue down the path to higher emissions, stoked by a growing population and continued reliance on fossil fuels, temperatures could climb an average 10degrees.

That's when the really bad projections could come true.

At that point, wildfires would become 55percent more frequent. Los Angeles would suffer through 100 more 90-degree-plus days each year. The Sierra Nevada spring snowpack would decrease by as much as 90percent. The sea level would shoot upward. Wine grapes would die.

"The economic impacts are going to be huge if we don't do something," said Kassie Siegel, climate program director for the nonprofit conservation group Center for Biological Diversity.

"It'll be much, much cheaper to mitigate the effects of global warming than to adapt to it. There's moral arguments, there's ethical impacts, but just look at the economic impact."

Jerry Taylor does -- and he doesn't care.

Taylor is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute, a Washington-based public policy think tank, and he dismisses the debate about global warming as hysteria.

Not long after Earth Day celebrations began, he notes, there was a scare about global cooling, and that turned out to be nothing.

"The only people who paint a bleak picture are political activists with an ax to grind," Taylor said. "It's very difficult to find big disaster scenarios because very little of the U.S. economy is affected by the weather."

The sector that matters to Mike Conroy, however, is directly affected by the weather. He's a strawberry farmer with Conroy Farms Inc. who tends 150 acres of crops in Camarillo and Oxnard.

Conroy is keenly aware of the frost earlier this year and then Friday's long-awaited rain.

If it gets hotter, he said, farmers will find a way to adapt. Trading in his pickup for a Toyota Prius, he figures, won't make much of a difference.

"If I started trying to speculate about whether we have global warming or not, I'd be a basket case," he said. "I don't see that it would be that radical in my period of time. I've got five years left, so I don't know, but it's not something I stay awake worrying about."

There are plenty of people who do, though.

Siegel envisions a world that increasingly relies on energy-efficient appliances, solar panels on every house, plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles.

People would live closer to their offices, telecommute more often and eat locally grown food.

"There's different ways this story can go," she said. "In the scenario I want to see, we can have some changes and adaptations. ... In another scenario, we don't start reducing emissions, and in another 10 years, we'll ... see 20-foot sea level rise and a die-off of a third of the world's species.

"We will have massive, unacceptable impacts to human life and our economy."

All this talk of disaster could drive someone to drink -- perhaps a cabernet or petite sirah from Paul Dolan's Mendocino Wine Co.

Dolan has been in the wine business all his life and heads the Wine Institute, an advocacy group for California vintners. He also very much believes in global warming.

"It's going to get warmer here," Dolan said. "We're going to run out of territory where we can grow grapes. My sons are fifth-generation winemakers, and I think that in their lifetime, they may have to find new crops to grow."

And so, partially out of concern for the planet, partially out of concern for his family business, he's going carbon neutral.

Next week, he'll begin converting his operation to rely on solar panels and biodiesel fuel. He'll ship his wine in environmentally friendly packages.

Anything he can do to stave off hotter temperatures will pay off in the long run, he says.

"Global warming is probably the single most significant event in our lifetime," he said. "If there should be a war on something, it should be on global warming. It's going to affect everybody on the planet in some way."

brent.hopkins(at)dailynews.com

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