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A&M ag economist shares in Nobel Peace Prize
Texas When Dr. Bruce McCarl of Texas A&M University woke up the morning of Oct. 12, the last thing he expected to do was win the Nobel Peace Prize. McCarl was sitting in the family room at 5:30 a.m., watching the news on CNN, when he saw that former vice president Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had shared the prestigious award for their efforts to document and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change. A Regents Professor of agricultural economics, McCarl had worked on climate change for more than 20 years, studying how agriculture could be affected and how it could play a role in mitigation. Portions of this work were done jointly with the U.N. climate change panel. "I went over to my computer, and e-mails just started pouring in from Europe," he recalled. His colleagues were wondering what it meant for the U.N. panel to also receive the award, some saying they didn't even know it had been nominated. Soon afterwards, word came from the climate change panel's headquarters that all lead authors on the books the panel has published on climate change some hundreds of experts should consider themselves Nobel Laureates. In its latest book, coming out in November, McCarl was a lead author in the chapter examining how agriculture could help counter the effects of global warming by reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. With that, McCarl said, he woke up his wife Lynn to tell her the good news, and then he went out for a long, long walk around the neighborhood. Reminded that he is now the second winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M, McCarl told a television reporter that his "1/600th"of a prize doesn't quite compare with the one awarded in 1970 to Dr. Norman Borlaug, whose innovative wheat varieties are credited with saving one billion lives. "Of course," he added, "many of us involved in the study and mitigation of climate change hope that our work will galvanize global actions that will lead to bettering the lives of current and future generations." "We are extremely proud of Bruce and all that he has accomplished," said Dr. Elsa Murano, vice chancellor and dean of agriculture and life sciences. "He has been a student of climate change for more than 20 years, and he is a leading thinker in showing how agriculture can be a part of the solution." "Bruce has been a pioneer in developing useful models that help policy makers grapple with the costs of a range of mitigation strategies," said Dr. John Nichols, head of the department of agricultural economics. "We are absolutely thrilled that his work, nearly all of it done during his career here at Texas A&M, is being recognized in this way." As an economist, McCarl said, he has sought to identify first the costs borne by agriculture due to climate change, and then later the most cost effective ways that agriculture can play a role in countering the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, one of the primary causes of global warming. By far, he said, the emerging development of biofuels fuels made from agricultural byproducts or crops grown specifically for these purposes offers the best opportunities to mitigate climate change. Fossil fuel use is the source of more than 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and substituting agricultural commodities moves us to a position of recycling rather than net addition, he explained. In particular, plants absorb atmospheric greenhouse gases in their growth and release them when burned, while coal involves releasing carbon that has been trapped in the ground for millions of years, McCarl said. He said he also has examined numerous strategies for carbon sequestration the natural and artificial means of removing carbon from the atmosphere and thinks that forestry and soils could play a more significant role. Trees, for example, are 50 percent carbon, and soils hold many times more carbon than the atmosphere. "So if we can modify management to enhance this stored carbon," he said, "we can reduce atmospheric concentrations." McCarl said that from his studies he has concluded that Texas is vulnerable to negative aspects of climate change. Drought, high temperatures, hurricanes and rising seas regularly punish the state, and under climate change, these factors will only increase. Texas also must contend with pressures to reduce emissions, he said, because it has approximately twice the greenhouse gas emissions of any other state, including California. In 2001, some 42 percent of U.S. emissions came from burning coal, and Texas has the largest inventory of coal-fired power plants. Another 42 percent came from petroleum production, and Texas is the home of the petroleum industry, he said. "Agriculture can play a significant role in helping Texas, too," he said. "Texas can certainly be an innovator in energy matters, as it always has been." McCarl came to the department of agricultural economics at Texas A&M in 1985 from prior faculty positions at both Oregon State and Purdue universities. He earned his undergraduate degree in business statistics at the University of Colorado and a doctorate in management science from the Pennsylvania State University. ------CUTLINE------ Dr. Bruce McCarl, Regents Professor of agricultural economics, shares in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. (Photo courtesy of Texas Agricultural Experiment Station). Date: 10/22/07
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