The Plight of the Frogs

Somehow it's hard to worry about global warming in the middle of October. So if not many people noticed or cared when the Union of Concerned Scientists sent a petition with 1,500 signatures to the White House calling for international measures to curb global warming, we should not be particularly surprised. I admit to guilt as well--after talk of Earthly destruction from ozone depletion, toxic pollutants and every fruit, vegetable or meat, it doesn't take much effort or worry to add another potential hazard to the list of threats to the environment. What would Rachel Carson think of this new attitude?

Or perhaps this complacence is the old attitude, and the environmental concern that flared up in the past few decades is about to die again. Perhaps that is why no one has noticed the frogs.

I first remember reading about the frogs a year ago. In Minnesota, natives kept discovering frogs in ponds and lakes with developmental abnormalities, from frogs missing limbs to those with eyes growing in their throats. They finally reported this trend to newspapers and some scientists went to work to solve the puzzle. Ironically, the species of frog affected, Xenopus, is frequently used in labs to study the genetics of development, making it even more striking that these frogs, a fairly well-characterized species, have slipped by unnoticed.

Just a few weeks ago, researchers reported that the source of abnormalities was the groundwater, and that tadpoles raised in tanks that contained more than 50 percent Minnesota water led to a very high deformity rate. This is the same groundwater that is considered safe enough to be used for drinking. For those who might think this is a problem peculiar to Minnesota, the high frequency of deformed frogs has been found in Japan and southern California. More importantly, these species could be serving as the environment's proverbial canary, much like the ones used by miners decades ago. And the frogs may point to a serious problem with the water supply. The animals affected are very commonplace; should all the squirrels around Harvard start sprouting developmental abnormalities, we would worry--I hope. Yet perhaps in this isolated case, because scientists are still trying to find the cause of these frogs problems, their plight has not made a particularly strong impact.

While ignoring the new frog problem at this stage is excusable, ignoring global warming is not. We have heard the idea for many years; we know which pollutants create the most damage; and we have a fairly good idea of what steps we could take to alleviate the problem. And so the Union of Concerned Scientists has asked Clinton to bring up the issue at the international conference in Kyoto this December.

Glaciers around the world are melting and the sea level has been rising, says Kevin Trenberth, climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Yet chemical companies and some members of Congress have complained that any guidelines could decrease the competitiveness of the U.S. in the global market and that any agreement calling for a similar reduction in pollutants from Europe and the U.S. would affect the U.S. more than any other country.

If you recall the ozone debate, chemical companies proclaimed very similar forecasts of doom when the number of ozone-depleting materials produced by each country was cut. Yet we haven't seen any reports that the U.S. economy has greatly suffered as a result of the reforms. Similarly, we should be able to accomplish these reductions without feeling the pinch. And if we do feel a little pinch, then an aggressive media campaign could make the public think it was worth the effort. After all, recycling, unheard of a few decades ago, has become a routine part of life in many places.

It's frightening that we still cannot discover the cause of these abnormalities in frogs across the country, and even more frightening to think of how those causes could be affecting us now without our knowledge. However, in the case of global warming, we understand some of the causes and have some of the solutions at our fingertips. It would be very disappointing if we still didn't act to fix the problem.

Tanya Dutta's column appears on alternate Tuesdays.