U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William D. Ruckelshaus wrote in a 1984 report on climate change and sea level rise that "Our system of government has traditionally been biased toward a sort of institutional inertia, which eventually is broken by development of a massive consensus that sweeps through remaining barriers and ensures that the policies finally adopted will have lasting constituencies."
For those of us who have been concerned for years about the threat of climate change, the lack of interest in this problem among the electorate, and the ability of politicians to use diversionary tactics to avoid the issue, have been agonizing.
Over the past year, though, the weight of scientific evidence that global warming is real, and that it is caused chiefly by human activity, has become overwhelming. The issue has finally captured the attention of the public, forcing a stubborn U.S. administration to at least acknowledge the threat. The tide has turned in Australia, as their newly-elected prime minister moves to endorse the Kyoto Treaty, but the U.S. under George Bush continues to claim that our economy cannot afford to address global warming, despite the fact that we are the most prosperous nation ever to exist on the face of the Earth.
Ever since the oil shortage of 1973, we as a nation have sat passively by, letting the cost of energy rise and fall (mostly rise) according to the laws of supply and demand - laws which laissez-faire economists hold sacred. The main beneficiaries of this inertia have been the oil industry and the nations from which we buy our oil. Over the past three decades, we have been told that efforts to curb gasoline consumption through a carbon tax - raising gasoline $1 or $2 per gallon - would wreck our economy. Proponents of a carbon tax, myself included, pointed out that the revenue could have been used to develop renewable energy sources, improve energy efficiency, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, improve air quality, and lower the income tax.
Well, now we're paying $3 per gallon, and that extra revenue is pouring into oil-rich Saudi Arabia and other Middle East oil-producing countries.
Our dependence on Middle East oil hurts U.S. interests in many ways. First, it has tilted our foreign policy toward costly military intervention in the area; second, our oil dollars flow mainly into the pockets of the wealthy, stirring unrest among the poor; and, third, as wealthy Arabs spend their dollars on Western products and services, they are seen as abandoning traditional religious values, further increasing tensions between rich and poor, and fueling support for anti-American terrorism. Global warming or not, a change in U.S. energy policy is long overdue.
For years, U.S. participation in the Kyoto Treaty was blocked by opponents who wanted more evidence that the Earth was warming and humans were to blame. A tiny but vocal minority still refuses to face the facts.
Anyone involved in business knows that decisions are often made with imperfect knowledge - in a process called risk assessment. The best course of action is chosen after weighing the costs and benefits of the available options. In the GOP presidential debate in Iowa on Dec. 12, John McCain wisely provided us with his risk assessment on global warming: "I know that climate change is real," he said, "but let me put it to you this way. Suppose that climate change is not real and all we do is adopt green technologies, which our economy and our technology is perfectly capable of. Then all we've done is given our kids a cleaner world." In other words, the risk of action is low, the risk of inaction or delay is great.
The failure of our government to take meaningful steps to combat global warming is frustrating, but there is reason to hope that the massive consensus spoken of by William Ruckelhaus 23 years ago is finally emerging. Let's hope it's not too late.
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