Even as the Planet Heats Up, Efforts at Good Climate Change Legislation Go Cold
Federal legislators’ recent unwillingness to aggressively and doggedly pursue the passage of comprehensive climate change legislation reflects an alarming fact: The threat of climate change is not inspiring urgency.
When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid removed the teeth from the proposed climate legislation by applying the carbon cap only to utility companies, we should have been outraged. When Reid, in the face of unwavering Republican senators and an apparently apathetic Obama administration, abandoned cap-and-trade climate legislation altogether, we should have been marching on Washington. Instead, the unseasonably hot summer has made us sluggish and drone-like, repeating the election-cycle mantra that jobs are of paramount importance. Just a whiff of “energy-tax” and “job-killer” was enough to send us shuffling back to our air-conditioned living rooms, allowing climate-change legislation to die of heat stroke.
The economy needs attention, but not at the expense of good climate legislation. And the possibility that a carbon tax might generate new energy industries (and related jobs) and lower consumer bills over the long run has been overshadowed by the loud claims of well-heeled oil and coal companies (and their mouthpieces in the Senate) that cap-and-trade will cripple the economy. In fact, 10 states in the northeastern U.S. have been operating under a mandatory cap-and-trade system (the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative) for two years now. The RGGI enforces a cap on carbon emissions from utilities, and the results have been a decrease in carbon emissions, and the creation of new jobs, particularly in the energy efficiency sector.
The New York Times recently ran a number of fascinating and often disturbing editorials on the effects of climate change, and the Senate’s failure to implement climate change legislation. Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman offer frank assessments of what the rejection of federal climate legislation could mean for our environmental and economic future.
If physical evidence is necessary to convince you of the effects of climate change, columnist Nicholas Kristoff provides shocking pictures of shrinking glaciers around the world, including in our own Glacier National Park, which has lost 83% of its glaciers in the last century.
If glaciers are too remote of an image to resonate with you, read Dina Fine Maron's piece on the warming of Lake Superior, and the effects this warm-up will have on the residents (plant, animal, and human) of Great Lakes states. And if we need any more reason to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, please consider the Gulf oil spill, as well as the recent oil leak in the Kalamazoo River right here in Michigan.
Federal climate change legislation deserves real consideration. There is a direct relationship between our unmitigated dependence on fossil fuels, and environmental disasters like the recent oil spills. If the thought of melting glaciers, rising sea levels, invasive sea lampreys, and an oil slick on Lake Michigan doesn’t frighten you, the idea of our government in the back pocket of the energy industry should.
Photo: Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park.