Will Global Warming Require
Government Action?

In the telescope of history, global warming will prove to be a more important issue than the Iraq war in the 2008 election. Whether Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards or even Bill Richardson gains the Democratic nomination, matters less than whether a Democrat or a Republican wins. The reason is: although the Iraq war is a major issue, and the four above are against it to differing degrees, still the historic issue of greatest importance is global warming as the latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report highlights.

On this issue all the Democratic candidates are generally agreed: major efforts will be needed by the US to reduce carbon emissions. The Republican candidates are likely to dismiss the importance of global warming, as has President Bush; they emphasize the economic difficulties of acting through government to slow down the process. They are likely to insist that the market and voluntary guidelines are the only acceptable response. Yet voluntary guidelines haven't worked and aren't likely to do so in the future.

The reason is simple: market economics does not account for costs external to a business. Human caused climate change is an external cost. It does not directly affect a corporate balance sheet. Even if a CEO of a large company is committed to reducing carbon emissions, his legal obligation is to maximize investor return. If he commits his company (let's say GE) to carbon capture of all its industrial processes, his costs will rise significantly. It is inevitable, if there are no regulations mandating lower carbon emissions that some of GE's competitors will not install carbon capture in their industries; their costs will be significantly lower, and they will be able to undercut GE and take away its market share.

That's why voluntary guidelines don't work. Companies lobby for them because they don't want to be forced to pay for the external costs to which they are contributing--the most critical of which is climate change. The exceptions are the CEO's who lobby for government regulation; they do so because they want regulations to force their competitors to comply and they know they can't afford to follow better environmental practices unless their competitors do.

The IPCC's latest report has given impetus to the UN to call for launching negotiations for a comprehensive deal among all nations to slow or reverse global warming when they meet in Bali this December. Think of GW Bush at this meeting! You know what he thinks we should do: the statement he brought out of an agreement with Australia and other anti-Kyoto Protocol nations like China and India called only for guidelines: need I say more?

Therefore, on the issue of human survival, who Americans vote for in 2008 will make a significant difference; whether or not we really begin to grapple with the changes we will have to deal with as we face global warming.

If we follow the siren song of the deniers of our role in creating climate change, or of those who say we don't have to do anything different, need only small changes that will cost us nothing, we will be like the Senators of the Late Roman Empire in the fifth century, who believed until the very end that nothing would change, that Rome was Eternal; they believed that the Roman Empire would never disappear, but it did, in 476.

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