Where's the War on Warming?

Images of the death and the estimated $50 billion worth of damage [1] caused by Hurricane Sandy remind me that we Americans need to get slapped in the face to get serious about problems like climate change. And how do we solve problems? The War on Drugs, The War on Terror, The War on – “Fill in the Blank” – these we understand – The War on Global Warming? Not so much.

(Note: Prof. Auerbach's commentary was broadcast on WFCR on 11/19. To hear the audio, see the link at the bottom of this page.)

Hurricane Katrina was supposed to change all that, but then carbon limits died in Congress under the political cover of the Great Recession. Remember “carbon-cap-and-trade” – where the government sets limits on CO2 production – and companies can trade these like assets if they come in under their cap? A nice balance between market forces and environmental protection. Remember how both Obama and McCain supported this idea in the run-up to the 2008 election? – So where is carbon-cap-and-trade today? Well, like so much else, the idea died in Washington, DC [2].

The dirty truth is that we Americans stink at solving gradual problems. Don’t get me wrong – I love this country, but we do have problems.

The first is political – we suffer from politicians controlled by powerful interests. Take Coal for example. Nowadays, both Romney and Obama support “clean” coal. Remember that coal emits 2/3 more CO2 than does natural gas for the exact same amount of energy. I repeat – 2/3 more CO2 from coal. There is absolutely nothing “clean” about coal. But the coal industry enjoys a powerful lobby, and that means massive inertia in Washington, DC.

And as if this political problem were not enough, we suffer from an even bigger problem, a subtle but insidious problem that stretches from the White House to the Capitol Building, from Wall Street all the way to Main Street. Our second problem is a cultural problem. We live in a world where time is increasingly measured in smaller and smaller bits, measured by sound bites and text messages instead of generations and lifetimes. How could we possibly summon the political and cultural will to solve a problem like climate change, which is predicted to rear its ugly head around the year 2050, when the powers that be focus exclusively on quarterly earnings and the next election? And what’s worse, the American public – the voters and investors – don’t hold these powers accountable for their tiny, pea-sized vision of the future.

So is there reason for hope? Yes there is. California just passed their own carbon-cap-and-trade law, blazing a trail for the rest of America. And here at UMass Amherst, innovative new courses teaching the concepts of Sustainability, like the iCons Program, are producing a new generation of leaders with long time horizons. Will these efforts prevent the next Hurricane Sandy? Of course not. But we won’t have to wait for a disaster to take the future seriously.
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Prof. Auerbach's commentary was broadcast on WFCR, the New England Public Radio channel. You can download the audio clip here.

References (for your information):

[1] http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2012/11/01/new-estimate-for-economic...

[2] http://science.time.com/2010/07/22/cap-and-trade-is-dead-really-truly-im...