Red, Green and Blue: Climate Change Bill Comes Due?
The oceans and atmosphere are warming, and now the global warming blame game is also heating up. Inuit in Shishmaref are seeking damages for the climate change that has forced them from their 4,000-year-old community. And 12 states recently prevailed in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that states carbon dioxide is a pollutant that can be regulated by the U.S. EPA.
In the past week alone, we've seen the U.N. point its finger squarely at the developed nations responsible for most of the carbon dioxide in the air, and have heard Asian leaders lash out against their region's growing reputation as pollution poster child.
Not to excuse countries like China, because it is a fast-rising contributor to global pollution and greenhouse gases, but why is that? Because we consumers in the West have an insatiable appetite for the cheap goods it pumps out. If we weren't buying all that stuff, China wouldn't be making it.
The Sudan situation and global warming's role in worsening it is stickier, so I'll leave that for now. But how's this for a solution to the Chinese goods/pollution problem: a carbon import tax imposed by the nations buying what polluted, developing countries make? The more the exporters pollute, the steeper the tax. That way, we provide developing nations with an incentive to cut emissions, and we gain a revenue stream that can be directed toward carbon mitigation or alternative energy projects.
Tags: china, climate change, darfur, EPA, global warming, Red, Green and Blue, Shishmaref, sudan, UN
- Uncategorized
June 26th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Making the US liable for acts of God really doesn’t seem very smart to me, Shirley.
The US and our capital economy is inarguably a force for good in this world. If you want to see ecological disaster visit the third world countries where trench sewers are the norm and they grill endangered species over open cook-fires.
The more an economy progresses the more able that economy is to answer social and environmental concerns. Without our surplus wealth there would be no environmental movement. We’d all be on Maslow’s first step digging roots for food and focused entirely on daily survival. It is our wealth that gives us the luxury to even consider our relationship with mother earth. And it is for the want of our wealth that other failed socialistic and communistic societies wish to impose damages upon us.
Why do you continue to laude a cause that undermines the economic machine that is our environment’s only true hope?
June 26th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
There are two problems with your take on this, as far as I see, Jimmy. One, the U.S. IS responsible for much of the pollution China is emitting: A Carnegie Mellon study found that the amount of carbon dioxide emitted as a result of U.S.'s growing dependence on Chinese imports rose from 12 percent in 1997 to 22 percent in 2004. (http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2007/June/june13_emissions.shtml) That's significant.
The other problem is the characterization of the Darfur crisis as solely an "act of God" or the result of tribal disputes. Australian scientist and author Tim Flannery describes the circumstances thus in "The Weather Makers":
"The true origin of the Sahel disaster was revealed in November 2003, when climatologists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research … published a painstaking study … and revealed that the amount of human-caused land degradation there was far too insignificant to have triggered the dramatic climate shift (drought). Instead, a single climatic variable was responsible for much of the rainfall decline: rising sea-surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean, which resulted from an accumulation of greenhouse gases. The Indian Ocean is the most rapidly warming ocean on Earth, and the computer study showed that as it warms, the conditions that generate the Sahelian monsoon weaken. As a result, by the 1960s, the Sahelian 'drought' had begun."
Ban Ki-moon is right.
In any event, the causes of the Darfur calamity and other crises like Shishmaref's and Tuvalu's are in some way moot. As you yourself suggested last week (http://www.greenoptions.com/2007/06/20/red_green_blue_environmental_risks_and_the_knowledge_wisdom_gap), "With our current level of technology we could detonate less than a billion dollars worth of dust mortars in the lower stratosphere and bring on the next ice age if we chose but we'll never do that regardless of warming because of the imminent liability of doing so."
Well, I believe we're coming to the point where others ARE seeking a judgment of liability and an award of damages. We haven't seen any country or entity that contributes to global warming yet nailed with a successful, multi-million-dollar (or multi-billion-dollar) court loss yet, but ongoing news portends that time is soon coming. So, the question is, do we try to do the right thing now and start taking some major (i.e., beyond CFLs and low-flow showerheads) action to address the losses of those facing rising ocean levels or endless drought … or do we wait for the lawsuits to start being filed thick and fast?
June 26th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Why don’t we skip all the mumbo jumbo hoop jumping and just declare America the Evil Satan it really is.
Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant I don’t care what some stupid judge says.
The bottom line is that all of these whacked out dictators in the world want someone to blame their failed economies on and the US is an easy target being made easier every day by well intended people who just don’t understand that the world is looking for reasons to hate us.
It makes no sense to continue set ourselves up for this immense failure whose only aim is US wealth redistribution.
Is there anthropologic global warming? Well yes, some… but not to the extent the zealots wish to blame on us. Who discovered it? Who’s doing something about it? It’s us and our economy… because we can.
I’ve always loved this quote… it spells out the relationship between the US and much of the rest of the world.
Guess the statesman if you can… no lifelines.
I think this applies worldwide and what we have to understand is that it makes no sense to give our critics ammunition against us because we are the only hope for the world; socially, politically, economically, environmentally… in every way.
June 26th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Jimmy, the point is not that America is the Great Satan. We have plenty of good points as well as flaws, and it's certainly one of the better places to be living in the world these days. I'll be the first to acknowledge that.
However, the signs are there that those who've enjoyed the greatest riches of a fossil-fuel-based economy (and, therefore, have generated the most greenhouse gas emissions) will soon be facing a growing number of legal challenges from those who haven't been so lucky, who don't live in places better protected from the ravages of rising sea levels and melting permafrost. Like it or not, all those people in places like Shishmaref, Tuvalu, the Sahel, and — eventually — Bangladesh and other poor and fragile regions of the world WILL be seeking redress. And, sooner or later, a judge somewhere will award damages.
So, what do we do? Do we wait for the tobacco- or Vioxx-sized ruling against Exxon or the EPA or Dick Cheney and his secret energy commission? Or do we start planning now for ways (globally, not just the U.S. and our dollars) to cover these coming costs? That's the question I'm asking.
And, wow, a Clinton quote that you love! (Sorry, I cheated!) Of course, it was directed at terrorists who are aiming their grievances, real or imagined, against the West using violence and threats of violence … not against the world's disadvantaged who are slowly but surely watching their homes swallowed by saltwater or their fields drying into infertile dust. I have a feeling Bill would have a far different take on their circumstances, given the context.
June 27th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
The basis for their grievance is the same, Shirley. Unfounded in that acts of God are not our responsibility regardless of how many irresponsible self-important ’scientists’ join the bandwagon to say it is.
Since Malthus (and before) every generation has its chicken-little, sky-is-falling, “we’re doomed” mantra. Anthropologic Global warming is simply the latest in a long list of hysterias but the dangerous part with this one is that there’s a 5th (and 6th) Column in our own country feeding this cult-like revival. We’ve got the environmental scientists who, like all professionals, place disproportionate importance on their own work/contributions; and we’ve got a media megaphone that exaggerates the fears because that’s what sells.
June 27th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
As for the quote, it applies well to certain segments of our own population as well.
June 27th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
As to your last comment, I agree wholeheartedly! (Paris Hilton again?) : )
Again, though, I return to the basic point: we WILL soon start seeing more claims for damages due to climate change. It’s not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with whether the Earth is warming, or whether people are responsible, or whether the U.S. or China is more culpable: someone, somewhere is going to sue some company or some nation for many, many millions or billions of dollars, and one day, one of those plaintiffs will prevail.
So what’s the best response? Do we wait for that moment or do something — and, if so, what — now?
June 27th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
I think the legal definition of ‘Acts of God’ needs to be put to proper use… in the courts and particularly in the media; sans the oft’ implication of ‘US Caused Global Warming’ being the reason for every rain-storm and drought in the world.
Politics has hijacked and co-opted the science and for good reason. The US enemies are lining up to use it against us.
You mentioned Darfur earlier. The US has called it a genocide longer than anyone else and has been calling for UN action longer than any other country. The hold-up? Well every UN measure on action in Darfur requires the implicit subjugation of the US to the World Court. Why? Well because that’s check-mate in the eyes of the world for taking down the US and they are willing to use our country’s compassion about the suffering in Darfur as leverage to force it.
Now the UN says (and the media repeats loudly) that the whole Darfur crisis is due to [US caused] Global Warming? Absurd!
These are not unrelated events coming together at random. It’s a concerted effort to incite disdain for America and to build a frame-work for taking us apart.
What is sad to me is the number of Americans who are backing it.
June 27th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
Again, Jimmy, in reference to the Darfur situation, I'll return to two points that have been well established long before the U.N. report:
One (again citing research quoted in "The Weather Makers"): "The Indian Ocean is the most rapidly warming ocean on Earth." That warming has set in montion long-term changes that have greatly weakened the Sahelian monsoon. The drought affecting the people in Sudan is not going to go away any time soon, so the question is, How can those people be helped? They can no longer raise enough food or livestock to support themselves in the region that once supported them, so where do they go? What do they eat? All the brokered deals and embargoes and refugee camps and emergency food aid (unless it's continued ad infinitem) won't solve the problem. Bottom line: The environment that once sustained the people of Darfur has collapsed … it can no longer sustain them.
Two, here's a correction to the oft-repeated assertion that the Darfur crisis is pitting Arab herders against African farmers (again, quoting Tim Flannery): "Although the herders are characterized as Arabs and the farmers as Africans, with the exception of their lifestyles they are culturally and physically indistinguishable." This is not a cultural war, it's a climatic-driven human crisis.
For more details, check out these studies published in Science in 2003:
"Drought in the Sahel" (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/302/5647/999)
"Oceanic Forcing of Sahel Rainfall" (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/302/5647/1027)
Facts are facts, even when they're presented by an organization you dislike as much as the U.N., and especially when they're borne out by extensively vetted, peer-reviewed science. Does politics play a part in some of the interpretation? Of course. But then we're ALL playing politics while there's a real humanitarian/climatic crisis that no one is addressing with anything but Band-Aids.
July 2nd, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Jimmy,
Just one quick correction: It’s “anthropogenic” global warming, not “anthropologic” global warming. On everything else, I concur with Shirley (well done).