Al Gore predicts that global warming will cause the polar ice
caps to melt, causing the world’s oceans to rise by 20 feet.
Al Gore predicts that global warming will cause the polar ice caps to melt, causing the world’s oceans to rise by 20 feet.
The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts the rise will be more like 20 inches (23, in the panel’s report).
The politicians would like us to think it’s an either-or situation. Either global warming is real and a dire threat, or it’s not. Or it’s real but it’s not a dire threat. But as usual, the politicians are trying to recruit foot soldiers with a non-issue.
The argument isn’t really about the existence or extent of the global warming phenomenon. It’s about whether we should change from a petroleum-based world economy to something else.
From the oil industry itself to the shape of our subdivisions, the landscape of the 20th and 21st centuries has been dominated by oil, and huge economic interests are happy with the status quo, even if, like the U.S. auto industry, they have squandered their advantage.
Whether global warming is Armageddon or a recurrence of a cyclical fluctuation, there are lots of good reasons to reduce our dependence on oil, and lots of ways to do it.
One possibility was put forward by Jonathan Rauch, who writes for the Atlantic Monthly and Reason and was quoted in The Week: “We could tax carbon emissions. … $30 a ton on carbon dioxide emissions would add about 27 cents to a gallon of gasoline and about 20 percent to residential electric bills. … A carbon tax would accelerate the transition to new energy technologies, while also reducing the ‘geopolitical leverage of … Iran, Russia and Venezuela.'”
We have recently seen a gradual increase of at least 27 cents in the price of gasoline, and it hasn’t changed behavior very much. For me, even with my 40-mile one way commute, since my car gets about 32 miles per gallon, that’s less than $20 per month. I don’t like it, but I put up with it. It tells me that prices could get a lot higher before people would trade in their gas guzzlers, work closer to home or start to use public transportation.
While waiting for people to change their behavior, the money raised by the tax could be used to incubate businesses developing alternate energy sources, public transportation innovations or other ways to energize self-interest for the good of all.
Buying local is another way to indirectly reduce our dependence on petroleum. We are fortunate here, compared to New York City or even San Jose, that much of what we eat is grown within a day’s drive from here.
Finding it isn’t always easy, but reading labels can tell us whether those berries are from down the road or from down Mexico way.
In the meantime I wish the politicians would quit making this a partisan issue and get on with finding solutions. While we are fretting about having to change any part of our way of life, at least a fifth of China is shivering without any kind of power grid at all to heat their dwellings.
Don’t any politicians, on either side of the global warming discussion, see an opportunity here?
As the Chinese economy continues to grow, do we want them to heat their houses with old-fashioned carbon-based energy systems? Or would we rather offset the huge amount of stuff China exports to us with alternative technology developed here? If we could help prevent China from becoming another hostage to the oil producing countries, wouldn’t that be a good thing?
Elizabeth Gage writes a weekly column every Thursday in the Free Lance.
