Kyoto Schmyoto
(This post is dedicated to dad.)
In my mailbox this month, I received a National Geographic containing several pages dedicated the search for strategies to reduce the man-made carbon emissions that have been identified as playing a key role in the our warming climate. Then a week later, The New York Review of Books arrived, which included a review of two books challenging the feasibility of reducing carbon emissions.
There is consensus now, even among scientists that editorialize in the Wall Street Journal, that the planet is getting warmer, that this is due to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and that human beings have contributed greatly to this increase. The question is what do we do about it? Or more to the point, what can we do about it? Over the last decade, it's become clear that the “cap and trade” approach of the Kyoto Protocol is not feasible from either a political or practical point of view.
Luckily, several technological advances and innovations have been developed in the decade since Kyoto, resulting an array of solutions (pdf) for slowing the rate of carbon transfer into the atmosphere. So why do environmentalists like Al Gore the climate change naysayers focus on the decade-old Kyoto style approach as the main point of contention? Because it makes for good partisan bickering and divisive politicking, that's why.
While this confrontation may get politicians elected, it does nothing to actually reduce global warming. When the conversation devolves to this level, the status quo wins over common sense. This is how we find otherwise ardent environmentalists opposing windmills (I'm looking at you Robert F. Kennedy). This is also how the ethanol bandwagon got launched, even though corn-based ethanol provides little benefit over fossil-fuel (thanks also in no small part to the small sugar lobby who block the import of cheap, more efficiently produced ethanol).
Hopefully, we're beginning to come around. Maybe if we focus on the big picture, we might see that our current choices (like, oh, maybe fighting a prolonged war over the control and stability of an oil-rich country) are actually having a detrimental effect on the one issue that unites all of humanity: the long-term, continued health and habitability of our planet.
