Saving the Planet
The Editors of the State Journal-Register published their opinion on global warming today.
Its good to see today's editorial acknowledge the reality that global climate change is a serious problem and efforts by the Bush administration to keep information from the public. Despite Bush's frequent lip-service for the environment, this administration has been nothing but a road block on the way to resolving global warming.
I'm not sure exactly what the editors were getting at when they wrote that solving the problem will take "a global technological effort that makes the Manhattan Project look simple" but in the previous paragraph wrote that "it is unlikely we can sacrifice ourselves out of this problem with hybrid cars, smaller refrigerators and solar water heaters."
I think developed nations (which generally have declining or slowly expanding populations) and under-developed nations (which generally have rapidly expanding populations) have different challenges. Most of the world's carbon emissions come from wealthy, developed nations with the United States and China leading the way.
Incidentally, Communist countries have horrible track records on how they treat the environment. So China's high pollution levels aren't surprising but Americans still emit far more carbon on a per-person basis.
If the problem is going to be solved it means those of us in the Unites States have to reduce the amount of energy we use individually. So new technologies like lower polluting cars, geothermal heating/cooling systems, better insulation and other energy efficiency programs are an absolutely essential part of the solution. We need to transition to those technologies that allow us to do more with less energy.
The good news for those of us in Springfield is that CWLP is starting to dramatically increase its investment in energy conservation and efficiency programs as a result of the clean energy agreement with the Sierra Club. CWLP has already rolled out a few new programs recently, but there's much, much more to come. That will make it easier and cheaper for CWLP customers to be part of the solution to global warming while simultaneously reducing their monthly utility bill.
One reason reducing carbon emissions is so difficult, and is facing so much opposition, is that our economy is largely dependent on coal and oil. That means the transition to a new type of economy is opposed by powerful economic interests who fear they have much to lose.
Our overall economy will remain strong because there are many green-collar jobs that will be created to do everything from building solar panels to installing new insulation in homes. But that's little consolation to those heavily invested in oil and coal who feed talking points to talk radio hosts.
I hope developing nations with expanding economies will take note of the United State's dilemma. They have the opportunity to build a different kind of economy from the ground up that's based on lower polluting energy sources. That battle is being lost in China but it doesn't have to be lost in other nations with growing economies.
This might be what the editors of the SJ-R had in mind when they wrote about technology and growing populations. We need to use new technologies to help developing nations build an economy that isn't dependent on high-polluting fossil fuels. That will save them the pain of a difficult economic transition down the road that the U.S. is facing now.
Its going to take leadership from the United States to make that happen. We're still the world's superpower. We set the agenda for other nations of the world so the burden is on our shoulders to set the example. Hopefully our next President will show the leadership it takes to encourage the use of renewable energy and new technologies around the globe instead of continuing the pollution platform of the current White House.