Many politicians claim to act in the interest of the public, yet they act in the interest of a narrow group. The nature of the electoral system (one election every three or four years) makes that politicians are typically seeking only short term benefits for a select groups of voters that will help them get elected. Similarly, politics often focuses on local issues and this makes politicians inclined to blame outsiders for any problems.
So, how much can we trust politicians to be able to take adequate action on an issue like global warming? If we handed the task of dealing with global warming to right-wing politicians, they would propose buying off those who wanted action, resulting in no effective action at all. They are keen to establish carbon trading schemes. The danger of such schemes is that the rich will use such schemes to continue their polluting lifestyle, paying the poor under the pretence that this will solve the problem, but the result is that the problem only increases as the rich don't stop polluting while the poor will use this money to imitate the polluting lifestyle of the rich.
On the other hand, if we handed the task to left-wing politicians, they would increasingly tax the rich for their polluting lifestyle and use the proceeds partly to increase an inefficient government bureaucracy, in which case nothing effective would be achieved either. Since no alternative is made available, the rich will simply continue with polluting activities (because they can afford to do so), while the poor have no alternatives either, so - in line with socialist doctrine - they will be given the other part of the tax proceeds with the argument that they needed help with the increased cost of energy and food, which will only lead to them to continue with or take up further polluting activities.
As said, we should not wait for those who seek to advance a specific political ideology, to articulate the necessary action for us. No, we should all take responsibility ourselves and both take action regarding our own lifestyle, as well as regarding our logic. Because the answer as to what should be done is so simple and straightforward. The best way to decrease emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is to tax emissions of greenhouse gases and subsidize alternatives. In case of carbon dioxide, fossil fuel should be taxed and the proceeds should be used to subsidize local supply of clean and renewable energy, which will make the policy doubly effective. Similarly, the best way to decrease emissions of methane is to tax what's responsible for that, e.g. by introducing a tax on the sale of meat. Again, to make such a policy doubly effective, the proceeds should be used to subsidize local supply of alternative food, e.g. in vegetarian restaurants.
These are only two out of my ten recommendations to deal with global warming, but it goes to show that one can reach conclusions without waiting for answers from politicians. The importance of global warming as an issue is also that it so clearly shows what happens when good debate on such an issue is neglected in society. Indeed, it is precisely because we have failed to think matters through that we're in such big problems with climate change. As you say, it's hard to trust politicians to come up with effective policies - global warming is one of the issues that demonstrates that both capitalism and socialism are dead. It's up to us to articulate the action plan. Global warming as an issue urges us all to think matters through and make sense of why so many politicians have let us down for so long.
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Comments: 9
Sam, when you have time look up the products of combusion for fossel fuels. It is NOT CO2 it is CO and there is a big difference. If it is CO2 that is causing the problem it is not from burning fossel fuels.
" the best way to decrease emissions of methane is to tax what's responsible for that, e.g. by introducing a tax on the sale of meat."
That not the major sourse of methane. The major source of Methane is old garbage dumps. vegitable mater as well as meat left to decay under an old garbage dump will cause masive amounts of methane. Just South of Seattle a whole housing project had to be abandoned because it was built over an old garbage dump that had been back filled. Several people died and many were hospitalised from methane when the gas filled baements. No there are pipes sunk into the ground to draw off the methane and burn it. You can see several of those "torches" along I-5 between Seattle and Tacoma.
Beside all that Global Warming may be real but it's cause is a hoax, pure BS like the mini Ice Age predicted back in the 70s.
Maybe we should tax food based on its carbon footprint. Each catagory gets a base tax assessed by its input requirements and then a certain amount added for different bands of distance it has travelled.
At that point we use the taxes collected to develop more local sources of foods adn then education campaigns about eating locally.
Should we tax the sale of the "musical fruit" too?
It has always been capitalism that works, and socialism that fills in when needed. The baby boomers have not saved for retirement, we do something about it, always at the last minute, with a massive welfare program, and then go about our business as if nothing has happened. That is the American way.
We will build high speed, automated, suspended rail, and abandon our sprawl when it is too late, and not a minute sooner.
Makes a suspended rail advocate like me wonder what I'm doing.