Legend has it that Nero fiddled while Rome burned. These days, Congress fiddles while the world burns.
More precisely, it’s Russia that’s burning at the moment, with a record heat wave and forest fires being blamed for as many as 15,000 deaths so far. Also troubling is the drought, which prompted the Russian government to ban wheat exports this year, sending shock waves through global food markets.
And as Russia burns, Pakistan drowns, with record rainfall producing floods that have affected 20 million people. A nuclear power ever teetering on the verge of chaos, Pakistan could be pushed over the edge by a catastrophe like this one.
While we can’t blame global climate change for any specific weather event, the disasters now unfolding follow a pattern of greater extremes predicted by scientists amid rising world temperatures. A warmer atmosphere, for instance, holds more water vapor, which produces heavier rainfall. (Just ask the people of Nashville, where the stage of the Grand Ole Opry was under water earlier this year.)
If we don’t take steps to stop climate change, these freakish extremes will become the new norm in the decades to come. How many droughts, fires, and floods will it take before we act?
Despite the evident urgency of the issue, the U.S. Senate failed to consider a climate and energy bill before members of Congress returned home this month. The odds of such legislation passing this year look very slim.
Not that the proposals being considered were anything to be hopeful about.
The latest congressional measure to limit carbon dioxide emissions is aimed only at electric utilities, and it would give away most permits to emit the greenhouse gas in the initial years. When the free permits run out, the proposal would allow polluters to purchase cheap carbon offsets that would, in most instances, fail to produce net reductions in CO2.
Top it all off with a volatile trading system that fails to send a clear price signal to clean-energy investors, and you have a recipe for failure.
This is what you might expect, of course, when legislation to control climate change is dictated by the people who are causing it. Perhaps Congress should stop trying to appease the coal and oil lobbies and start listening to the folks who actually want to preserve a sustainable world for their grandchildren.
Climate scientist James Hansen is one of those folks. In the preface of his recently published Storms of My Grandchildren, Hansen writes, “I did not want my grandchildren, someday in the future, to look back and say, ‘[Grandpa] understood what was happening, but he did not make it clear.’ ”
Hansen is doing everything in his power to be clear about climate change and what needs to be done. At an Earth Day rally on the National Mall in Washington this past spring, he unveiled a proposal called “The People’s Climate Stewardship Act.”
Simple, transparent, and effective, the proposal calls for a direct fee on carbon-based fuels at the source - whether coal mine, oil well, or port of entry - that would rise each year. As a result, clean-energy sources would be cheaper than fossil fuels within a decade. Since this would increase the cost of energy, the revenue from the carbon fee would be returned to households in the form of monthly payments or reduced payroll taxes, shielding families from higher prices.
The carbon fee would level the playing field for wind, solar, and other clean-energy technologies, unleashing a flood of investments that produce millions of jobs and wean our nation off coal, oil, and natural gas.
Now that cap-and-trade climate legislation has failed in the Senate for the fourth time, we should regroup and gather support in the next Congress for the simple, fresh approach of a carbon fee and dividend. Rep. John Larson (D., Conn.) introduced such a bill last year, but it was tabled when the House passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill.
Let’s hope Larson makes another run at the proposal in January. The smoky haze hanging over Moscow and the floodwaters inundating Pakistan serve as a warning that we’re running out of time.
Marshall Saunders is the founder and president of Citizens Climate Lobby. He can be reached at [email protected].
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