Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
any nation accepting the enslavement of its citizens and justifying the
practice by arguing that America once accepted slavery. It is simply unac-
ceptable to use past ignorance to justify present stupidity. Moreover, we
should not use the fact that China's per capita carbon footprint remains
small to explain why it might be resistant to action: if we do so, we
endorse the idea that in all fairness, this footprint should become larger
as if developing nations somehow have the right to spew huge quantities
of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, simply because we have been
stupid enough to do so for generations. We can sympathize with their
longing for economic growth, but we should not submit to liberal guilt. If
the rest of the world demands the opportunity to live through the history
we have enjoyed, the planet will be toast in short order.
We have to translate China's demands into terms that are just both
across nations and to the planet. And justice demands something we may
not be able to tolerate: a radical and instant renunciation of what we can
now see as extravagant, monstrous stupidity, our willingness to eat the
Earth for our own benefit. The point is not to invite the Earth's nations
into our greenhouse gas insanity, but to stop our insanity and to discover
a way of living that is truly sustainable. We should not only make this shift
ourselves but also enable developing nations to enter an alternative, more
viable modernity as well.
This discussion of the international political scene, of course, takes us
right back to the domestic context. Needless to say, the American public
has litle inkling that such a renunciation is necessary or should even be
discussed. The politics of climate change in the United States typically
revolves around what we must do domestically to change our practices
and whether or how to secure international agreement. But since a work-
able solution will have to provide substantial subsidies to developing
nations, it will also require at least a minimal generosity from American
taxpayers on top of whatever costs we must pay to transform our own
energy practices.
It might be plausible to imagine that in a period of robust abundance,
Americans could accept both domestic transformation and international
generosity at once. But it's hard to imagine that sort of acceptance today.
The lingering effects of the Great Recession make aggressive action polit-
ically impossible. With high federal debt, state governments recovering
Search WWH ::




Custom Search