Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
the public can appropriate it for a collective purpose, turning it into a
straightforward, low-maintenance, and effective means to create a green-
house-free economy. In effect, this strategy makes market society into
a transformative machine that would generate incredible momentum
toward undoing the causes of climate change. When that common goal
finds expression within the terms of the market, individual choice can
do the rest. The result would be neither capitalism nor socialism, strictly
speaking, for it would rely on an alternative to both, using an aspect of
capitalism to achieve a socially designated purpose.
This strategy accords well with other aspects of an innovative solu-
tion. The shift to sustainable energy technologies, as well as ecologi-
cally sound management of farmlands and forests, will rely heavily on
scientific research, experimentation, and know-how. This approach thus
hopes to use science to reconfigure the fossil-fuel-driven world it has
created over the past two centuries. Here again the proposed measures
would make possible a fusion of apparently opposed political traditions;
it would blend technological innovation with environmental responsibil-
ity, making good use of engineering skills to ecological ends. Just as we
can use the market to transform itself, we can rely on science to do the
same—to find ways of sustaining our lives that are far less destructive
than those it has provided so far.
In effect, this measure ultimately proposes a Grand Compromise
between free-market ideology and an inescapable environmental impera-
tive. It accepts the bedrock American love of economic freedom and
uses it for a cause in which the vast majority of Americans also believe.
The nation has used a roughly similar approach on previous occasions,
as Social Security and Medicare demonstrate. Those measures blended
economic individualism and public protection in ways that were ini-
tially atacked as socialist but that eventually received nearly unanimous
public support, suggesting that hybrid solutions of this kind are possi-
ble in America.
Nevertheless, this proposal has not yet been adopted by our legisla-
tive bodies. (In 2010, the Senate rejected a bill without a vote, perhaps
because the cap-and-trade mechanism in the bill was riddled with flaws,
but more likely because it would have indirectly raised the price of fossil
fuel.)
87
It does not seem likely that any legislation increasing the cost of
Search WWH ::
Custom Search