What Do Polar Bears and Poor People Have in Common?

“The arid torpor of inaction will be our demise.” –Bad Religion, “Kyoto Now!”

There is a lot of debate over whether or not global warming is caused by human beings. Virtually none of that debate is taking place among climate scientists. The experts in the field, the people who have devoted their lives to its study, agree with 90% certainty that humans are responsible for climate change. We cannot afford to wait until the climate scientists are 100% certain. Global warming already has great momentum, and will do much damage before we can ever hope to stop it. A delay would be disastrous. Global warming needs to be confronted immediately on all fronts. Among the things we need to focus on:

Energy conservation: Greenhouse gasses come from power plants. The less power we use, the less power plants will emit. The same logic applies to automobiles.

Clean energy: Wind and solar power produce electricity with virtually no emissions. We need research and government grants to make these alternatives affordable.

Developing countries: Even if Western nations stopped emitting greenhouse gasses immediately, soon developing countries such as China and India would take our place. These countries are building dirty coal power plants at a fantastic rate. We need to provide them with the means to develop clean power plants.

Government mandates: Corporate leaders agree, the market is not capable of cracking down on emissions on its own. That is why they are demanding mandatory caps on emissions. This is clearly a case where government intervention is appropriate.