Hullabaloo

Friday, October 19, 2012

 
Eugene Robinson dares speak of the unspoken

by David Atkins

Eugene Robinson says what needs to be said:

Not a word has been said in the presidential debates about what may be the most urgent and consequential issue in the world: climate change.

President Obama understands and accepts the scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels is trapping heat in the atmosphere, with potentially catastrophic long-term effects. Mitt Romney’s view, as on many issues, is pure quicksilver — impossible to pin down — but when he was governor of Massachusetts, climate-change activists considered him enlightened and effective.

Yet neither has mentioned the subject in the debates. Instead, they have argued over who is more eager to extract ever-larger quantities of oil, natural gas and coal from beneath our purple mountains’ majesties and fruited plains...

If this is a contest to see who can pretend to be more ignorant of the environmental locomotive that’s barreling down the tracks toward us, Romney wins narrowly.

Obama does acknowledge that his administration has invested in alternative energy technologies, such as wind and solar, that do not emit carbon dioxide and thus do not contribute to atmospheric warming. But he never really says why, except to say he will not “cede those jobs of the future” to nations such as China and Germany.

The whole thing is a must-read, but I'll just post his conclusion here.

Why does it matter that nobody is talking about climate change? Because if you accept that climate scientists are right about the warming of the atmosphere — as Obama does, and Romney basically seems to as well — then you understand that some big decisions will have to be made. You also understand that while there are some measures the United States could take unilaterally, carbon dioxide can never be controlled without the cooperation of other big emitters such as China, India and Brazil. You understand that this is an issue with complicated implications for global prosperity and security.

A presidential campaign offers an opportunity to educate and engage the American people in the decisions that climate change will force us to make. Unfortunately, Obama and Romney have chosen to see this more as an opportunity to pretend that the light at the end of the tunnel is not an approaching train.

Part of the problem is that oil, coal and auto-heavy swing states aren't receptive to the climate change message. Part of the problem is that talking about cap-and-trade and carbon taxes is a losing message when gas prices are nearing $5 a gallon in many areas. And part of the problem is that in an environment in which your average undecided voter doesn't even know to avoid the hot stove of Bush Administration policies just four years after the global economy sustained third-degree burns from them, talking about issues that will only have consequences decades down the road isn't a big winner.

Climate change is a problem that presents a challenge on many levels to many structures: to free-market expansionist capitalism, to the nation-state model of organization, and even to traditional democracy itself. None of them are prepared to deal with the management of global non-immediate problems with devastating, irreversible long-term consequences.

The deficit hawks often lament a similar problem. The difference is, however, that the deficit hawks are trying to "fix" an irrelevant problem with "solutions" that will make it even worse. Climate change, on the other hand, is very real and it's barreling down at us with the surety of a speeding train in a dark, narrow tunnel.

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thereisnospoon 10/19/2012 07:30:00 AM