http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/767Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, in a press conference following the release of the UN Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change report earlier this month, made an interesting comment. Asked why the Bush administration has opposed experimenting with carbon caps for American industry, he said, "The U.S. economy is not something to be experimented with, in my judgment."
What's the worst that could happen if we don't cut carbon emissions from power plants and automobiles over the next 10 years?
Well, the worst that could happen is that global warming could accelerate (remember, every estimate of the pace of global warming over the last decade has been higher than the last one, so we should be prepared for more bad news). That means the world gets hotter, critical croplands get drier, storms get bigger, and economic losses due to these problems grow, perhaps leading to a serious global economic slowdown. But it could also mean that Siberia's permafrost could melt faster, and that the 4,000 billion tons of methane trapped under that permafrost could start boiling into the atmosphere faster. If that came to pass, we could have temperatures far hotter than predicted by the latest UN report. Indeed, with methane gas 24 times as potent a global warming blanket as carbon dioxide, we could find ourselves facing a runaway heating scenario that could turn most of the world into a desert.
The U.S. economy is not something to be experimented with? Is this guy serious?
Besides, the Bush administration, which claims the only valid way to run an economy is to leave it alone to "market forces," which says that tinkering with market forces is ipso facto a bad idea, has been quietly plotting ways to tinker with the Earth's weather in a big way. According to a number of reports, the same Bush administration that won't experiment even with something as benign as carbon trading, is funding research into projects such as producing a sun-blocking smog layer of sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere, or launching gigantic mirrors into orbit to block some of the sun's light from reaching Earth.
One assumes Bodman's alleged fear of economic experimentation stems from concerns that such experiments could lead to negative consequences. Well, just what do these guys think might happen as a consequence of tampering with the sunlight? Cut the amount of solar radiation reaching Earth, and you wreak havoc on crop production everywhere , including places where millions, even billions of people can't afford even a minor crop loss. (Such actions by one country, I might note, would clearly be an act of war against the other nations of the world.) And what about that smog layer? Eventually, the sulfur dioxide will break down into sulfuric acid and fall on land and sea, adding to already worsening acidification problems in both places.
When you consider all this, the Bush administration, and its obstinate and criminal 6-year stall on dealing with global warming, starts to look like a kind of Borat government. Stupid statements are launched into the media, where they are treated as though they were serious and worthy of serious consideration. Stupid policies are initiated, and funded by Congress as though they were rational. Stupid people are nominated to office and given responsibility as though they were genuine public servants and skilled managers. The Democrats in Congress, and the voters who put all these people, Republican and Democratic, in power, are looking like Borat's unwitting extras, taking it all seriously, and acting as though it what we had in Washington was a real government of dedicated public servants.
DAVE LINDORFF is co-author, with Barbara Olshansky, of "The Case for
Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work may be found at
www.thiscantbehappening.net and at www.counterpunch.org
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