A Republican Case for Climate Action

A Republican Case for Climate Action
By WILLIAM D. RUCKELSHAUS, LEE M. THOMAS, WILLIAM K. REILLY and CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN
The New York Times

EACH of us took turns over the past 43 years running the Environmental Protection Agency. We served Republican presidents, but we have a message that transcends political affiliation: the United States must move now on substantive steps to curb climate change, at home and internationally.

There is no longer any credible scientific debate about the basic facts: our world continues to warm, with the last decade the hottest in modern records, and the deep ocean warming faster than the earth’s atmosphere. Sea level is rising. Arctic Sea ice is melting years faster than projected.

The costs of inaction are undeniable. The lines of scientific evidence grow only stronger and more numerous. And the window of time remaining to act is growing smaller: delay could mean that warming becomes “locked in.”

A market-based approach, like a carbon tax, would be the best path to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, but that is unachievable in the current political gridlock in Washington. Dealing with this political reality, President Obama’s June climate action plan lays out achievable actions that would deliver real progress. He will use his executive powers to require reductions in the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the nation’s power plants and spur increased investment in clean energy technology, which is inarguably the path we must follow to ensure a strong economy along with a livable climate.

The president also plans to use his regulatory power to limit the powerful warming chemicals known as hydrofluorocarbons and encourage the United States to join with other nations to amend the Montreal Protocol to phase out these chemicals. The landmark international treaty, which took effect in 1989, already has been hugely successful in solving the ozone problem.

Rather than argue against his proposals, our leaders in Congress should endorse them and start the overdue debate about what bigger steps are needed and how to achieve them — domestically and internationally.

As administrators of the E.P.A under Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, we held fast to common-sense conservative principles — protecting the health of the American people, working with the best technology available and trusting in the innovation of American business and in the market to find the best solutions for the least cost.

That approach helped us tackle major environmental challenges to our nation and the world: the pollution of our rivers, dramatized when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire in 1969; the hole in the ozone layer; and the devastation wrought by acid rain.

The solutions we supported worked, although more must be done. Our rivers no longer burn, and their health continues to improve. The United States led the world when nations came together to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals. Acid rain diminishes each year, thanks to a pioneering, market-based emissions-trading system adopted under the first President Bush in 1990. And despite critics’ warnings, our economy has continued to grow.

Climate change puts all our progress and our successes at risk. If we could articulate one framework for successful governance, perhaps it should be this: When confronted by a problem, deal with it. Look at the facts, cut through the extraneous, devise a workable solution and get it done.

We can have both a strong economy and a livable climate. All parties know that we need both. The rest of the discussion is either detail, which we can resolve, or purposeful delay, which we should not tolerate.

Mr. Obama’s plan is just a start. More will be required. But we must continue efforts to reduce the climate-altering pollutants that threaten our planet. The only uncertainty about our warming world is how bad the changes will get, and how soon. What is most clear is that there is no time to waste.

The writers are former administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency: William D. Ruckelshaus, from its founding in 1970 to 1973, and again from 1983 to 1985; Lee M. Thomas, from 1985 to 1989; William K. Reilly, from 1989 to 1993; and Christine Todd Whitman, from 2001 to 2003.

I really love this article. Unlike all the rest, this one actually does more than just vague bitching and complaining. It actually gives us numerous real world solutions.......viable ones too!!!

No really. WTF is the point of this???

Remember before the whole climate change thing started, how saving the world was just about recycling and saving the whales?

Big O is stooping to new lows to try and sell his carbon tax. The dumbass freedom haters need to really, really need to think long and hard on this. Results in Europe have sucked bigtime on this. Just another way for government to separate you from your money.

Said it before and I'll say it again. Leech it out.

Nope. Nobody's listening. Everyone would rather be chicken little on this.

Marconius wrote:Big O is stooping to new lows to try and sell his carbon tax. The dumbass freedom haters need to really, really need to think long and hard on this. Results in Europe have sucked bigtime on this. Just another way for government to separate you from your money.

Said it before and I'll say it again. Leech it out.

Nope. Nobody's listening. Everyone would rather be chicken little on this.

Here is another argument, then. What elevation do you live at? What elevation does Dod live at?

Bryant wrote:

Marconius wrote:Big O is stooping to new lows to try and sell his carbon tax. The dumbass freedom haters need to really, really need to think long and hard on this. Results in Europe have sucked bigtime on this. Just another way for government to separate you from your money.

Said it before and I'll say it again. Leech it out.

Nope. Nobody's listening. Everyone would rather be chicken little on this.

Here is another argument, then.  What elevation do you live at?  What elevation does Dod live at?

Does it matter??? We already know the oceans won't rise that much and even if they do, I ain't planted. I got two feet attached to two legs.

That is non sequitor though. Leech the carbon and methane out and do something with it. Instead of giving us end of the world scenarios(which are highly exaggerated BTW), fix the problem in the easiest way possible. We have tech to do it today. We have the unemployed workforce. We have the materials. Instead no solutions are given. Only "the sky is falling".

Until the emotionally driven end of the world people stop being emotionally driven and start thinking rationally, with "common sense" solutions, expect to be ridiculed to the extent of ridiculenessdom.

So what exactly will a carbon tax do to stem the problem.

Please be exact and please be ready for me to use real world data from other places that have such a tax.

Also, how is giving one man the means to sidestep US law gonna solve this issue??? Please reread what it is you posted. It is nothing more than another argument to consolidate power into one man's hands.

I thought you were against dictatorships???

And how is the US going to control what china and india the rest of the developing world is doing? Even the UN carbon credit scheme is just an international version of the same redistributionists ideas. Its all about "revenues" conveniently linked to nearly every aspect of modern life.

Those that have/use more, pay more in taxes. Progressivism.

And all the carbon tax in the world hasn't done squat to cut carbon emissions. Companies just buy more credits, then pass the savings on to you, the customer!!!

Sure we get to offset it by buying a friggin tree or two in S America, but all that money does is go to the development of even more soy and coffee farms for the liberal arts yuppies who can eat their tofu and drink their Starbucks while talking about all the good they think they did. Even if the friggin tree is planted, I would be long dead before it offsets anything.

Dumbasses now rule the world. And we all know how dumb they are. Yep, dumb enough to actually think they make intellectual sense.

Marconius wrote:

Bryant wrote:

Marconius wrote:Big O is stooping to new lows to try and sell his carbon tax. The dumbass freedom haters need to really, really need to think long and hard on this. Results in Europe have sucked bigtime on this. Just another way for government to separate you from your money.

Said it before and I'll say it again. Leech it out.

Nope. Nobody's listening. Everyone would rather be chicken little on this.

Here is another argument, then.  What elevation do you live at?  What elevation does Dod live at?

Does it matter??? We already know the oceans won't rise that much and even if they do, I ain't planted. I got two feet attached to two legs.

That is non sequitor though. Leech the carbon and methane out and do something with it. Instead of giving us end of the world scenarios(which are highly exaggerated BTW), fix the problem in the easiest way possible. We have tech to do it today. We have the unemployed workforce. We have the materials. Instead no solutions are given. Only "the sky is falling".

Sea level rise predictions are pretty significant. I'm not sure of the economics of mechanically removing green house gasses from the atmosphere.

First, the science has painted a clear, surprisingly consistent image.  Don't listen to what the liberal or conservative press say, look at what is coming out the of scientific community.  Look at the peer reviewed literature (if you find something behind the pay-to-view curtain let me know and I'll see if I can find it for you).

I don't like the carbon tax idea, they were running with it because its the market solution.

There are no deniers here. I never did deny. I did question, and still do today about several points. First is man's ethnopocentric idea that everything we do has dire consequences. Sure we contribute, but only a small fraction. Even without our contributions, it would still happen. Hell, we destroy and create less net carbon emissions now that we no longer rely on wood for heating and cooking(remember the planet is greening). That leade me to my second question of the egotistical way we think we should stop something that happens naturally. What is the average mean temperature of the planet since life began here??? Answer is significantly warmer than today. Hell, we have enough evidence to say that ice poles really don't belong here on a permanent basis.

Of course we are just little ants running around on cosmic dust so we know it all. What we see today is the way it has always supposed to be. Let's forget that a warmer, greener planet is a healthier planet.......at least that has always been my thought.

Economically, removing the greenhouse gases using existing tech is a whole hell of a lot cheaper, not to mention more benefitial to the economy, than trying to reinvent the wheel.....which is basically what we are trying to do.

We already know the electric powered cars use way too much energy to produce. We also know that the material to make them is even more finite than hydrocarbons. We also know that solar isn't viable for most of the globe and that it takes hydrocarbons to make the photoelectric cells. Wind is not viable in even more situations than solar.

Passive hydro works on less than 1 knot of current and are unobtrusive in nature. Place them in river channels, off the coastline and viola, most people on the planet have clean, renewable energy for powering of homes

Leeching the air would create massive jobs for construction and maintenance. We can also use the reactor of nuke plqnts to slap carbon and methane back together as gasoline(posted an article on this back in myspace days....yeah, they did it in New Mexico). Considering this, we could use gasoline forever with no harmful effects since we are turning around and sucking it back out of the air.

Sounds simple. Too bad there are no lobbyist for this in DC. All we see now is games leading to guilt leading to taxation leading to consolidation of power. Cut through the bullshit and it ain't a hard problem. Nothing that can't be fixed.

Now talk about something really important. When are we gonna ensure the survival or our species and get off this dust speck???

Sir Pun wrote:And how is the US going to control what china and india the rest of the developing world is doing? Even the UN carbon credit scheme is just an international version of the same redistributionists ideas. Its all about "revenues" conveniently linked to nearly every aspect of modern life.

 
 That's my question.  If the global warming myth is real, China and India harm the environment far more than we ever have.  I would imagine Russia is just as bad.  Yet the left expects US taxpayer is going to solve the problem? 
 
The climate changes.  It always has.  Europe was in the depths of a "Little Ice Age" during the dark ages which hurt their ability to produce crops.  Then, without the aid of cars or factories or smog producing machines, the little Ice Age ended....all by itself.     And it didn't need a carbon tax by progressive do gooders to do this.  Rather, scientists seem to think it happened due to solar activity, volcanic activity, changing ocean currents and the earth's orbital cycles.  In short, these things just happen.  Its nature.
 
I'm all for ecology and cleaning up the environment.  Developing wind, wave and solar technology is a great idea if left up to the private sector.  Might create a few jobs too!     But taxing the people, forcing unreasonable changes on American taxpayers for such a dubious myth like Global Warming (excuse me...'climate change') or for unproven tech is not a good idea.
 
Incidentally, i found it interesting that Christine Todd Whitman sort of tried to give herself some kind of 'Conservative credibility' by saying she served as George W Bush's EPA advisor or whatever.  Odd that the article didn't mention that she was often at odds with Bush and the Conservatives while she was on the job, or that she quit.  Or that she has complained about the so called 'Rightward-lurch' of the GOP. 
 
If she thinks the GOP is too far to the right, that oughta tell us a little about Ms Whitman.

I love how they say that global temperatures are the highest ever recorded....oh you mean over the last 100 years or so that we've actually been keeping temperature data?

Sir Pun wrote:I love how they say that global temperatures are the highest ever recorded....oh you mean over the last 100 years or so that we've actually been keeping temperature data?

We can easily tell historic temps in a number of ways. Ice cores, fossilized tree lines, etc. I couldn't explain the science behind it since that is Bryant's job, but the methods, especially when combined, become very accurate.......at least until we invent time travel and use it to go back with a thermometer or two.

Even if sea levels were to rise to a point beyond what we are technologically capable of holding back, somethin tells me all the cajuns and coonasses, hillbillies and rednecks, will be alright. I mean were talking over the period of at least a century or so to see any substantial gain. My mortgage is up in 26 lol.

Marconius wrote:There are no deniers here. I never did deny. I did question, and still do today about several points. First is man's ethnopocentric idea that everything we do has dire consequences. Sure we contribute, but only a small fraction. Even without our contributions, it would still happen. Hell, we destroy and create less net carbon emissions now that we no longer rely on wood for heating and cooking(remember the planet is greening). That leade me to my second question of the egotistical way we think we should stop something that happens naturally. What is the average mean temperature of the planet since life began here??? Answer is significantly warmer than today. Hell, we have enough evidence to say that ice poles really don't belong here on a permanent basis.

Ice poles are a common feature throughout the Earth's history, but are not always present. Why would it matter what the average temperature on earth over the last 3.6 billion years? Heck, I don't see how the average temperature over the last 600 million years (when the kingdom we belong to, Animalia, began) would be helpful. The organisms that existed in those times had different needs than most modern critters. I disagree with your argument with CO2 production, we can show quite conclusively that Homo Sapiens today are responsible for releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere than our wood burning ancestors. While climatic variation can occur naturally, we have abundant evidence that the rapid change in global temperature trends is directly related to industrial activity

Of course we are just little ants running around on cosmic dust so we know it all. What we see today is the way it has always supposed to be. Let's forget that a warmer, greener planet is a healthier planet.......at least that has always been my thought.

It depends what for. Also, the rate at which temperatures and ocean pH are changing is much greater than many organisms can adapt to. As one might expect, we're seeing lots of extinctions because of it (well, between this and other human activities like logging and polluting).

Economically, removing the greenhouse gases using existing tech is a whole hell of a lot cheaper, not to mention more benefitial to the economy, than trying to reinvent the wheel.....which is basically what we are trying to do.

Have any studies? I'm not disagreeing, I'd just like to read more.

We already know the electric powered cars use way too much energy to produce. We also know that the material to make them is even more finite than hydrocarbons. We also know that solar isn't viable for most of the globe and that it takes hydrocarbons to make the photoelectric cells. Wind is not viable in even more situations than solar.

I don't know about electric cars, but I do disagree with your assessment of solar power. It may not be a one-size-fits-all solution, however its very effective in many areas.

Passive hydro works on less than 1 knot of current and are unobtrusive in nature. Place them in river channels, off the coastline and viola, most people on the planet have clean, renewable energy for powering of homes

Leeching the air would create massive jobs for construction and maintenance. We can also use the reactor of nuke plqnts to slap carbon and methane back together as gasoline(posted an article on this back in myspace days....yeah, they did it in New Mexico). Considering this, we could use gasoline forever with no harmful effects since we are turning around and sucking it back out of the air.

Dear god, that is a dangerous and very energy inefficient method of producing gasoline!

Sounds simple. Too bad there are no lobbyist for this in DC. All we see now is games leading to guilt leading to taxation leading to consolidation of power. Cut through the bullshit and it ain't a hard problem. Nothing that can't be fixed.

There are too many people trying to convolute the situation and manipulate it for monetary and political gain. I don't think its a simple problem to solve, that the solution requires both better technology and a big change in culture. It will require new regulation (in its weird way, this is what the carbon tax was trying to avoid) and quite a bit of money.

Now talk about something really important. When are we gonna ensure the survival or our species and get off this dust speck???

This is a fun thing to think about, however how far away is the nearest inhabitable planet? Even if we could travel at the speed of light, how long would it take us to get there? Unless we find some flaw in relativity or discover a way to dramatically extend the human lifetime, if we go its going to be a one way ticket.

Sir Pun wrote:I love how they say that global temperatures are the highest ever recorded....oh you mean over the last 100 years or so that we've actually been keeping temperature data?

There are many other thermometers than Hg. Oxygen isotopes is one common thermometer used to examine paleo temperatures.

Bryant wrote:

Marconius wrote:There are no deniers here. I never did deny. I did question, and still do today about several points. First is man's ethnopocentric idea that everything we do has dire consequences. Sure we contribute, but only a small fraction. Even without our contributions, it would still happen. Hell, we destroy and create less net carbon emissions now that we no longer rely on wood for heating and cooking(remember the planet is greening). That leade me to my second question of the egotistical way we think we should stop something that happens naturally. What is the average mean temperature of the planet since life began here??? Answer is significantly warmer than today. Hell, we have enough evidence to say that ice poles really don't belong here on a permanent basis.

 

Ice poles are a common feature throughout the Earth's history, but are not always present.  Why would it matter what the average temperature on earth over the last 3.6 billion years?  Heck, I don't see how the average temperature over the last 600 million years (when the kingdom we belong to, Animalia, began) would be helpful.  The organisms that existed in those times had different needs than most modern critters.  I disagree with your argument with CO2 production, we can show quite conclusively that Homo Sapiens today are responsible for releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere than our wood burning ancestors.  While climatic variation can occur naturally, we have abundant evidence that the rapid change in global temperature trends is directly related to industrial activity

Of course we are just little ants running around on cosmic dust so we know it all. What we see today is the way it has always supposed to be. Let's forget that a warmer, greener planet is a healthier planet.......at least that has always been my thought.

It depends what for.  Also, the rate at which temperatures and ocean pH are changing is much greater than many organisms can adapt to. As one might expect, we're seeing lots of extinctions because of it (well, between this and other human activities like logging and polluting).

Economically, removing the greenhouse gases using existing tech is a whole hell of a lot cheaper, not to mention more benefitial to the economy, than trying to reinvent the wheel.....which is basically what we are trying to do.

Have any studies?  I'm not disagreeing, I'd just like to read more.

We already know the electric powered cars use way too much energy to produce. We also know that the material to make them is even more finite than hydrocarbons. We also know that solar isn't viable for most of the globe and that it takes hydrocarbons to make the photoelectric cells. Wind is not viable in even more situations than solar.

I don't know about electric cars, but I do disagree with your assessment of solar power.  It may not be a one-size-fits-all solution, however its very effective in many areas.

Passive hydro works on less than 1 knot of current and are unobtrusive in nature. Place them in river channels, off the coastline and viola, most people on the planet have clean, renewable energy for powering of homes

Leeching the air would create massive jobs for construction and maintenance. We can also use the reactor of nuke plqnts to slap carbon and methane back together as gasoline(posted an article on this back in myspace days....yeah, they did it in New Mexico). Considering this, we could use gasoline forever with no harmful effects since we are turning around and sucking it back out of the air.

Dear god, that is a dangerous and very energy inefficient method of producing gasoline!

Sounds simple. Too bad there are no lobbyist for this in DC. All we see now is games leading to guilt leading to taxation leading to consolidation of power. Cut through the bullshit and it ain't a hard problem. Nothing that can't be fixed.

There are too many people trying to convolute the situation and manipulate it for monetary and political gain.  I don't think its a simple problem to solve, that the solution requires both better technology and a big change in culture.  It will require new regulation (in its weird way, this is what the carbon tax was trying to avoid) and quite a bit of money.

Now talk about something really important. When are we gonna ensure the survival or our species and get off this dust speck???

This is a fun thing to think about, however how far away is the nearest inhabitable planet?  Even if we could travel at the speed of light, how long would it take us to get there?  Unless we find some flaw in relativity or discover a way to dramatically extend the human lifetime, if we go its going to be a one way ticket.

This deserves a better response than I can give over the phone. Too much good stuff.

Bryant wrote:

Sir Pun wrote:I love how they say that global temperatures are the highest ever recorded....oh you mean over the last 100 years or so that we've actually been keeping temperature data?

There are many other thermometers than Hg.  Oxygen isotopes is one common thermometer used to examine paleo temperatures.

You guys are talking above my paygrade.  

So heres the million dollar question can we both have a technological society with 6 billion ppl on the planet, and still "save the planet?" Because most of the solutions ive heard revolve aroundassive fepopulation, and promitive living. You know, the ppl that dont want us drilling any oil, and us liing in grass huts. I dimt think thats a viable option.

Guess who has the largest carbon footprint in history. Our own barrack obama