Earth Equity News

How to Win the War on Global Warming. By Bryan Walsh, Time, April 27, 2008. "If the vast majority of people increasingly agree that climate change is a global emergency, there's far less consensus on how to fix it. Industry offers its plans, which too often would fix little. Environmentalists offer theirs, which too often amount to naive wish lists that could cripple America's growth. But let's assume that those interested parties and others will always be at the table and will always - sensibly -- demand that their voices be heard and that their needs be addressed. What would an aggressive, ambitious, effective plan look like -- one that would leave us both environmentally safe and economically sound?... If we took all the steps outlined here -- a national cap-and-trade system with teeth, coupled with tougher energy-efficiency mandates and significant new public and private investment in green technologies -- where would that get us? We'd be a little poorer -- a sustained battle against climate change will hit our wallets hard, absorbing perhaps 2% to 3% of gdp a year for some time, according to energy expert Henry Lee at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, though unchecked warming could end global prosperity. But think of it as an investment: that money, if matched by action internationally, can reduce emissions radically over the next half-century, contain warming and lead us to a postcarbon world."