Opinion piece by Bill McKibben
As he assumes the presidency, Barack Obama must make climate-change legislation and investment in green energy top priorities. And he must be ready to take bold
Do you think that sounds melodramatic? Let me give it to you from the abstract of a scientific paper written earlier this year by one of the people who now work for Mr. Obama, NASA scientist James Hansen. “If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleo-climate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 [in the atmosphere] will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm [parts per million] to at most 350 ppm.” In other words, if we keep increasing carbon any longer, the earth itself will make our efforts moot.
Hansen’s calculation is a scientifically grounded way of saying: Everything must change at once. To meet his target,
Getting a clean, tough cap-and-trade bill through Congress needs to be a preoccupation of President Obama.
before enough feedback loops kick in to irrevocably warm the planet, Hansen says fossil-fuel combustion, particularly coal, must cease around the planet by about 2030, and that it must happen sooner in the industrialized nations. As the climate observer, and tireless blogger, Joe Romm observed when Hansen’s paper was published, it means that “we need to go straight to the government-led WWII-style effort for the whole planet that is sustained for decades.” (Well, back to FDR, what do you know.).
Anyway, here are some of the pieces of what Obama must push for:
* Massive government investment in green energy. For this to have any hope of being politically viable, it will need to be seen as the single huge stimulus effort that might lift us out of our financial swamp. (That’s almost certainly true, by the way
