The Climate Debate Is Brutal and Dysfunctional, but There’s Still a Way Out

If you reframe the climate issue in a way that favors solutions in line with the value systems of an individualist, you depolarize the issue.  Thus, solutions like increasing nuclear power – which is seen as more of a business-oriented approach – or unleashing geoengineering schemes, which are perceived to rely on technological ingenuity – make conservatives much more willing to believe that global warming is actually a problem.

Conversely, what makes conservatives most unwilling to do something about climate change?  A government regulatory solution, such as action by the EPA to force cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.  But that’s precisely the approach that we’re now pursuing –not that Obama or the Democrats wanted it this way — because of a long history that centers on the failure, early in the Obama years, to get a so-called cap-and-trade bill through Congress, followed by the growing power of the Tea Party, which has been strongly dismissive of global warming risks.

There’s still a way out

What can break this logjam?  First, the recognition of what eventually has to happen: Republicans have to accept the science of climate change, and Democrats have to find a solution that those across the aisle can also live with.  And it’s unlikely the EPA solution is going to be the one.

So, what’s the answer?  That’s pretty clear at this point: a nationwide carbon tax that returns all the revenue from the tax to citizens, rather than using any of it for new government programs.  This is, basically, what the province of British Columbia in Canada has done by instituting a revenue-neutral carbon tax that has greatly lowered the taxes of citizens in the province.
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The solution…someday

That’s not to say that the GOP will be ready to fully back a carbon tax in the next two years.  “I’m looking at this Congress as a time when carbon tax advocates are going to keep planting seeds, but I don’t really think we’re going to be harvesting anything in the next few years,” says Komanoff of the Carbon Tax Center.

Compromising on this issue just won’t be easy.  There is a very long history of attacking the existence of the problem on the GOP side, which thwarts the embracing of solutions and also enrages scientists and the left.  Meanwhile, Obama has given up on trying to get Congress to pass a law, and understandably opted for the EPA approach because it was the one option that he actually had.

Nonetheless, atmospheric physics ultimately forces all hands.  The climate problem is real, and it just worsens over time.  The science won’t go away, the issue won’t go away, the world’s sense of urgency won’t go away — and the politics seem to be shifting in such a way as to make attacking the science of climate change harder to get away with.

So a time may come when the logic of this article makes sense — even if not today. But soon.

And if it happens in the relatively near future, the planet may still be savable.

Read original article at The Climate Debate Is Brutal and Dysfunctional, but There’s Still a Way Out