Climate change: What the U.S. should do

The evidence for climate change has become too great to ignore.

The evidence for climate change has become too great to ignore, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. The polar ice caps are now melting three times faster than in the 1990s, and heat waves are withering crops from Kansas to Russia. A new study warned this week that runaway carbon emissions may leave the earth a staggering 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by 2100, with consequences that are “beyond bleak”—a sea-level rise of three feet, mega-storms that ravage coastal cities, and droughts of biblical proportions. But all the president has offered so far to tackle climate change is a “big lump of meh,” said Monika Bauerlein in MotherJones.com. As the U.N. begins climate-change talks in Doha, Qatar, this week, Obama needs to show that the U.S. will do its part to forge a global treaty to cut carbon emissions beginning in 2015. As Hurricane Sandy and this summer’s record wildfires proved, “we can’t afford to keep paying the price of inaction.”

It’s not true that Obama has done nothing on climate change, said Kim Chipman in Businessweek.com. His policies on gas mileage, new power plants, and clean-energy development should help cut carbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020. “Without fanfare,” he has paved the way for the 2015 treaty to become a reality. U.S. carbon emissions have fallen to their lowest level in 20 years, said Charles C.W. Cooke in NationalReview.com, but credit market forces, not Obama, for that decline. “Fracking, that bête noire of progressives everywhere,” now provides so much clean, cheap natural gas that it’s replacing carbon-dense coal in the nation’s electrical power plants.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us