Piecing Together a Clean Energy Solution
Scientists almost unanimously agree on the facts behind climate change. Global warming and increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are presently occurring phenomena, with the largest culprit being modern society’s burning of fossil fuels. The opinions and claims emerging from Congress and the White House are much less straight forward. Alongside vocal pushes to replace traditional energy sources with non-carbon sources, opponents to climate change policy have voiced concerns about efficacy and economic costs of proposed legislation. These climate policy opponents form a large enough coalition in Congress to block legislation, shifting the responsibility to handle climate change to the states. State level policies like renewable portfolio standards and financial incentives to invest in clean energy do more to combat climate change than if advocates had continued to pursue federal level legislation. However, the patchwork implementation of climate policies at the state level causes varying levels of action among states, making it difficult to ensure continued emissions reductions for the future.
A majority of scientists also predict catastrophic future effects if the world maintains its current trajectory of fossil fuel usage. The resultant “dangerous anthropogenic interference” from carbon emissions could cause a variety of phenomena like rising sea levels and frequent natural disasters which would have massive social and economic effects (Kolbert, 2009). Even with such an unsettling prediction for the near future, Congress struggles to muster internal support for climate policy legislation, with the most formidable obstacle being politicians who deny the existence of man-drive climate change. The divide between believers and non-believers very neatly falls along partisan lines for both citizens and politicians.