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Global Warming: Adapting policy to climate change

The basic change under the cap-and-trade bill is that it will limit the amount of carbon that U.S. companies can produce. If they exceed the limit (“cap”) of carbon emissions imposed, they can purchase (“trade”) carbon allowances or permits to cover for the excess emissions. The money received from the purchase of these allowances will be used to invest on environmentally friendly companies and, could also be distributed to low income families to help them with costs of energy use.

 

The cap-and-trade bill has brought a lot of skepticism since the House Energy and Commerce Committee was planning on it back in April. A major example is given by the criticism received by Coal manufacturing states like, Illinois and West Virginia. There is a concern that the bill could prove to be fatal for their coal mining industry.  Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) and Rep. Shelly Moore Capito (R-W.Va) criticized the bill since the beginning of the year and it is easy to understand why. According to a study by the National Mining Association, coal mining provides more than half of the nation’s electricity, generates more than 550,000 jobs nationwide, and contributes $8.2 billion in payroll.

 

There is a general fear that the bill could potentially bring more pressure to the economy in three areas: damage the U.S. manufacturing sector and force jobs to move overseas, lead to higher energy prices to consumers, and ineffective to stop global warming in the future.

 

Six months prior the United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen, it is clear that government intends to make an effort to adapt to climate change and reduce the impact of global warming. The effort is encouraging and progressive in ideals, but the costs of the change and its impact still remains unclear. The Global Humanitarian Forum report titled: “ Human Impact Report: Climate Change – The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis.”, warns us that 300 million lives are already seriously affected by gradual warming of the earth. Global warming is here, it is real, and is important to create new laws to change the way we manage our energy, deal with pollution, and respect our nature. I hope this is just the beginning of a new administration willing to put a step forward and confront this important issue. It is time for the United States to consider natural conservation and environmental prosperity our priorities on health policy.