It’s going to be a big week for climate change. It was the hot topic at the United Nations on Monday and will be discussed again in the nation’s capital later this week.
An endless parade of speakers has declared that the “time for doubt” on global warming is over and the time for action has arrived.
A recent U.N. press release opened thus: “With human activity driving global warming, extreme weather events and climate fluctuations of the sort never before experienced in recorded history, U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon today challenged the world’s nations to the decisive action this year to tackle the climate change threat head-on.”
Elsewhere in that same document, just about every ill known to man is blamed on increases in greenhouse gases. A representative from the Women’s Environmental and Development Organization discussed what she called the “gender dimension of climate change.” She pointed out that in the 2004 tsunami, more than 70 percent of those killed were women. She proposed that the U.N. urgently address the question of how “to identify avenues that would achieve more equitable approaches to adaptation.” (Presumably, it would have been more equitable if the tsunami had killed more men.)
The point here is that even if there were “no doubt” about global warming or its new label, “climate change,” it is now abundantly clear that there is no shortage of other things to fight about.
Yet is is not clear whether states or even localities are the proper government entities to fashion reductions in greenhouse gases. In recent months, no less than 300 bills have been introduced in legislatures of 40 states dealing with energy efficiency, emissions and climate change. On the surface, that seems a clumsy way to deal with any problem. But that is not all of it. No less than 20 states, including Colorado, have adopted renewable energy requirements for utilities and at least 13 states have tried to impose stiffer tailpipe emission standards on automakers.
Now the argument in favor of this piecemeal approach is that somebody has to do the heavy lifting, and since Congress isn’t doing anything the job falls to the states and the big cities.
There is some truth to this. Both the U.S. Senate and the House have passed energy bills, but the measures are so different there doesn’t appear to be any way to combine them. That makes it likely neither will pass, thus spurring even more state activity.
A federal judge has recently upheld the right of Vermont to require fuel efficiency standards more stringent that those imposed by the federal government. Judge William K. Sessions III ruled that the auto manufacturers had failed to show that the proposed standards were not feasible. He wrote that the auto companies had not “demonstrated that it will limit consumer choice, create economic hardship or the automobile industry, cause significant job loss or undermine safety.”
This decision is being hailed in California and a dozen other states that want permission from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to impose higher fuel standards.
Common sense suggests the judge is either plainly wrong or certainly premature in his judgment. Job loss, consumer choice and safety would become more important against a backdrop of differing state-imposed standards.
If stricter standards are, in fact, desirable or actually necessary for the nation’s survival, isn’t that something best addressed in Washington?
Leave aside the question of whether there is still legitimate doubt about the issue of climate change. There is still plenty of doubt about what should be done about it and who should do it. The U.N. isn’t the organization that quickly comes to mind.
Al Knight of Fairplay (alknight@ ) is a former member of The Post’s editorial-page staff.
