America is losing its edge. Or at least, that’s what the experts would have us believe. From professors to politicians, nothing has gotten our educated crowd more hot and bothered for the past decade than the future of American economic power—except maybe for Christine O’Donnell’s views on masturbation. The Georgetown community is no exception. During Parent’s Weekend this month and the GAAP weekends last year, lectures on America’s competition issue have been standing-room-only.
For all the interest in the dilemma, though, one potential solution has not received its fair share of attention—especially in relation to its feasibility and the potential it has to revive American ingenuity. This is the economic solution of environmental legislation, and it has the ability to incentivize the type of economic growth our nation needs to secure its place at the top.
The United States stands to gain much more economically from any global warming legislation than it will lose. Stimulating the growth of the environmental technology industry in America—which is lagging well behind other developed countries’ industries—will pay heavy dividends.
The world is only going to demand more “green” technologies, and it will benefit us if they are made in America. An easy example is alternative energy transportation. As the world transitions from old and inefficient internal combustion, the demand for vehicles that run on electricity or hydrogen or have some sort of hybrid technology will skyrocket. If American firms are the ones producing such vehicles, they will rake in cash. If not, the money will go to the Europeans and Japanese.
Too often, environmental goals and economic goals are described as mutually exclusive. This is a dreadfully flawed and incorrect view. Not only does meaningful environmental legislation—a tough cap-and-trade system or carbon tax—prepare American companies for huge new amounts of demand, but it will also help pay for the inevitable environmental catastrophe that will face nations on a warming planet. It is tragically shortsighted for any nation to put off incentivizing the “green” economy. It is one of the surest investments in the economic and social wealth of the future citizens of any country.
China seems to recognize this fact better than we do. Although they are building far too many coal and oil-driven power plants they have made sizeable investments in alternative energy as well. From 2007 to 2009, China’s share of the global wind energy market rose threefold. They are now the biggest growth market for wind energy in the world and currently produce more energy from alternative sources than America.
First in solar power growth is not the United States either, but Germany, and Sweden takes the prize for biomass use. We’re lagging behind so many nations in one of the largest growing markets of the 21st century, that it’s no wonder that we are losing our competitive edge. If our politicians really believe in American exceptionalism, they must begin to take the economic consequences of our environmental negligence more seriously.
At a time when the U.S. is recovering from a serious global recession, the last thing we need is a host of other costs to deal with. As we see with many environmental mishaps—the flooding in Pakistan, intense hurricanes, the BP oil spill—the costs involved with extreme weather incidents and ecological accidents can be gigantic.
Add that to the inevitability of rising sea levels as a result of climate change, and our nation will be saddled with huge, unplanned fiscal burdens, the likes of which we cannot hand\le. For these reasons, it is clear that ecologically conscious legislation is not only beneficial for the environment and for long-term American economic growth and competitiveness, but is essential for lasting budgetary responsibility as well.
Conservatives claim that the sources of climate change are not known or recognized by the scientific community, and that all actions to mitigate its effects are thus wasteful. However, they conveniently ignore that 82 percent of scientists polled by CNN believe that human activity is a direct cause of climate change. It is only empty rhetoric and rogue experimentation that supports their will to inhibit progress on environmental legislation, and their belligerence will only lead to degradation of this nation’s resources and boundless natural beauty while hampering it economically.
It is time for those who doubt global warming to face the facts. It’s time for our government to help make this nation competitive again, as it has done so many times before. We need sanity and scientific consciousness on this issue more than ever before.
