The Battles over Sustainability and Climate Change

The political battles between anti-regulatory and libertarian conservatives and environmentalists have focused on two major and interrelated issues: sustainability and climate change. The opening of this chapter sets the stage by looking at the “Great Pacific vortex,” a vast whirlpool of plastic garbage the size of Texas, as a symptom of environmental distress. The battle over unrestrained growth took the form of “the Bet,” a wager between the Malthusian population doomsayer Paul Ehrlich and the libertarian economist Julian Simon. Whereas Ehrlich said growing world populations threatened life on earth, Simon argued that population growth was the solution, not the problem. Scarcity triggers a substitution effect (kerosene for whale oil) and as population increases so does human ingenuity. In the 1990s, the battle over climate change upstaged the argument over population. Enter Al Gore. As scientists battled to build a climate model that predicted the impact of greenhouse gases on temperatures, Gore heard a lecture in which his professor at Harvard, Roger Revelle, showed the class a graph of the “Keeling Curve” that demonstrated an unmistakable pattern of rising temperatures. It transformed the path of Gore’s life and the debate over climate change. The formation of the IPCC, along with the climate conferences at Rio in 1992 and Kyoto in 1997, provided an international platform on which scientists and government officials debated the nature of climate change and the need for governments to act. The Bush administration not only rejected Kyoto but also encouraged increased purchases of gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks.