AL Gore's movie surprised me. He brought some dynamism and certainly great conviction to the the issues of global warming. But after his stirring description of the problems, his actual suggested action steps seemed wimpy.
Global warming requires drastic steps but drastic steps are politically improbable. The movie would have served the world better if it at least forced us to consider that we in the US should look at some of the following kinds of actions.
In Sweden, gas costs about $7 per gallon. People buy smaller cars, ride bikes more, live closer to work and generally drive less. Let's urge our government to tax gas heavily to provide strong incentive for us to change our habits and use that money for mass transit.Or you go put all that money into developing alternative energy sources.
Immigrants who come to the US consume more typically than they do in their sending countries. Limiting immigration into the US and other high consuming countries will help the world consume less.
Al Gore lives in a big house--but he bought thousands of dollars worth of solar panels to generate his own energy. Solar panels are great. And clearly eventually, maybe now, the world needs people to live simpler, in smaller houses. Why don't we put a luxury tax on all single family houses over a certain size. You could have the tax gradually increase. But isn't it finally obscene when you see these huge McMansions being built? Do two people really need 10 rooms and 3 baths to live in. Oh, but what about choice. Sure let people choose that if it is that important and then let them pay a luxury tax on the extra space and the excessive energy consumption that their life style calls for. Tax them above and beyond local property taxes, because of course in many high income communities those taxes are absurdly low. Dont allow people to deduct mortgage interest payments above a certain amount each year--hard to know what amount would be fair--but we could search for it.
Inconvenient Truth to my remembering never addressed the issue of population. We live in the disastrous era of so many Bush policies that we may have forgotten that one of them prohibits providing family planing assistance through any international organization that facilitates abortion. Family planning needs to be available globally. For our own self interest we need to put money there.
How do we encourage people especially in high energy consuming countries like the US to have small families? Should we for example only provide tax credits for the first two children in a family? Certainly, we want education and opportunity for all children(my family of origin included 6 children). But at the same time, we know all too well the limits of the world's resources.
At a meeting the other day, an executive in the food industry told us that the price of a truckload of flour had gone from $8000 to $20000. As we enter this recession, as we seek to survive economically and spiritually under the burden of the 7 trillion dollar debt created by Bush economics and the war, we will be called to drastic steps, to sacrifices. Now we comfortable Americans don't like to hear those words. Sacrifice is what we expect others to do--but that time has come again for us.
Changing a light bulb or two is not enough. Buying a hybrid car(which my wife and I did) is not enough.
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