Climate Change
By Tom Campbell
Climate change represents a substantial threat to human prosperity: warming has led to extreme weather and degraded ecosystems. Greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide and methane, are the substantial cause of recent warming, which has been 10 times more rapid in the past century than any previous warming period.
As with other pressing issues we face, irresponsible environmental stewardship risks long-term disaster. One must only look to the dust bowl to understand how human impacts on our environment and ecosystems can undermine prosperity. Given California has a particularly varied and precarious climate, it faces acute consequences from climate change: extreme heat in the central valley, more frequent and severe wildfires, longer droughts punctuated by more extreme precipitation events, and a declining Sierra snowpack. Snowmelt typically comprises 30 percent of the state’s water supply.
While we face local consequences from climate change, collective action is needed. California can only make a negligible contribution to stopping global warming if we act alone: the production of greenhouse gases within our state is miniscule compared with the world’s production. Furthermore, there is a possible perverse effect whereby businesses that produce global warming gases will migrate out of California to jurisdictions that do not control them as strictly as we do. There is thus no alternative to binding international agreements, as the major economies were able to achieve for chlorofluorocarbons in the Montreal Protocol of 1987.
The best approach to climate change is a world-wide agreement restricting the production of global warming gases. The most efficient way to effectuate this approach is through a global carbon tax. If US states, along with all other countries adopted such a tax, there would be no benefit to shifting production from California to other states or countries. It was a mistake for the US to pull out of the Paris Accords, since that process is the only mechanism we have, at present, to move toward global rather than individual localized action.
The above are statements on several public policy issues drafted by Tom Campbell, former US Congressman, former California State Senator, former Director of Finance for California, and currently Interim Chairman of the Common Sense Party. They are meant to initiate consideration of several important issues; they are not the official views of the Common Sense Party. Please feel free to submit your own thoughts on these issues on the Open Policy Discussion Page.
