Which
would be better for stabilizing the global climate -- legislation that
sets aggressive carbon emissions reduction targets but has little
chance of passage? Or, a bill that sets less aggressive targets,
includes several significant compromises, and wins enough support to be
enacted into law?
America's experience shows that the
environment is better served by enacting modest protections as soon as
they can gain enough political support, rather than holding out for
tougher legislation with little prospect of passage.
Often, when
new environmental protections have been proposed, they have been
greeted with apocalyptic rhetoric about the supposed destruction they
would wreak on the economy.
In 1970, President Richard Nixon's
proposed Clean Air Act was labeled by one automaker as a "threat to the
entire American economy and to every person in America."
In
1990, some electric utilities predicted that President George H.W.
Bush's proposed controls on pollutants linked to acid rain would result
in skyrocketing rate increases.
Such dire predictions almost
never come to pass. As Calvin Coolidge once said, "If you see ten
troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into
the ditch before they reach you."
When new environmental
standards become law, companies figure out how to live with them, or
even how to use them as a driver to create better products and improve
their businesses.
Once the initial hurdle of enacting
protections has been surmounted, and the scaremongering has been proved
false, protections can be more easily strengthened over time.
Today,
automakers market cars that not only are safer, better built, and more
durable than cars sold a generation ago, but they also comply with
tailpipe emissions standards that are 50 times tighter than the first
rules issued under the 1970 Clean Air Act.
Putting a price on
carbon pollution is the essential first step towards reducing the
dangers of climate change. Even if that step is not as strong as some
would prefer or that the evidence would justify, a modest price on
carbon enacted now would be far better than a higher price that never
sees the light of day.
