Why Global Warming Matters to the Next President

The United States is now the only developed economy in the world not to have signed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change and to oppose mandatory greenhouse-gas emission targets. Is this posture wisdom or folly, and does it matter in 2008?

There is no longer any serious scientific argument against the evidence that our weather patterns are shifting and that sea levels are rising. Unfortunately, however, there is also evidence that the world´s largest economies lack the political will to significantly retard this course of events. The only open issues are the speed with which the water will rise to tragic levels (decades vs. centuries) and which countries will be the big winners and losers from global warming.

Over the course of the next 30-50 years the social, political, and economic impacts of climate change will become better understood. Here in North America it is probable that the principal impacts will be more powerful storms flooding the low-lying areas along the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico and changing weather patterns affecting water supplies in the West, croplands in the heartland, and snowfalls in the Northeast. These new patterns of inundation and drought will cause significant property loss, land use modifications, and over time the relocation or rebuilding of critical highways, ports, railroads and communications systems.

Although disruptive and expensive, these impacts can be managed with proper leadership, because the U.S. is a large, rich, diverse and well-organized country that is mostly situated well above sea level. But in many other parts of the world, adjusting to the impacts of global warming will be much more difficult.

Drought, desertification, storms and rising sea levels already affect millions of people in Africa, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, China, and throughout the Asian-Pacific region. That number will rise to hundreds of millions as glaciers and polar ice packs continue to melt. The ensuing migration of these peoples to safer ground and the consequent stresses upon social, economic, and political systems will strain and potentially disrupt national governments and entire regions of the world on a scale unknown to human history—probably beginning in our lifetimes.

Three climate-related political issues will therefore challenge our new President. The first is well known. It is taking seriously our country´s contribution to global warming and significantly reducing our greenhouse-gas emissions. Each year that the U.S. fails to step-up to this responsibility the world gets warmer and our moral stature as a world leader diminishes. Further, to the extent that this failure to act contributes to the current outflow of America´s wealth to the oil producing states of Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, our economic and political leverage over world events is also reduced.

The second challenge that will face our new President is the allocation of the nation´s financial resources. This is illustrated by the policy vacuum exposed by Hurricane Katrina as well as by the gradual withdrawal of private insurance companies from vulnerable coastal areas. Our nation´s wealth either can be spent upon costly, if not futile, efforts to restore storm-damaged coastal areas and to indemnify property owners against repeated financial losses; or it can be used to rebuild our transportation, coastal defense and communication infrastructure further inland and to encourage affected residents and businesses to relocate to less vulnerable areas as well. Our wealth is arguably insufficient to do both.

The third challenge is the future of liberal democracy in the world. Faced with significant climatic-based disruptions, affected peoples can be expected to support those forms of government that most rapidly address their sufferings and promise them a brighter future. The ability of democratic governments and of free enterprise to respond to humanitarian crises will be sorely tested by the siren songs of demagogues, dictators and other advocates of authoritarian rule seeking to take advantage of this situation. Will the U.S., as the world´s foremost liberal democracy, be financially capable and philosophically disposed to help, or will we stand by disinterestedly and with empty pockets while the global system that we have promoted and defended for decades suffers reverses?

It would be naive to expect a political campaign that has been reduced to persona and sound bites to give more than lip service to such complex issues as these. Nevertheless, global warming is a significant subject for the voters to consider in evaluating a presidential candidate. Will he/she lead, follow, or obstruct efforts to respond to its causes and consequences? And if he/she is predisposed to respond positively to the challenges posed by global warming, is he/she the best prepared candidate to do so forcefully, creatively and effectively?

America has a lot to gain or to lose from the answers to these questions, and the answers do matter this year.