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Sunstein on global warming incentives

There's a smart op-ed in today's WaPo by University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein (via Dessler).

The basic point is simple: The two countries that are contributing most to global warming (the U.S. and China) will be among the least harmed by it, according to most projections, and thus have the least incentive to do something about it.

(In case you're wondering, India and Africa are going to take the brunt of it, via damage to agriculture and especially vulnerability to disease.)

The dynamic more or less insures inaction, unless one of three things happens.

First, we could decide that even though we will be better off relative to other countries, the absolute losses will be too much to risk. Sunstein alludes to that here:

Rehabilitated turtle returned to ocean home

On Wednesday, more than 150 admiring beachgoers said goodbye to "Little Crush" as it was returned to its salty underwater home. This rehabilitated green sea turtle washed ashore five months earlier, underweight and ill from ingesting more than 70 man-made items discarded in the oceans. After being treated by a team of Walt Disney World animal-care specialists, it regained its health and was released into the ocean.

Little Crush (so named for his resemblance to Disney's turtle character in Finding Nemo) was also equipped with a satellite transmitter enabling researchers to keep tabs on its ocean voyages. According to 11-year-old Alex Custer, the ceremony was "awesome."

Little did Alex and those other 150 beachgoers know that Little Crush is not heading into a ocean of possibilities; he's heading into a sea of danger. He'll have to run a gauntlet of commercial fishing gear and may -- if he's like many other sea turtles -- end up hooked on a longline or captured in a net.

Alex and the beachgoers also likely don't realize that our government ignores its own laws and officially sanctions and allows the catching (and killing) of thousands of endangered and threatened sea turtles by commercial fishing operations every year. Not quite the Disney ending we'd (all) hope for.

Six Nations, Under Siege

Native Canadians fight for land rights Suburban sprawl has encroached on the once-pristine wilderness of southern Ontario’s Six Nations Reserve — and the residents of Canada’s First Nations that live there have had enough. Since February, hundreds of Native protestors have blocked roads, lit bonfires, confronted police, raised traditional First Nation flags, destroyed national flags […]

In Clemente Conditions

Radioactive, cancer-causing tritium leaks into California groundwater Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that can cause cancer, miscarriages, and birth defects, has leaked from a nuclear power plant near San Clemente, Calif. Groundwater tested at up to 330,000 picocuries of tritium per liter; we don’t know what a picocurie is, but California’s public-health goal for […]

Smoky Chokey

National parks aren’t breathing easy From California to Maine to Alaska — sea to shining sea, as it were — almost a third of America’s national parks suffer poor air-quality conditions, says a new study by the National Parks Conservation Association. Sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury threaten wildlife, plants, visitors, and staff, and can […]

Dodge Not Lest Ye Be Judged

Court rules with EPA on power-plant pollution controls Imagine that gavel sound from Law & Order, and here we go: In 1999, the U.S. EPA sued Cinergy Corp. for modifying several coal-fueled power plants without following Clean Air Act pollution-control requirements. (Moment of silence for the days when eco-laws were enforced.) One month before President […]

Still have glimmers of childlike wonder and hope?

Well, time to give 'em up. Dolphins are stupid.

(Thanks to reader ET -- or should I say, "thanks.")

Werbach and Wal-Mart

Lest I let a single article about Wal-Mart pass by without notice: check out the San Francisco Bay Guardian's long look at Wal-Mart's greening and the company's hiring of Adam Werbach.

(And lest I let you forget that I wrote an op-ed on the subject: here's my op-ed on the subject -- and a bloggy follow-up.)

Listen to Werbach:

A new natural capitalism

I'm going to sit the fence on Kit's poll by saying that reigning in climate change will require both a re-envisioning of capitalism and a revision of our core values.

An excellent professor of mine at MIT introduced our class to the concept of "natural capitalism," pioneered by Paul Hawkins and Amory and L. Hunter Lovins. Their 1999 book on the subject, probably familiar to many of you, was an eye-opener for me at the time. Here is a short synopsis of the book from Publisher's Weekly:

Capitalism v. environmentalism: a poll

Don Boudreaux, an economist, argues that doing nothing is the best policy for global warming.

As David, biodiversivist, Tim Lambert, and ThinkProgress point out, this argument has a lot of screws loose. (ThinkProgress also has a picture of Boudreaux, who looks slightly insane. He is also, by sheerest chance, with the Cato Institute, which according to a book by two University of Colorado law school scholars, "receives most of its financial support from entrepreneurs, securities and commodities traders, and corporations such as oil and gas companies, Federal Express, and Philip Morris that abhor government regulation.")

Just for a moment, let's ignore the whiff of prostitution. Let's ignore the alarming changes that global warming is expected to bring to climate, and the worsening of drought, floods, forest insect pests, hurricanes, species extinctions, among other aspects of life on earth.

Let's focus instead on the politics of the claim.