What’s Missing From America’s Climate Action Conversation?
In America, the far right lacks realism about severe consequences of human-caused climate change while the far left proposes unlimited spending as Climate Action. They’re both tragically unrealistic. For the rest of us, the 90% in the pragmatic middle who want tangible climate action now, what’s missing from the national dialog besides a sense of urgency to draw down 35 billion tons of excess carbon emissions compounding annually?
The missing ingredients are in reframing Climate Action as deterministically addressing the urgent crisis using good ol’ American ingenuity and market responsiveness. Once we’re past the painful realization that mother nature is already speaking loudly via climate force-amplified destruction, we want pragmatic and can-do climate action. To wit — here are the missing ingredients in our national climate dialog:
- Largest Carbon Pools First
As human-caused climate effects escalate, we should draw down the largest carbon emissions pools first & faster. E.g. carbon-accelerating refrigerants, electricity production, and transportation are the largest carbon pollution sources in America today.
2. Massive Change Via Buying Cycles
The fastest and most affordable drops in carbon footprint come during buying cycles, when we naturally replace things. To bend the carbon pollution curve soonest, we need carbon drawdown innovation when we buy things like light bulbs every 5 years, cars every 7 years, and replace/rebuild homes every 30 years on average, etc. Can we get to carbon drawdown on every good and service within two buying cycles? I think so… with unequivocal market signals.
3. Pragmatic Market Signals From Government Policies
Via clear government-driven market signals (not wholesale nationalization), we need to unleash urgency to remake our economy for carbon drawdown in all goods and services starting with the biggest carbon emissions pools first.
4. Inclusive Climate Action Raises Economic & Security Boats Too
We need national (and local) policy to drive carbon drawdown signals in a way that incents inclusive job creation, economic growth and redesign, and renewable energy national security.
With the above framework, our market-oriented policymakers should fashion a “Green-To-Great Deal” agenda by signaling carbon drawdown imperatives prioritized by largest carbon emissions pools first. We’d thereby deploy a deterministic and potent climate policy that’s market-led, achievable, and benefits citizens by growing Carbon Freedom Jobs while simultaneously being great for the economy, national security, and our life support systems too. Policy ideas to this end abound but they need this kind of ‘middle 90%’ agenda and urgency to drive them.
So far we have one hand clapping in the green new deal national dialog. We need an appealing opportunity-oriented Green-To-Great Deal agenda alternative for our better future. It’s time to rapidly move past science denials to engineer a Green-To-Great Deal with the above framing. Government-led, and market-driven climate action is not only required, but likely the best way to achieve a kind of future Climate Prosperity in a renewed “carbon draw down” economy. Now is the time.
