EACH of us took turns over the past 43 years running the
Environmental Protection Agency.
We served Republican presidents, but we have a message that transcends
political affiliation: the United States must move now on substantive
steps to curb
climate change, at home and internationally.
There is no longer any credible scientific debate about the basic facts:
our world continues to warm, with the last decade the hottest in modern
records, and the deep ocean warming faster than the earth’s atmosphere.
Sea level is rising. Arctic Sea ice is melting years faster than
projected.
The costs of inaction are undeniable. The lines of scientific evidence
grow only stronger and more numerous. And the window of time remaining
to act is growing smaller: delay could mean that warming becomes “locked
in.”
A market-based approach, like a carbon tax, would be the best path to
reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, but that is unachievable in the
current political gridlock in Washington. Dealing with this political
reality, President Obama’s June
climate action plan
lays out achievable actions that would deliver real progress. He will
use his executive powers to require reductions in the amount of carbon
dioxide emitted by the nation’s power plants and spur increased
investment in clean energy technology, which is inarguably the path we
must follow to ensure a strong economy along with a livable climate.
The president also plans to use his regulatory power to limit the
powerful warming chemicals known as hydrofluorocarbons and encourage the
United States to join with other nations to amend the
Montreal Protocol
to phase out these chemicals. The landmark international treaty, which
took effect in 1989, already has been hugely successful in solving the
ozone problem.
Rather than argue against his proposals, our leaders in Congress should
endorse them and start the overdue debate about what bigger steps are
needed and how to achieve them — domestically and internationally.
As administrators of the E.P.A under Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Ronald
Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, we held fast to common-sense
conservative principles — protecting the health of the American people,
working with the best technology available and trusting in the
innovation of American business and in the market to find the best
solutions for the least cost.
That approach helped us tackle major environmental challenges to our
nation and the world: the pollution of our rivers, dramatized when the
Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire in 1969; the hole in the ozone
layer; and the devastation wrought by acid rain.
The solutions we supported worked, although more must be done. Our
rivers no longer burn, and their health continues to improve. The United
States led the world when nations came together to phase out
ozone-depleting chemicals. Acid rain diminishes each year, thanks to a
pioneering, market-based emissions-trading system adopted under the
first President Bush in 1990. And despite critics’ warnings, our economy
has continued to grow.
Climate change puts all our progress and our successes at risk. If we
could articulate one framework for successful governance, perhaps it
should be this: When confronted by a problem, deal with it. Look at the
facts, cut through the extraneous, devise a workable solution and get it
done.
We can have both a strong economy and a livable climate. All parties
know that we need both. The rest of the discussion is either detail,
which we can resolve, or purposeful delay, which we should not tolerate.
Mr. Obama’s plan is just a start. More will be required. But we must
continue efforts to reduce the climate-altering pollutants that threaten
our planet. The only uncertainty about our warming world is how bad the
changes will get, and how soon. What is most clear is that there is no
time to waste.
