Green For Green

By Sadiya Bruce
The Peanut Gallery
on Commerce, Science & Transport:

Did you wake up in the morning feeling like P.Diddy? Well, to ruin your Bad Boy morning, take a look outside of your window. On the way to committee session, did you notice that it was sunny and snowing? Did you get a little bamboozled?

This could be the cause of a carbon dioxide increase by about 1/3 since the Industrial Revolution. Before the shift to industry, carbon dioxide emissions were 230 parts per million. Now, it is 380 parts per million causing temperatures and sea levels to rise. In order to control this issue, international participation is needed with the lead of the U.S. 

The question now is: how to fix this? The Senate’s Commerce, Science and Technology committee is currently trying to form an international climate policy that may be the answer. The first suggestion is a global tax-and-trade system that would allow countries a maximum level of emissions that they are allowed to divide among themselves.

Other options on the table are to cut emissions drastically, but the real goal is to try and keep emissions at its current level instead of it rising. Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, discussed a proposal that was passed three months ago in the Presidential Cabinet to “encourage clean efficient energy incentives for industries and companies who adopt green technologies.” She also discussed a cap-and-trade system the Congress is working on to set the limits the system will include.

The guest speaker in the Commerce, Science and Technology committee said it is time for “the U.S. to take a stand and take a lead in the international community.” This international climate policy may be the tool to give the U.S. that initiative that the rest of the world is looking for…besides the Obama dollars they’ll get in the end.