Final Draft (Problems in the Climate Bill)

Dear New York Times Board Editor,

The thought of life vanishing from this earth seems unimaginable, but there are ways humans can stop what they created. Global Warming is a topic that is heavily debated everyday in our society. These greenhouse gases are slowly ruining our planet which asks for drastic solutions. There were some points in the editorial that I agreed with, but the way the editorial suggested we should go about solving this problem seemed unintelligent to me. Last December, representatives from 192 nations gathered in Copenhagen to make a plan that will drastically change the course of global warming. This meeting aimed to reduce carbon emissions in the air created by burning of fossil fuels. The meeting urged the nations to create a plan that will “reduce greenhouse gases by 5.2% from 1990 levels” (Vergano). In The New York Times editorial “The Case for a Climate Bill,” the author talks about the importance of a bill that puts both a cap and a price on carbon emissions. This climate bill is having a hard time passing through Congress because even though it will reduce carbon emissions, there are many side effects to this plan. The bill will hurt both developing and developed countries because it will only harm the recession this world is already facing.

There are many reasons why this bill will not work in this society we live in. Nations have no intention of letting the developed world force them to stop using fossil fuels. Many nations depend on these carbon emitting fuels to create energy and run their country. Restricting these nations from this source of income would greatly affect their economy denying many nations to industrialize and keeping their population in poverty. This is what this bill is asking the world to accept. The editor of “The Case for a Climate Bill” is ignorantly saying “a good program would create more jobs than its cost” (Paragraph 3). This bill will affect every household in the country. Vergano, the senior editor on Global Warming in The New York Times, argues “the costs of creating a carbon "market" to achieve such cuts would be about $175 a year by then for the average household.”(Vergano) He later goes on to say that we are doing all this just to lower the temperature by 2 degrees Celsius in the next couple hundred years. This amount of money every year is not worth it, especially with most of the world still staggering from the worst recession in 40 years.

Developed countries also have no interest in this bill because of the consequences of trying to cut carbon emissions. All the economic models show that to keep the temperature increases of the earth less than 2 degrees Celsius, nations would need to start putting a carbon tax on carbon emissions. William Klesse, chief executive of oil refiner Valero Energy, says the bill will be asking the refiners somewhere “between $30 billion and $110 billion a year” (Helman). This will drastically increase the price of gasoline in this recession filled world. There are many calculations that predict that this is 50 times more expensive than the climate damage this bill seeks to prevent. So, the main reason this bill is not getting much attention is because the price of solving this problem is far more expensive than the damage this bill is trying to prevent.

The main debate focuses on how man can cope with this man-made problem. For many years, environmentalists have been following the same path on solving this situation by urging governments to pass laws that will drastically lower the carbon emissions in the air. We see this same pattern occur again in the meeting at Copenhagen. Policy makers need to realize this and quickly change their plan before it is too late. So, what is next? What can we do to solve this problem more effectively? The burning of fossil fuels creates carbon emissions that are slowly ruining the planet we are living in. So, it should make sense to stop creating energy via burning of fossil fuels. The only way to reduce our fossil fuels without hurting the world’s economy in this recession is to invest in green energy creating technology. Unlike the editors’ theory in “The Case for a Climate Bill” about the bill creating more jobs, the oil refiners companies beg to differ. If this bill passes “Ihne predicts that at least 15 of the current 150 plants, capable of processing roughly 2 million barrels of oil a day, will close, eliminating 5,000 jobs” (Helman). The only way to solve this problem is by investing in technologies that create non carbon based energy.

This new way of going about solving this problem will create more jobs. The increased spending on research and development will create more jobs, which will also help the economy. Some examples of non carbon based energies are nuclear, wind, solar, and geothermal. Although there are many alternatives to creating energy, they are not nearly as effective and productive as burning fossil fuels which unfortunately create carbon emissions. So, our next step should be investing on creating new technologies and ways in which we can create energy without hurting our environment. Instead of putting a tax on carbon emissions, just a small percentage of the global GDP can create breakthroughs needed to stimulate a carbon free future.

The bill that the editor of “The Case for a Climate Bill” is supporting will only hurt the economy and stop nations from industrializing. Policy makers have been arguing and debating about putting a tax on carbon emissions will help nations, yet not one nation is willing to accept this change. The reason for this is because they know that there will be more problems from this than solutions. The only solution to this is by investing in technologies that create carbon free energy. We need to realize that all these meetings of nations, such as that at Copenhagen, are not working. We need to find alternative ways of creating energy without generating global warming.

Helman, Christopher. "Cap-and-Smother." EBSCOhost. Forbes, 30 Nov. 2009. Web. 5 Feb. 2010. .

"The Case for a Climate Bill." Editorial. New York Times [New York] 24 Jan. 2010, New York ed., WK9 sec. NYTimes. 24 Jan. 2010. Web. 5 Feb. 2010. .

Vergano, Dan. "Global warming cuts have a price." EBSCOhost. USA Today, 24 Nov. 2009. Web. 5 Feb. 2010. .