2008: Terror and temperature set tempo
By Bill Settlemyer
President and CEO, Setcom Media
Look past 2008’s wobbly economic picture due to last year’s credit crunch and the housing meltdown. Those will sort themselves out. It will be messy, but like all excesses driven by greed and shortsightedness, things will get better.
As far as the presidential race is concerned, your guess is as good as mine (probably better). Suffice it to say that voters are worried and unsure as to whether any of the candidates have the right stuff to lead the nation in these turbulent and perilous times.
Trouble in Terrorstan
The big stories of 2008 will be about terror and temperature. The really scary short-term focus will be on Pakistan, which Newsweek dubbed as “The World’s Most Dangerous Nation.” And that was well before Benizar Bhutto’s tragic but predictable assassination.
The situation in Pakistan presents the unthinkable possibility that al-Qaida or its sympathizers could gain access to the country’s nuclear weapons or nuclear technology. With Osama bin Laden having long since proclaimed his “duty” to obtain a nuclear weapon to attack the United States, it’s not hard to figure out where this could lead.
I don’t think we’ll be invading Pakistan to protect ourselves, because we can’t. We’ve got all we can handle in Afghanistan and Iraq. That leaves a combination of diplomacy and covert activities as the available choices.
It’s been said that after Sept. 11, the United States gave President Musharraf the option of joining the War on Terror on our side or having his country “bombed back into the Stone Age.” True or not, that threat won’t work against terrorists, because they really don’t care about the consequences.
Ironically, the current situation seems in many ways to be a repeat of the foreign policy catastrophe that led to the rise of a hostile government in Iran almost three decades ago. We placed our bets on one man, the Shah of Iran, and lost. History may now be repeating itself in Pakistan.
We are not the only country that has an interest in political stability in Pakistan. Great Britain and the Western European governments know all too well that the country has long been a breeding ground for anti-Western terrorism. President Bush and Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice should be working overtime to build a multinational coalition to combat the threat posed by Pakistan’s unrest. But this time, there can be no faux “coalition of the willing” made up mainly of the unwilling. This effort has to be real and collaborative, with the United States sharing power and decision-making with its allies.
Cross your fingers and pray for peace.
Climate change — the heat is on
The news is both better and worse where global warming and climate change are concerned. The bad news is that there are all kinds of signals coming at us from the natural environment suggesting that warming is progressing more rapidly than most scientists had predicted.
The good news is that most of the nations of the world have acknowledged the urgency of swift action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the Bush administration is now at least acknowledging the reality of climate change and talking about solutions.
Oh, but there’s more bad news, too. Economic growth and rising prosperity in countries like China and India threaten to ramp up emissions at a rate that could overwhelm the efforts of other nations to cut back. That’s why it is essential that the United States demonstrate leadership and a willingness to implement mandatory cuts in carbon emissions. Without that leadership, neither China nor India is likely join in efforts to enact a post-Kyoto treaty that will commit the entire world to reducing emissions.
One of the significant developments of 2007 was the coalition formed between leading U.S. corporations and nonprofit groups to address climate change. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership (www.us-cap.org) released a strong statement and set of principles in January of last year calling for a program of mandatory cuts in carbon emissions. You’ll find a full presentation of “A Call for Action” posted on their Web site.
The membership of this key group grew during 2007. On the corporate side, Alcoa and DuPont are members, significant to us here in the Lowcountry because of their leading roles in our region’s manufacturing sector. Other familiar manufacturers include Caterpillar, John Deere, Ford, GE and GM. Energy companies include BP, ConocoPhillips, Duke Energy, Exelon, FPL Group, NRG, PG&E, PNM Resources and Shell.
On the nonprofit side there’s the National Wildlife Federation, The Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense, Pew Center on Global Climate Change and the World Resources Institute.
In reviewing the USCAP proposals, I thought the projected targets for reducing future emissions were inadequate, but I think that will change as more scientific evidence, new technology and growing concern about climate change create the political climate for setting more ambitious targets. What really matters is that USCAP has demonstrated the ability of leading business corporations and nonprofit environmental advocates to unite under a common banner and call for a rapid and substantial response to the threat of accelerating climate change.
As for those who still claim that climate change is not happening or is not a significant threat to the world economy and the natural environment, they should first make the case for why they’re so much smarter than the top management of the world’s leading multinational corporations.
In the meantime, the rest of us have work to do. Our challenge is to preserve the planet for future generations, and at this point, it’s a race against the clock to change public policy, develop new energy technologies and engage everyone in our nation and on the planet to participate in this great but perilous venture. The stakes are beyond our imaginations, and we must not fail.
View as PDF
|
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Version