Green Zone Online

By now, you’ve no doubt heard that the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act is set to be debated in the Senate today. Most national environmental organizations have expressed direct or indirect support for the bill. There are some holdouts, though, most notably Friends of the Earth, which criticizes the bill’s negligible impact on carbon emissions until 2020, among other things.

While this is regrettable, there is no doubt that something has to happen at a national level. There has been no significant chance for the American government to have an impact on carbon levels since the Kyoto Protocol was turned down, and now more than even then, it is time to act. Bill McKibben wrote recently about the need for us to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to levels below 350 parts-per-million, and the need to do it fast. As he puts it:

Civilization is what grows up in the margins of leisure and security provided by a workable relationship with the natural world. That margin won’t exist, at least not for long, as long as we remain on the wrong side of 350. That’s the limit we face.

While the Climate Security Act itself may not impact carbon levels like some want and deem necessary, it is definitely a step in the right direction. Erasing carbon emissions by 70% in the next 40 years is a laudable goal. And it’s also good to keep in mind that this won’t all happen in a vacuum; public concern at carbon levels is certainly high, and there are many municipal efforts at achieving sustainable levels. The Climate Security Act can only help to further these efforts.

It is unfortunate in this day and age that there are environmental groups so militant they fail to recognize an opportunity for progress, indeed, work against such progress.