[Vision2020] A Republican Case for Climate Action

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

------------------------------
August 1, 2013
A Republican Case for Climate Action By WILLIAM D. RUCKELSHAUS, LEE M.
THOMAS, WILLIAM K. REILLY and CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN

EACH of us took turns over the past 43 years running the Environmental
Protection Agency<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/environmental_protection_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org>.
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<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,
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<http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/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<http://ozone.unep.org/new_site/en/montreal_protocol.php>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.

The writers are former administrators of the Environmental Protection
Agency: William D.
Ruckelshaus<http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/william-d-ruckelshaus>,
from its founding in 1970 to 1973, and again from 1983 to 1985; Lee M.
Thomas <http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/lee-m-thomas>, from 1985 to 1989; William
K. Reilly <http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/william-k-reilly>, from 1989 to
1993; and Christine Todd
Whitman<http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/christine-todd-whitman>,
from 2001 to 2003.




-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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