Bill Bradbury on Climate Change
I had the opportunity to see Bill Bradbury, the outgoing Oregon secretary of state, deliver a presentation on climate change today at Celilo Media, the publishers of the Chinook Book and Ecometro blog. My friend Carissa, the Ecometro blog editor, invited me because they had extra spots. Bradbury had attended a training session at Al Gore's Tennessee farm, where Gore, in the family barn, trains large groups of people to deliver the same speech on climate change that became the basis of the movie An Inconvenient Truth. Bradbury adapted the presentation to an Oregon audience with before and after photographs of the glacier on Mt Hood, the newly forming delta at the outlet of Hood River into the Columbia, and images of floods and landslides created by melting glaciers. He did a great job, and the intended effect - making me want to do something - definitely worked.
I had the good luck to see Gore give his original presentation at the Oregon Convention Center in September of 2005, before the movie came out. Gore gave the presentation twice in a row because of the large number of people who couldn't get it to see the first presentation. It was shocking then, and things have gotten even worse in the last few years. The ice caps have been melting faster than anyone predicted, and the unusually hot years have continued - of the hottest ten years on record, 9 of them have occurred within the past ten years. Since I saw the presentation, Australia signed the Kyoto Protocol, leaving the USA the only industrialized nation to not sign it.
Another, more welcome addition to the presentation was a short clip from Barack Obama about climate change being a huge priority for his administration. I am sure he will push signing the treaty though Congress, and I hope the minority Republicans don't block it.
Bill had mentioned Cap and Trade schemes as a solution to the problem. I asked Bill if he thought they were a viable method of controlling greenhouse emissions, and isn't there an inherent compromise built into the idea. He responded that he did not see the compromise, and thought they were a good way to control emissions since they would bring down the average amount of greenhouse emissions. I said that, if the system was meant to distribute the pain of compliance fairly across businesses in the economy, that it didn't make sense, because the most profitable companies would continue to pollute, while the stated goal of making the transition easier would only be true for companies that can afford to buy carbon credits from less polluting companies. I agree with the 'cap' part, just not the 'trade'. Someone else suggested a carbon tax, and the Secretary admitted that was anther viable approach, but was unpalatable to voters. Frankly, after the shocking evidence he had just presented, that's not a good enough reason to compromise on solutions.
I probably didn't make as good an argument as I could have to go head to head with the Secretary of State on his favorite issue, so I'll do it here n my blog. Read Against Cap and Trade Carbon Trading Schemes here.
