Politics as Usual

What, to your mind, is the most pressing challenge facing the global environment today? Why?

Simply put, the greatest threat facing the global environment today is the lack of political will to put into force concrete steps towards changing the way in which we interact with the environment and addressing the issue of human-generated climate change. As a single phenomenon, climate change obviously is the most pernicious threat as it has the capacity to alter, in at least some appreciable manner, environments everywhere on the planet. It is the paralyzed political system(s), however, that is allowing such shifts to occur at an accelerating rate.

While the present and potentially future inaction of humans to deal with this issue can be laid at the feet of both individuals (i.e. consumers) and national governments and international organizations, it is the latter that is deserving of greater blame. Individuals, in general of course, have proven in the past to be utterly unwilling to make compromises for the purposes of environmental protection that have even the appearance of an economic cost or a loss of convenience. As such, a solution to carbon emissions and resource use must instead come from the top-down.

Unfortunately, binding emissions targets have proven elusive at both the international and national levels as governments refuse to make what they believe to be promises that will hinder their economies and prove unpopular with a largely indifferent populace or surrender what they feel is a right to live as the developed world has for the past century. In the United States, this means that governments are unwilling to take actions such as allowing for gasoline prices (through taxes) to climb to levels that seriously encourage conservation or create a robust emissions regulatory framework. Unless this country and the other nations of the world choose to enforce solutions on their economies and markets, grassroots action will fall short and the planet will be doomed to sever environmental changes.

On a final note, this inaction in the United States represents a missed opportunity. While it may be cliche to say, it is entirely reasonable to believe that clean energy, encourage by responsible policy-making, could become a lucrative industry for the American economy. Furthermore, steps to reduce or even eliminate fossil fuels would definitely serve the interests of the country, removing the need to secure access to vital energy resources internationally.