Is climate change the perfect political problem? Andrew Revkin of the New York Times seems to think so, and recently asked the best political analyst of our era, Bill Clinton, how we face up to that, in a video interview. Yours truly has taken the trouble to provide a transcript of his answer.
After admitting that the attempts he and Al Gore made in l993 to impose a modest carbon tax failed, thanks to opposition from Detroit automakers and unions, Clinton goes on to frame the issue neatly:
Andrew Revkin: Is climate change the perfect political problem? It’s
difficult to communicate and to legislate, takes place over a
long-term time scale, with outcomes that will always have some
uncertainty….how do you deal with that?
Bill Clinton: The real challenge is to make this a voting
issue. We now have a big majority of people who think that climate
change is real, and we have a big majority of people who favor some
action on it. This is a voting issue in Europe. Can it be made a voting
issue here in America?
I think the answer is yes, because we already
know enough to know that climate changes are already underway and they
can’t be good. And we already know enough to know that there things we
can do that will generate economic opportunity and reduce social
inequality and that can’t be bad.
Kit Stolz 