2007 is rapidly shaping up as the year where the world, including the United States, becomes united in its intention to do something serious about global warming. Incredible momentum is building especially in the US, which will hopefully take its place as a leader of the world on the issue in the years ahead. Consider:

1) Bush managed to snatch mediocrity from the jaws of leadership in his State of the Union speech last night by “merely” calling for a 20% reduction in gasoline in the next ten years replaced by ethanol instead of calling for a hoped-for cap on emissions (let’s hope that the technology for making ethanol out of cellulose is in place by then, because doing it from corn alone will require 11 billion bushels by 2015 which is larger than the entire US corn harvest). At least replacing this much gasoline will substantially reduce emissions, since ethanol is nearly carbon-neutral. Nevertheless, he broke new ground last night by actually uttering the words “climate change”, which surely drew gasps from people everywhere. Never before has this president so clearly stated his affirmative belief in the reality of global warming, and it’s about time.

2) The new Congressional Democratic majority is intent on tackling global warming in an urgent fashion. Some of their proposals do call for emissions caps, with backing from key Republicans like John McCain.

3) Politicians of all stripes are realizing the connection between climate change and national security, as any steps we take to reduce carbon-emitting fossil fuel dependency (especially for oil) are also steps taken in the direction of reducing our dangerous addiction to fuel from hostile countries.

4) A coalition of industrial and electric utility companies has recently formed and is loudly calling for the creation of an emission cap-and-trade program–even lobbying Bush himself to adopt caps. Why are they being so altruistic? Because they acknowledge the inevitability of having to do something about carbon emissions, and they fully realize that if they’re not at the table when deliberations begin they will end up on the menu. Some companies like GE also see enormous business potential in the “going green” movement, with emissions-reducing technology opening up vast new markets in the face of calls for carbon regulation.

5) A massive, four-part global warming report is about to be released, with the first part coming next week. This first phase is being composed by over 600 scientists, reviewed by another 600 experts, and edited by bureaucrats from 154 countries–and will rely on 19 computer models for predicting the future of warming. It will make the strongest argument yet that sudden and drastic warming is happening even now, that we are only at the beginning of the process, and that it is “very likely” that such drastic warming is directly caused by man-made emissions rather than natural causes.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that resisting the reality of man-made global climate change will become the province of a few Luddite Republicans. I think we’ll look back on this year as being the most important yet in turning the juggernaut of our civilization around to begin tackling this enormous problem.

As the Chinese proverb says..may you live in interesting times.

Tags: bush, cap-and-trade, emission-caps, emissions, environment, global-warming