Slow Cooker Earth Part V: The Unforseen Effect on Public Policy

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This is the final installment in the Slow Cooker Earth series. We’ve looked at what global warming means in terms of extreme weather and rising sea levels, and its effect on animals and the land. Today we look at its effect on human society.

“Global warming” and “climate change” are obviously becoming the new buzzwords in our lexicon, and a big way we see them manifest in our daily lives is in public policy and legislation, though you may not realize how much has changed simply because of the weather! But obviously on an international level the Kyoto Protocol has been big in the news for years, and federal, state, city, and local governments are all working hard to keep up with new challenges. The rules associated with how we do business, how we travel, how we build, and how we live are all evolving because of climate changes. (That is one reason why so many large multinational companies are now calling for definitive carbon laws—so they can eliminate some of the uncertainty.) Below I illustrate four such cases of climate-induced public policy issues. If there are other issues you know of, tell us about them in the comments!

Taxing Carbon - Sweden installed the world’s first carbon tax in 1991. While the idea has been bounced around several times here in the States, it is more common to find mandated carbon cap systems where corporations buy and sell the right to pollute in carbon markets—also known as “cap-and-trade” systems. In 2005, the European Union set up the largest and first international emissions trading market, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, and we are now seeing them develop in the Northeast United States (the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative) and in California. This creates a new form of income for clean, efficient companies, but it also taxes those who can’t keep up.
US States plan to cut emissions [BBC News]

Air travel - Airline flight accounts for about 3.5% of our greenhouse gas emissions. And each flight we take puts out MUCH more carbon into the atmosphere than even our biggest gas-guzzlers do per-person per-mile. Some airlines already offer voluntary carbon offset purchase programs, but fliers will most likely be required to pay mandatory offset fees on international flights in the near future.
Airline introduces carbon offset program [GreenBiz.com]
UK May be the first country to implement binding carbon targets [BBC News]

Rail travel - Trains are the cleanest mainstream form of travel per passenger-mile, so carbon tax incentives for shipping companies and short-range domestic travel will increasingly favor rail systems that decrease our carbon output and increase energy independence. Citizen groups like Energize America are petitioning Congress with their own legislative proposals to build an American high-speed passenger railway system much like France’s TGV.
Energize America: The High Speed Passenger Rail Act, Draft 1 [Daily Kos]

Coastal infrastructure - Low-lying developments in hurricane areas (such as Florida and Louisiana coasts) are at high risk with the increased rate and intensity of hurricanes and the possibility of rising sea levels. Therefore, there is increased public spending on coastal engineering (things like levees, water walls, and dikes) and higher insurance premium costs (which are also subsidized by federal money). And as National Geographic reports, all this infrastructure might actually be “making the shores more vulnerable by destroying wetlands, sandbars, and other natural barriers that mitigate storm damage.”
Global warming seen pushing up insurance costs [Reuters]

Part I: How Weather Patterns Are Changing Worldwide
Part II: The Threat Posed By Rising Sea Levels
Part III: What You Should Know About Species Extinction
Part IV: How Global Warming is Changing the Face of Our Icons
Part V: The Unforseen Effect on Public Policy

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