I think most people want a cleaner environment, but they just don’t trust the other party to do it the way that needs to be done. (It was Richard Nixon who passed the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts in the late sixties, early seventies.) I’ve always found people in both parties to be concerned about the environment. I’ve worked in the government for roughly four years, about half of that was under a Republican administration, half that was under a Democratic administration. Why has climate change become such a polarizing issue? So the problem is that if we decide we have a problem and we don’t like it in 50 years, for the most part, we’re stuck with it. But the best science predicts that a ton of carbon dioxide admitted today is basically going to have its warming effect within about 10 or 20 years.Īnd that warming effect is actually going to persist constantly probably for over a thousand years just because of the delay in terms of getting it out of the atmosphere and the lag in terms of how the warming takes place. Eventually it gets absorbed by the oceans, which actually causes a separate acidification problem in the oceans. On the unique problem of carbon dioxide pollutionĬarbon dioxide takes a really long time to get out of the atmosphere. Climate Change, Protest and PolarizationĬonversation highlights have been edited for readability and clarity.
0 kommentar(er)
