A More Balanced Approach to Climate Change Policy

by Thomas F. Stephenson

Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy

www.hoover.org/taskforces/energy-policy

Our country urgently needs a more balanced approach to the global warming and climate change issue. On its own, it is a major policy problem, and it has also come to dominate discussions over our country’s broader energy strategy. The current, starkly contrasting characterizations of the global warming and climate change problem and the solutions proffered by the polar opposites in the debate are neither accurate nor constructive as we strive to achieve a more sane policy approach to the issue.

In the current political environment, we can divide the global warming controversy into three areas of debate: (1) the human contribution to global warming, climate change, and the state of climate science, (2) the expected social and economic impacts of global warminginduced climate change, and (3) what to do about  it. Each important element is addressed below. In our view, however, the most promising path forward lies in recognizing that the position one takes on any one of these three elements need not actually dictate one’s views on the others. Despite today’s political difficulties then, and perhaps surprisingly, our Task Force on Energy Policy at the Hoover Institution finds good reason to be cautiously optimistic that progress is being made and that good technology and policy options still remain. 

Read the entire essay from he Hoover Institution.