Walking and Chewing Gum

It is not getting much attention amid coverage of the financial crisis and electoral politics, but the news on climate change continues to get worse.

First, global emissions of greenhouse gases jumped by three percent in 2007, despite rising fuel prices and a slowing world economy. The increase exceeded the assumptions in the scientific models used to predict how quickly climate change will occur. Those models were gloomy enough; reality, it appears, might be worse.

Second, even countries more committed to reducing emissions than the United States are having trouble actually doing so. In 1991, Norway became one of the first countries in the world to impose a carbon tax. Norway now reports that, instead of declining since the tax was instituted, its emissions have increased by fifteen percent.

Finally, the warming that has already occurred may have started natural processes that will accelerate the rise in temperatures. Recently Scientists traveling along Siberia's northern coast found foaming seas above deposits of methane that had formerly been locked under the sea bed. The permafrost above those deposits may have begun to melt, allowing the pent-up methane, which is twenty times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat, to bubble to the surface. Positive feedbacks like this will make it much more difficult to stop runaway warming.

If we seriously intend to prevent disastrous climate change, then we must act quickly. But many seem to think that we can't tackle more than one problem at once. This week some politicians warned that the world, particularly the U.S., already has its hands full with a slowing economy.

But, while having two problems at once may be unfortunate, it doesn't make either less urgent. What if we could solve both at the same time?

A couple of studies done recently suggest that we might be able to. According to a report released earlier this month by The U.S. Conference of Mayors, companies focused on clean energy and energy efficiency could be the economy's fastest-growing segment in the next three decades, creating over three million new jobs.

Thirty years is a long time, though. Another study published by the Center for American Progress says that with aggressive government investment of $100 billion over two years could add two million jobs to the economy. The same amount of money invested in the oil industry, the report states, would increase employment by only a quarter as much.

Such an investment would eventually provide a number of other benefits, of course. Fewer (or no) oil imports would mean less money for terrorists and for dictators in Iran, Venezuela and Russia. Public health would improve as air pollution declined. Renewable energy and efficiency industries would develop, with the potential for exports. We might have a chance to halt climate change.

Finally, it would be virtually impossible to invest too much. Unlike the housing market, where the bubble attracted so much investment that we ended up with a bunch of houses that we don't need, if we spend too much, in purely economic terms, on a green recovery we will just end up with cleaner energy, more efficient buildings, more competitive industries, and healthier people. Can we have too much of any of that?