(Editors note: Read part one two and three)In the first three parts of this essay, I offered a portrait of American life as viewed from the top, and I suggested that the deeply rooted sense of exceptionalism, found wide spread in our leadership class, in fact, pervades all levels of society. I’ve also argued that this exceptionalism is especially problematic in our era of a global crisis due to climate change. The questions that remain are what we should do and what we can do to face up to the greatest problem ever to confront humanity.

What should be done is fairly obvious: introduce policy that rapidly phases out fossil fuel emissions. The most straight-forward approach that would unleash our strength as a society of entrepreneurs would be to cap emissions due to industrial and land use activities and issue carbon permits that can be traded on an open market. Fossil fuels should also be taxed at their source. The tax revenues should be redistributed to society’s poorest to minimize the impact of carbon taxation on the population. No one can predict the precise changes in the economy or social organization that would result from such a policy, but in broad outlines, the effects of such policy can be discerned. Certainly there would be an extended period of austerity for the middle class, and even the wealthy might feel the pinch as the economy retrenched in a green, sustainable mode. Many existing large corporations would fail and new enterprises rise to replace them.

At this moment there is little political support for such a program. Most Americans strongly prefer to continue life consuming at the level to which they have become accustomed, and the large corporations that provide the items of consumption will certainly struggle to hold onto their positions. For these reasons, no candidates for president advocate such a program, and instead offer programs that fall below the threshold of even being labeled bandaids. You can be assured that in the run-up to the 2008 elections the “American exceptionalism” card will be played time and time and again to justify doing little or nothing about global warming. We will be told that pie-in-the-sky technology will come to the rescue, or that it is up to individuals to reduce their carbon footprints on a voluntary basis. And American exceptionalism will implicitly assure that there will be no suggestion to examine or imitate what is being done in Europe, where nations are already capping emissions and changing their energy infrastructures. In fact, dealing with global warming has become the centerpiece of creating greater European unity.

Continue reading American Exceptionalism And Global Warming (Part 4) →