Op-Ed: How the U.S. came to protect the natural world — and exploit it at the same time
For decades, environmental activists have been warning about a looming global disaster: global warming.
They claim that humans are emitting greenhouse gases at a rapid rate, and they’re making the planet hotter.
But the experts who can best measure the impact of greenhouse gases on climate have been cautioning against global warming for years.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says global warming is only now beginning to heat up and is unlikely to stop.
At the same time, a slew of corporations — including oil companies, coal companies and the agribusiness giant Monsanto — are rushing into the business of regulating and regulating the chemicals and pesticides they use to keep the planet healthy.
“We live in an age of climate crisis,” Dr. Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute told FoxNews.com. “It’s an unprecedented emergency.”
And so the U.S. government has gone to great lengths to protect the natural world from its ravages.
Here are some takeaways:
The United States has for decades been on one of the planet’s most powerful carbon emission watch lists.
We’re among the worst on the planet when it comes to our fossil fuel addiction — and in many ways our actions have been a big part of the problem.
We didn’t pass a major carbon tax before President Obama had to be re-elected in 2012, but now even he is on record as admitting that fossil fuels are a major contributor to climate change.
If we want to keep our air and water clean and green, we need to work to regulate the industry that pollutes the world’s atmosphere.
In fact, U.S. climate regulation dates back more than a century.
Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt were key players in the effort to clean up America’s polluted air and water.
Roosevelt spearheaded the creation