Taunting Mother Nature and Mr. Market

    A week before Obama’s second inauguration, Thomas Friedman wrote an article for the NewYork Times titled “The Market and Mother Nature” which outlined his proposal on tackling what he considers to be the United States two biggest domestic issues: national debt and climate change.  Friedman, a three time Pulitzer Prize recipient, previous chief economic correspondent for the Washington bureau, and a White House correspondent, argues that both financial and carbon debt are reaching a point of no return.  On the status of the United States emissions Friedman comments, “For thousands of years up to the dawn of the industrial age 200 years ago, the Earth’s atmosphere contained 280 parts per million of the heat-trapping greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Today, that number is nearly 400 p.p.m., with 450 p.p.m. routinely cited as the tipping point where we create the conditions for out-of-control acceleration.” Friedman cites the melting of Earth’s icecaps in Alaska, Canada, and Siberia, which causes the release of frozen methane. Methane as a greenhouse gas is more hazardous than CO2 and therefore causes sea levels to rise at a much quicker pace. As for the status of the United States financial debt he says, “We’re on a similar trajectory with our debt. Mounting deficits have driven America’s debt-to-G.D.P. ratio from 36.2 percent in 2007 to 72.8 percent today. In their widely hailed book on credit crises, “This Time Is Different,” the economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff argue that countries that allow their debt-to-G.D.P. ratios to exceed 90 percent experience slower growth and greater instability — much like hitting a climate tipping point.” 
   Friedman offers a solution to solve both simultaneously, saying that we can slow the progression of climate change and help lower the U.S. Financial debt by implementing small carbon taxes. He backs up his argument with a study conducted by the Congressional Research Service that states “a small carbon tax of $20 per ton — escalating by 5.6 percent annually — could cut the projected 10-year deficit by roughly 50 percent (from $2.3 trillion down to $1.1 trillion).” Friedman ends his article asking his NewYork Times audience, generally those who would be categorized as the educated upper-middle class, “what would [they] rather do to help solve our fiscal problem: Give up [their] home mortgage deduction and wait two more years for Social Security and Medicare, or pay a little extra for gasoline and electricity?” 
    Personally, I find Friedman’s solution of implementing a carbon tax a step in the right direction, and I also love that he has chosen not only to highlight the economic issues we are facing but the environmental problems as well. Many of today’s pundits are fixated on solving the economic problems and seemingly refuse to believe that environmental issues hold the same weight. Friedman has a strong voice and I’m glad that he’s chosen to use his platform to bring awareness to climate change. He makes his argument easy for the reader to understand, not only offering his educated opinions, but also supporting his opinions with facts on the status of our carbon and economic debt. By keeping his argument accessible and limiting the amount of jargon his readers have to wade through, Friedman ensures that the public has the tools to stay informed on these important issues.