Let’s Attack Waste, Not Global Warming

By John Hofmeister  |  The Wall Street Journal  |  September 29, 2014

Supporters and opponents in the climate debate miserably fail to answer honestly the global-warming question and its impact on climate, because they can’t. No one can possibly know the future of this dynamic and not very well known planet to provide the definitive and absolute answer to the question that cannot be known for decades, even centuries, when anything can happen. We struggle to know or understand the past. How can we possibly know or understand the future? To be either categorically affirmative or negative is to be about as superficial, unscientific and fundamentally unfounded in the answer as one could possibly be. Why is that? Because such people are answering the wrong question! It’s like trying to answer another impossible question: is faith good or bad?

Let’s change the question to get at the obvious and categorically answerable truth affecting climate that will determine our future and the condition of the planet, which no one can deny. Is unfettered, unmanaged and uncontrolled waste able to destroy our planet and make it unlivable? Let’s refine the question. Is the lack of waste management of physical, liquid and gaseous waste on a pathway to destroy the planet as we know it? The answer to both questions is unequivocally, undeniably and absolutely, yes!

The lesson here is this: Let’s deal with certainty, not uncertainty.

Let’s discuss our future unambiguously and certifiably, not hypothetically.

I have met no one in recent years, at least in my lifetime, who promotes the illegal and irresponsible management of waste as we have tolerated it in the past. We don’t dump our trash on our neighbor’s porch for a reason. We know that what is emitted from exhaust pipes, smokestacks, and vents contains waste products that we don’t want in our lungs. We don’t urinate in reservoirs without repercussions. Waste is a problem that must be managed.

We could temper the debate, create universal consensus, establish and enforce public policy and improve and save the Earth from ourselves, if we decided to manage our waste, including its elimination, instead of managing global warming.

John Hofmeister (@cfaenergy) is former president of Shell Oil Co. and founder and head of Citizens for Affordable Energy. He is also a member of the U.S. Energy Security Council.