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Are pressing environmental issues being ignored because of the all-consuming fixation on global warming?

LS: Without question, many environmental harms are being ignored or exacerbated while society tries to address a global warming concern that may not exist.

One of the things you talk about in the book is the tendency of politicians to say, as John McCain frequently does, that we should somehow regulate carbon emissions because, to paraphrase, if global warming is real action will ensure we won't all drown in boiling oceans and if it isn't we'll basically have a cleaner planet. What's wrong with that?

LS: Kyoto is not benign environmentally. It is spawning destructive policies such as carbon offsets, which lead to the conversion of farmland and forests in the Third World to carbon-intensive eucalyptus plantations. Kyoto is also promoting uneconomic nuclear plants and hydro-dams, which flood fertile river valleys upon which millions of people in the Third World depend. In McCain's case, and probably Lieberman's, a chief motivation for their support for emissions reduction is national security. They see climate change as a weapon in their arsenal. They hope climate change reforms will reduce Western dependence on potentially hostile oil exporting nations such as Russia and Iran, and at the same time weaken their despotic regimes economically.

As someone with years of experience in the trenches, what do you see as the global warming endgame?

LS: If climate change science doesn't turn around and soon demonstrate concrete evidence of harm, the global warming issue might well just melt away. I have met very few people who have strong convictions about global warming. In their bones, they don't believe the end of the world is nigh.

topics:
John McCain, Environment, Global Warming, Law, Iran, Russia, Energy, Oil