At an
Opportunity 08 forum in Iowa, Brookings Managing Director Bill Antholis discusses the political challenges and tradeoffs in climate change policy.
"My interest in climate change is I was appointed to work on climate change policy when I was at the White House. I didn't know much about it. I came to understand that it is probably the most complicated issue that the country faces. It is more complicated than health care and I must say I'm pretty baffled by the health care system. Climate change brings together science, economics, politics and diplomacy … as much as it corresponds with the national security in the United States.
"That said, I think climate change has gone from ten years ago being something that was thought of as the fancy of our then Vice President Al Gore to now being something the entire world is focused on as a challenge. I think it does actually span across both political parties.
"All of the Democratic candidates and nearly all the Republican candidates have acknowledged climate change is facing the country. I think there's a question of how much and how far both parties are willing to go. The political salience certainly has risen quite a lot and if you lay it alongside the
energy security challenges that David [Sandalow] listed, there is obviously an enormous amount of overlap. There are some real potential divergent points on climate change and energy security. 80-percent of what you would try to do to get this country free from foreign oil or give us a range of choices would be really good for the climate. 20-percent might not be so good.
"There's debate about whether or not—there's no debate if we tried to get some of our oil from coal but that would be another alternative to importing foreign oil or if we did more drilling for oil domestically that would be an alternative. But the consequences are questionable and probably detrimental. There are a number of things we should try to do with respect to climate change that would be neutral with respect to trying to get off of foreign oil. For instance—I don't want to use up the two minute time period. We have got these two overlapping sets of ambitions out there. One, to be energy secure, the other is to get away from green house gas emissions. What I think is really important in the next set of years is that the United States first solve this at home.