Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

leadership in the long emergency S 97
nuclear power plants are virtually certain. Debt, decaying infrastructure,
a national health care emergency, and a badly fractured
political system, among other things, will further constrain the
choices the president can make, while consuming political attention,
energy, and money. But the effects of climate destabilization
will soon overshadow every other concern.
The task for the president is to restore trust, rebuild public
confi dence in government, and provide the leadership necessary
to bring order out of our present divisions. In such circumstances,
crafting good climate policy by which we might minimize the
worst while adapting to what we cannot avoid will be politically
diffi cult but absolutely essential. In journalist and author
Tom Friedman’s words quoted above, however: “We have not
even begun to be serious about the costs, the effort and scale of
change that will be required to shift our country, and eventually
the world, to a largely emissions-free energy infrastructure over
the next 50 years” (2007, p. 42). The long emergency ahead is different
precisely because it will span virtually every other issue and
virtually all aspects of society for a period of time we can scarcely
imagine. Climate stabilization and restoration of the biosphere
must be made permanent commitments of the nation and must
be sustained as a matter of national survival indefi nitely.
To that end, in June of 2006, Ray Anderson, Bill Becker, Gary
Hart, Adam Lewis, Michael Northrup, and I launched a twoyear
effort to craft a detailed climate policy for the fi rst hundred
days of the administration that would assume offi ce in January
of 2009. 1 After dozens of meetings, conference calls, papers, and
presentations, the deliberations of several hundred scientists, policy
experts, and communications strategists, and presentations to
presidential candidates both Republican and Democrat, the fi nal
document was handed over to president-elect Obama’s transition
team in November of 2008. The plan described over 300 possible
actions the president could take, as well as a legal analysis
of the executive authority at his disposal. Beneath the details, the