The defining policy of the current Bush
administration has been the "global war on terror," or GWOT.The
GWOT has brought us the doctrine of pre-emptive war, two
seemingly endless military interventions, the use of torture in
interrogations and the curtailment of our civil liberties.
If the U.S. government is to begin to
redeem its image abroad and play a positive role in addressing
the many problems that humanity faces, it must jettison the
whole notion of a war on terror.As "Super Tuesday" primaries and
caucuses approach, people ought to push candidates for their
party's presidential nomination to move beyond the GWOT.
While prosecuting the GWOT, the federal
government has largely ignored many problems that threaten our
nation and others significantly more than do acts of
terrorism.Perhaps the three most important such problems are: 1)
the approaching declines in the availability of oil and natural
gas, 2) global climate change, and 3) the growing gap in living
standards between rich and poor countries.
Three federal initiatives could contribute
to a long-term solution to the problem of declining oil and
natural gas extraction rates.These initiatives are:
> Increase the use of renewable
energy dramatically beyond its current 6 percent share of total
U.S. energy consumption;
> Expand inter- and intra-state
passenger rail systems to make rail travel at least as
attractive as less energy efficient air and automobile travel,
and
> Require automobile companies to
produce and market significant numbers of plug-in hybrid
vehicles instead of gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs.
We need to demand that the next president
and Congress do better than the energy bill of 2007, which does
little to promote renewable energy or improve rail systems, and
which takes a go-slow approach toward improving automotive fuel
economy.
The three initiatives listed above would
also help slow global climate change.The federal government
should undertake two additional efforts to reduce the production
of greenhouse gases:
> Re-engage constructively with the
174 nations that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol to date, and
> Invest seriously in researching,
developing and applying carbon capture and storage technologies.
To keep global temperature increases to
manageable levels, it will be necessary to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions by 50 percent to 85 percent by the middle of this
century. Perfecting a means of separating out the carbon dioxide
produced in generating electricity and putting it into storage
instead of releasing it into the atmosphere would help meet this
goal.
Finally, the federal government should
address extreme global socioeconomic divisions by commitments
to:
> Begin replacing so-called
"free-trade" policies, such as those promoted by the World Trade
Organization with "fair trade" policies, and
> Help develop and fund
international "poverty eradication" and "earth restoration"
programs along the lines suggested by Lester Brown of the Earth
Policy Institute.
If the U.S. continues to exacerbate and
ignore the plight of the world's have-nots, we will ensure the
continuation of both mass migration and terrorism far into the
future.
Terrorist acts cannot be ignored.Such acts
should be prosecuted and punished via the legal system, as
occurred in the case of the Madrid train bombings. However, the
next president and Congress need to commit a far greater share
of our nation's resources toward resolving problems that pose
still more serious threats than does terrorism, both to our
nation and all humanity.