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

leadership in the long emergency S 105
Not least, the 44th president and all his successors must bring
America back into the international community on climate, security,
and economic issues. There is no prospect of stabilizing climate
without a coordinated global effort that systematically addresses
carbon emissions, poverty, and security (Hart, 2006; Speth, 2004
and 2008). The world is waiting for U.S. leadership to help create
a global partnership on climate policy. Given the disparity of historic
and present carbon emissions, the United States is obliged to
set the right example and take the lead. But no one should assume
that the present hostility toward the United States will disappear
without a signifi cant effort sustained over many years.
Presidential leadership has many intangibles. The president has the
power to issue executive orders that affect government purchasing
and management of federal facilities, among other things. Presidents
have the power to initiate change in both statutory and regulatory
law. But in the fi nal analysis, this and future presidents must use all of
their persuasive powers to encourage the American people to move
resolutely, boldly, and quickly toward a much better future than that
in prospect. If this opportunity is lost, there will likely be no other.
This president and his successors will have a great deal of
persuading to do. Others could assume a continually growing
economy and thereby avoid thorny issues about fair income distribution
by hiding behind old myths that rising tides that would lift
all boats or wealth would trickle down from the tables of the rich.
The prospects for continual economic growth, however, are not
good. Even Nobel Prize–winning economist Robert Solow now
admits to being agnostic on the possibilities of continued growth.
On a fi nite planet governed by the laws of thermodynamics and
ecology, the reasons are not diffi cult to fi nd. Economists of the
neoclassical persuasion assumed that economic growth would be
possible by substituting more abundant for scarce resources and by
increasingly heroic technology. The results, however, are rapidly
diminishing resources along with rising inequity, ecosystems verging
on collapse, and rapid climate change.