A Fateful Summer

This could well be the most important summer of the 21st century so far. It could begin to equip this country and the world to save the future, or it could set us back even farther. President Obama is out there pitching, telling audiences in Michigan on Tuesday that his initiatives to fix health care and address the Climate Crisis through a cap-and-trade program are both essential to economic recovery and future prosperity.

The opposition feeds the media with irrelevancies and lies, and the conflict-addicted media eats it up. But beneath the smoke, and beyond the obvious and very well-funded ploys of delay and obfuscation, there are the facts of these matters.

On healthcare, opponents had to deal with the embarrassing revelations by a former insurance company executive that lefty far out radical filmmaker Michael Moore was essentially correct in his film "Sicko" about how broken and unjust the healthcare so-called system actually is. Those fulminating against gobment bureaucracy taking over healthcare had to once again ignore a scholarly study--this one in the journal Health Affairs--that "compared to people with private insurance, Medicare enrollees have greater access to care, fewer problems with medical bills, and greater satisfaction with their health plans and the quality of care they receive."

The latest attack on cap and trade came this morning from none other than Sarah Palin in the Washington Post, quickly dismantled for both what it said and what it didn't say. But there are also misgivings on the left and by environmentalists, which were addressed by Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Environmental Economics program in a Salon interview.

For critics that consider cap-and-trade a corporate giveaway, Stavins analysis shows that approximately 20 percent of the allowance value is given to private entities that have to comply, and 80 percent of that value of the allowances accrues to consumers, to small businesses and then for various public purposes.

For those who see the bill as too limited and compromised, Stavins maintains that the bill's method, created partly to get the support necessary to pass it, "does not degrade its environmental performance, or drive up its cost. Otherwise I wouldn't support it. I'm an environmental economist. I care about environmental performance, and I care about the cost of achieving it. That's the remarkable property of a cap-and-trade system."

He defends the relatively low goals for the near term as necessary to make as smooth a transition as possible to an energy system that is mostly clean. That means what is most important is the 2050 target of 80 percent below 2005 levels. That's the key one. For 2050, this legislation is very aggressive."

There are still twists and turns both bills will take in the next several weeks. But instituting a health care system that covers 97% or more of Americans, with a public plan to choose from, would be a monumental achievement. It wouldn't by itself solve all healthcare problems, but it is necessary to the other solutions.

The same applies to cap-and-trade. It won't stop the Climate Crisis, but it can begin to address the problems that are on track to wreck the future to an extent that most people so far can't imagine. It won't magically install a clean energy economy overnight, but it will start us in the right direction, for present renewal and public health, and for the future where our children, grandchildren and their descendants will live.