With the majority of the world now composed of industrialized nations, it’s obvious that not one single country can solve global warming on its own.

Obama has failed to put forth enough effective legislation regarding the environment during his time in office. He squandered his opportunity to craft a piece of landmark energy legislation when the Democrats controlled both houses in 2008-2010.

Meanwhile, Republicans have been associated with those that doubt global warming, and as more and more people become educated about climate change, this will increasingly hurt their electability.

On Sept. 18, Republicans brought skepticism about climate science to a new level by calling proposed EPA regulations limiting coal emissions a presidential power grab.

Climate change is a scientific fact. Doubting its existence is akin to doubting Darwin’s theory of evolution.

However, it seems unlikely our generation’s politicians will do enough to curb the detrimental effects of climate change.

The primary reason for this is globalization. It simply doesn’t make economic sense for countries to impose stricter environmental standards on their own firms.

Had globalization never occurred, there would be a much better chance that global warming would be a manageable problem rather than the global crisis that it’s swiftly becoming.

Take China for example. If China didn’t have extremely lax environmental standards, then it’s unlikely it would have grown to become the world’s second largest economy trailing only the U.S.

Although collective action between countries on climate change will be hard to reach, the largest industrialized nations must take on leadership roles if humans are going to solve this problem.

Eventually, and ideally, free market forces would be able to solve the problem without government intervention. Since this hasn’t happened yet, governments need to start playing a more active role in reducing fossil fuel consumption in their respective countries.

Republicans should champion this issue with conservative solutions.

The U.S. should start by passing a national carbon tax. Not only would this curb carbon emissions, it would also drastically reduce the debt, which should be a top priority for conservatives. I can’t think of a more responsible way of doing so than through a carbon tax.

This tax could take the form of a fixed amount that consumers must pay for the emission of one metric ton of carbon dioxide. Not only would this reduce consumption, but it would also provide more incentive for the development of alternative energy sources.

A carbon tax in the U.S. would not be enough to solve the issue of climate change on its own, but it is a good start. The U.S. has unfortunately played a very prominent role in greenhouse gas emissions.

Contrary to popular belief, emission reductions can be good for the economy. According to one relatively conservative estimate, carbon emissions could account for at least two to three percent of lost GDP by the year 2100.

There is precedent for both U.S. leadership on environmental issues and for international cooperation on environmental issues in the past.

The Clean Air Act of 1990 was critical in mitigating the various damaging effects of acid rain in the U.S. Ozone depletion at first appeared to be a problem destined to doom our generation.

Climate change is undoubtedly a harder problem to solve than acid rain and ozone depletion. It involves many more variables, and there are more industrialized nations now than ever before.

The Kyoto Protocol has obviously not done enough. Sadly, the U.S. is one of only two industrialized nations, the other being Australia, not to ratify the current Protocol.

We are more responsible than any other single nation for the detrimental effects of climate change. It’s about time we elect leaders that will actually stand up and do something about it.

Ethan Demers is a senior political science and history major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at [email protected].

Published on October 1, 2013 at 1:27 am