Why controlling global warming is good for our bottom line

A year before the American Revolution’s first shots were fired, another revolution was already well under way in Great Britain. In 1775, Scottish inventor James Watt completed work on the world’s first really big steam engine, allowing for relatively easy extraction of coal from deep inside the earth, providing the power source to fuel the Industrial Revolution. Ever since, we’ve been polluting the skies with ever-greater amounts of carbon dioxide, which is emitted when fossil fuels are burned.

If we don’t eventually scale back carbon-intense technologies, scientists and environmentalists say, our hunger for energy derived from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and, to a lesser extent, natural gas could eventually lead to our species’ decline, perhaps even its demise. I’m not talking about today, tomorrow or even in the next century, but eventually.

The United Nations recently convened a two-week climate conference in Durban, South Africa, to attempt to reach an international agreement to save the world from the worst effects of global warming caused by the continual burning of fossil fuels, including drought and sea-level rise. On Sunday, delegates from 194 countries reached a tenuous agreement that many environmentalists and politicos say was a long time in coming.

In 1997, the U.S. signed the Kyoto Protocol, another U.N. climate agreement that required developed nations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels, and politely asked developing nations, including China and India, to do the same. Under President Clinton, Congress refused to ratify the treaty, even though the U.S. was, at the time, the world’s biggest carbon emitter. (China is now.) With his deep ties to the oil industry, President George W. Bush wouldn’t even consider submitting Kyoto to Congress for ratification after he took office in 2001.