A villager walks through a partially dried reservoir in Yingtan, Jiangxi province Oct. 29, 2009. China's busy climate change diplomacy has become increasingly feverish weeks before crucial talks that could forge a new pact to fight global warming, or end in rancour that could rebound onto the world's biggest emitter. (Reuters)

Opinion: It's liberty at stake in a warming world

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US Congress and Obama must seize the moment in Copenhagen to preserve liberty for future generations.

By William H. Luers and Amy L. Luers — Special to GlobalPost

Published: October 30, 2009 06:14 ET
Updated: November 2, 2009 19:33 ET

NEW YORK and BERKELEY, California — President Barack Obama opened a new chapter in America’s role in solving global problems in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly. By calling for the U.S. to re-engage in the global community, he has set us on a new course to preserve American liberty. The preservation of liberty has been the most powerful unifying political commitment for generations of Americans. With global warming, the threats to our liberty are now tied more than ever before to the actions of all nations. The climate change negotiations in Copenhagen this December and in D.C. provide a critical opportunity for the U.S. to start down this new path.

Many of us in the United States have not personally experienced the absence of liberty nor the fear of political insecurity. Yet, if we do not act quickly to address global warming, our children and grandchildren will likely confront these challenges with increasing constraints on their choices and their well-being. Decisions underlying our children’s liberty can no longer be governed simply by election cycles. These decisions are upon us today and they cannot wait.

We write this as father and daughter, with different windows on global issues: one with a 50-year career in diplomacy, the other with a 20-year career in environmental science. Despite our diverse backgrounds, we both see climate change as the biggest and most challenging threat on the horizon to American values and liberty.

The struggles for liberty and global security in the 20th century were rooted largely in the oppression within and the conflicts with the closed societies of ideologically driven despotisms — of Fascism, Nazism and Communism.

In the 21st century, the battlefields will be staggeringly more complex. Rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns are already decreasing water availability, reducing air quality, and increasing frequency of floods, droughts and wildfires. If climate change continues unabated, these changes will greatly affect our children’s choices on where they live, what they eat and, most likely, how they are governed and the wars they fight.

The ingenuity of the U.S. and the global community has led to advancements in science and technology that have enabled us to tackle tremendous challenges in the past. We must harness this ingenuity; however, we cannot wait for the scientific or technological breakthrough that could solve climate change. The changes that humans are inflicting on our Earth are destabilizing our life support system. Once this is broken, we may never be able to fix it.

Comments:

3 Comments.

Posted by DeserveLiberty on October 30, 2009 21:02 ET

Bill and Amy, please remove yourselves from the delusion and insanity of the religion and attendant dogma of belief in “Global Warming” and the new-and-improved boogie man of “Global Climate Change.” The premise that these things are true threats to freedom and liberty are exactly opposite from the truth. The real threat comes in the form of proposed cures to a disease that does not exist.

The real data indicates that our atmosphere is actually in a cooling trend. It has also been shown that during previous warming trends, CO2 concentrations actually lagged increases in temperature and therefore CO2 causality is not indicated. The award winning docu-hysteria film and slide-show produced by Al Gore has been thoroughly debunked. One of several instances of the exposure of truth can be found here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html

Undoubtedly there is a need to develop renewable sources of energy. However, previous waves of politically motivated hysteria regarding nuclear power make it very difficult to pursue the best option that is also a proven technology. Every action has a cost and every action has a risk. These are irrevocable features of life. These are realities for coal, oil, nuclear, and even solar and wind certainly come with costs and risks. To fail to accept and manage those risks is to doom the continuance of civilization.

The climate of our planet is constantly changing regardless of the existence of human activity. We know this through evidence that areas that are desert today were once lush forests and that where some lush forests stand today, were once submerged sea beds. These changes occurred long before humans even had the capability to make fire.

So, step back from the edge. Re-join the majority of humanity who are now seeing the climate hysteria for what it is – an industry of politically motivated bad science. Spend some time outside and enjoy the wonders of this thing we call “the weather.” And remember, no one gets out of this world alive.

Posted by johnchik on November 2, 2009 20:42 ET

I'm glad to see a comment that is based more on science than "The Religion of Environmentalism". Well Done!

Posted by bruce Buirkle on November 4, 2009 00:40 ET

No time to write, but what about more effective population control?