The start of a new year means that the time is ripe for bold predictions and wild speculation about the year to come, so perhaps this column should be taken with a grain of salt. However, I feel strongly that 2012 will be a pivotal year for the United States. The combination of continued economic woes and a presidential election this November should set the scene for a national debate about how to reach a more sustainable and socioeconomically equitable future. If the United States is to truly move forward, it needs a comprehensive road map that will give our economy direction and enable us to confront issues like climate change.
In retrospect, 2011 was another tumultuous but ultimately unproductive year for America. Political gridlock, bizarre weather events and popular unrest added insult to our existing economic injuries. The gears of government nearly ground to a halt over an embarrassing budget impasse this past summer, just weeks before Hurricane Irene battered the Northeast and only about a month before protestors began occupying Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. Texas smashed all previous records with its hottest and driest summer in history, and while no single event is indicative of climate change, such periods of extreme weather are what we can look forward to if we continue to ignore the long-term trend toward a warming Earth.
Meanwhile, the economy remained stuck in neutral across much of the country. A year that saw the opening of the 112th Congress and a Republican vow to turn the country around was really more emblematic of three troubling phenomena economic stagnation, political dysfunction and changing weather patterns.
The crucial point and indeed one that the majority of our politicians are missing is that these various trends are deeply interrelated and that a solution is forthcoming if we simply connect the dots. The 2008 financial crisis provided further proof that consumerism is not sustainable as a cultural institution. There is no magic bullet that will allow everyone to consume indefinitely and live as upper-middle class Americans. By extension, our economy remains flawed the incentive structure is twisted such that economic and societal values are most often at odds. In the current framework, intelligent college graduates have every reason to choose finance over engineering or medicine because the free market is impartial to the externalities that the latter provide.
Furthermore, our fixation on consumption is destroying the world around us. Beyond extreme weather incidents, the big news about climate change in 2011 came in connection with work done by University of California, Berkeley physicist Richard Muller, a self-proclaimed climate change skeptic. In a study partially funded by the staunchly conservative brothers David and Charles Koch, Muller ran the data himself and concluded that, in fact, global temperatures are rapidly rising. That a pronounced skeptic was proven wrong and that said disbeliever received significant financial support from other skeptics should have elicited a much greater response in policy circles. But 2011 saw a total failure for climate negotiations in South Africa, and in the same year, the United States managed only marginal improvements in standards for automobile fuel efficiency and air toxin emissions. Such false starts and token steps don't come close to addressing this serious global issue.
It is time for America to sprint toward a more sustainable future. The United States has always kept pace with global innovation. We can embrace that same spirit to retool our economy for the 21st century through policy that alters the existing incentive structure and introduces a more progressive tax code, but also paves the way for greener, cleaner business expansion. By extension, the 2012 election is so important because few things aside from a presidential race can produce the sort of national conversation about sustainability on all fronts that the United States desperately needs. Our dysfunctional political system dictates that a window for the introduction and adoption of wholesale change only comes along once every four years, so we must embrace the opportunity to tackle our domestic problems once and for all. A productive race must come down to who can map out a plan for sustainable economic redevelopment. Hope and change won't be enough this time around.
