Balancing profit, people, planet

To the Editor:

Climate change is of growing importance to Americans. A CBS News poll taken last October showed 45 percent of voters viewed it as “very important.” Yet, President Trump continues to dismiss climate science, and policies to lessen or adapt to climate change, and vows to disregard our past international pledges to slow global warming. Record and rhetoric seem out of touch with nearly half of American voters.

These political crosswinds make predictions about future climate policies difficult. Will other participants — Congress, state and local governments, businesses, environmental groups — step forward to resist attempts at implementing carbon-friendly deregulation and subsidies for fossil fuel interests? 

As a climate voter, I certainly hope such actions would occur. Moreover, as economic history shows, when economies become fundamentally unbalanced, they do not last. They are not sustainable. Global economic growth, fueled by our continued burning of fossil fuels, is no longer compatible with stability in planetary ecosystems — the carbon cycle, predictable climate patterns, and myriad ecological services essential for planetary life.

The notion of a “triple bottom line” has been suggested as a metric for determining the sustainability of business decisions. The “three Ps” as it’s also known, consist of profit, people, and planet. Sustainability is defined as only those actions that give some importance to each. Obviously, the challenge for decision-makers is assigning, for any given situation, the relative weights of importance of each. 

An even stronger case can be made, I believe, for applying this model of choice in the public sector, and particularly to climate policies. Market-based incentives like carbon taxes, the clean energy subsidies and regulatory reforms (on permitting, fuel standards, power plant emissions) of the Inflation Reduction Act all offer myriad opportunities for guiding our economy onto a more sustainable path.

Robert Schlack

Bayfield