Amartya Sen is trying to start a conversation at The New Republic. Here’s the heart of it:
The bulk of the American population seems basically unconvinced that the threat is large enough to warrant any great sacrifices today on the part of the present population. Even as President Obama is gathering enough traction for trying to impose strong constraints on allowable emissions, particularly affecting older plants and factories, Democratic candidates in some states are reputed to be getting ready to dissociate themselves from Obama’s initiative, moving closer to the Republican position as the next elections get closer. There has been a serious failure in communicating the results of scientific analysis and in involving the general public in informed ethical reasoning, especially in the United States. Of course America is not the whole world, but public understanding and policy-making in the United States are important not only because it is such a big polluter, but also because the willingness of other countries to make sacrifices today would be hard to arrange if Americans go on polluting the environment with little attempt to restrain themselves.
But it is also clear that people don’t take the risks of nuclear power seriously enough. We have a consensus that we need to dramatically lower carbon emissions, but we don’t have any consensus beyond that. Sen correctly notes that we want to see increased power use in much of the world as an anti-poverty initiative. Solar can be a real catalyst, especially in equatorial regions where sunlight is abundant.