What’s the Best Way to Handle Future Climate Change?

Carbon markets, carbon taxes, technological push, or economic growth?
This week representatives from over 190 nations began gathering in Copenhagen to try to hammer out a global treaty to handle the problem of man-made global warming. As a long-time reporter on environmental issues, I, for many years, doubted the severity of the issue, but as the various temperature data sets (satellite, surface, balloon) began to converge, I became persuaded that man-made global warming is real and a potential problem. Global average temperature trends in recent decades suggest that the planet is warming up at a rate of about 0.13 per decade. (Interestingly, recent temperature data finds that while the last decade has been the warmest on average in modern records, global average temperatures have not been increasing since 1998.) So the question is: If global warming is a problem, what are the smartest policies to address it? Read more.