Climate
change may be the issue that most powerfully illustrates our
institutions' abject incapacity to meet our needs. Without
institutional transformation, the multi-billion-dollar green energy
investments proposed by the president-elect, the tedious global warming
arguments among our factionalized policy makers will, in the long run,
amount to little more than disagreement over the color of our caskets.

Of
course, there are still some fools who embrace the lies broadcast by
demagogues whose narrow self-interest is to gain just a little more
money by selling, or a little more power by protecting, planet-killing
technologies. They tell us that the following are merely tragic blips
in the climate cycle:

· A piece of Antarctic ice the size of Hawaii fell into the sea.

· Midwest dust storms caused $10 billion in damage, and floods caused much more.

·
The length and strength of great storms like hurricanes increased 50%
in the last 25 years; their frequency is increasing as well.

· 120 glaciers melted in Glacier National Park

· California wild fires burned more than a million acres.

· A ten-day heat wave in Europe killed 30,000.

The
mythical Northwest Passage over the pole is mythical no more, but the
polar bear soon may be. Forecasts beginning in the 1890s of a
fossil-fuel economy's consequences have become realities.

Fossil
fuels' dominance would not be possible without $17 billion annually in
government subsidies, tax breaks, research grants and waived royalty
fees. But Terry Tamminem, former director of California's EPA, says
that the true costs are closer to $1 trillion per year-damage to
forest, rivers, buildings and human health; taxes and jobs lost
overseas; and the costs, excluding the Iraq War, to defend the
industry's overseas infrastructure.

Our political and economic
institutions keep producing false solutions that divert desperately
needed resources, deepen the nation's deficit, waste precious time and
enrich special interests. They gave us the ethanol scam.

The
fossil-fuel energy used to irrigate, fertilize, grow, transport and
refine corn into ethanol, compared to just burning fossil fuel, is 1.3
to 1. For gasoline itself, it's 5-to-1.

Ethanol damages the
environment. In addition to consuming huge amounts of fossil fuel,
industrial-scale cornfields silt up the Mississippi River and create a
vast dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Burning corn ethanol is as dirty
as conventional gasoline and does little to solve global warming.

Nor
is ethanol an antidote to foreign oil dependence. If the entire U.S.
corn crop were used to make ethanol, it would replace only 12% of
current gasoline use.

The ethanol scam is largely the
accomplishment of one huge but shadowy company. Half of Archer Daniels
Midland's profits come from products subsidized or protected by the
U.S. government. The company spends millions in lobbying and campaign
contributions to influence policy. Sen. Barack Obama, for example,
co-authored legislation to raise production of synfuels to 60 billion
gallons by 2030.

In the last days of his campaign, Mr. Obama
said that he would "look at" clean coal technology. He should take a
hard look, because it's the next scam.

The Bush Energy
Department launched "Future Gen" in 2003, a $1 billion partnership to
design a coal-burning power plant with minimal emissions. After
spending $1.8 million, they gave up in 2007.

To remove CO2
emissions, coal burners must either use enormous amounts of energy to
first gasify it, or scrub CO2 out of burning coal's exhaust. Either way
adds 20% to the cost and lowers output by up to 40%.

Compressing
the removed CO2 into a supercritical fluid uses 10% more energy, and
pumping it underground, another 10%. Then you must keep it under
pressure and hope that it doesn't migrate through cracks in the earth,
create pools of an invisible, odorless asphyxiant, trigger earthquakes,
or damage freshwater drinking supplies.

By the time that
technologies could be developed to do all this, virtually every form of
renewable energy will be cheaper. Large scale wind and solar would be
much cheaper, easier, and quicker to build.

As with tobacco
industry executives who knew the truth for decades, coal company CEOs
know that there is no safe way to burn coal in the foreseeable future.
As with cigarettes, coal's death merchants' strategy is to lie. As with
both industries, our economic and political institutions protect their
homicidal greed.

When evidence of tobacco's lethal effects
became overwhelming, the death merchants increased their advertising.
This summer, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity launched
a $35 million media campaign. You've probably seen their television
ads. They're aimed at reassuring you in the tradition of 1960s tobacco
ads, and at generating support for 65 coal plants in development.

Once
again, this scam is aided and abetted by political leaders. Ohio,
Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Missouri-swing states in this year's
elections-mine and burn a lot of coal.

The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change comprises the top climatologists across the
world. Their alarming warnings represent their consensus. But such
bellwethers as Greenland's glaciers or the polar ice cap are hard
evidence of the planet's heating up much faster than forecast in their
computer-model projections. These projections estimate that average
earth temperatures will increase 11.5 degrees by 2100, raising sea
level by 23 inches. But the geological record shows that 3 million
years ago when temperatures increased only 5 degrees above today's
level, the sea rose 80 feet.

In response to this evidence, our
economic and political institutions produce scams that protect
themselves, reward their masters, and hasten our demise. By their very
nature, they are incapable of doing otherwise. The
too-large-to-let-fail corporations buy the policy they want from
too-small-for-courage politicians. And the institutions select for both.

Economists
describe our institutions' incapacity to place a proper value on clean
atmosphere and the planet's future as a "market failure." In fact, it
is the inevitable evolution of the market itself. In every industry, at
the end of every round of competition, there are fewer players left,
with more power. Eventually they have power sufficient to warp the
government and the market to their own ends.

The unambiguous
evidence that our institutions long ago outlived their usefulness to us
remains invisible to many Americans. And the climate-change point of no
return for our oceans and atmosphere happens long before we can see it
with our own eyes. I pray that we will see both before humanity's
future is cooked.