It’s a planetary emergency. Those are the words used by Al Gore to describe the threat of Climate Change, and to urge the world to action immediately on global warming.

While there is no question that such a statement contains a degree of hyperbole, it is necessary to use such alarmist terminology to awake leaders in democracies, which rarely act upon controversial problems until a crisis is upon us. The problem with such a crisis mentality is that it may prompt us to take extreme steps that have unforeseen consequences.

What we need is a thoughtful debate and discussion on Climate Change that does not rush into risky solutions, but instead puts us on the track to reduce climate change gases without dangerous environmental externalities. New toxins added to our atmosphere, to our ground, or nuclear fallout will not make our environment any more pure, even if it reduces carbon emissions.

There are few facts that will remain true, regardless of what path our leaders take:

• We know the climate is going to increase world-wide on average about 5 to 10 degrees in the next century, simply from historical greenhouse gases.
• We also know we are dependent on fossil fuels to power our society and that dependency is unlikely to disappear in our lifetimes.

Many environmentalists state that “catastrophic” consequences will happen if we do not reduce our greenhouse gases by more then 80% over the next 50 years. They argue that warmer temperatures will cause glaciers to melt and seas to rise, and that weather patterns to change, forever changing the earth’s make-up of animals and plants as never seen before. They also argue that it will effect the human race incredibly negatively, by leading to more hot summer days and more violent storms.

These stark predictions lead many to suggest that we need drastic action on climate change, lead by massive investments in unproven or dangerous technologies such as nuclear power and carbon sequestration. Yet, those technologies have and will have drastic negative impact not just on our economy but our environment. They are expensive, unproven, and drain resources from addressing the real problem facing our environment – sustainability.

Global warming sounds all very bad in isolation to all the other environmental problems that our environment is currently facing. Yet, man has modifying earth in significant since man was created by god. Man has killed whole species through a variety of ways, forever changed the makeup the land, and he has modified genetics of thousands of animals. Neither agriculture nor our cities are the natural way of the world. Through our chemical revolution, we have created many substances that we don’t even come close to understanding the long-term impact on the world.

Yet, this can not be a license to do unrestrained change to our earth without fear of our consequences. There has to be restraint, including with greenhouse gases. We have to be aware of our massive production of greenhouse gases, particularly the most potent gases that are mass produced. We must realize we are warming the earth, and that we can’t continue to do so at such as rate. We must moderate our greenhouse gas emissions.

We need a balanced plan for global warming, built in the reality we all live in. Fossil fuels will be energy for the foreseeable future. We need to cap and reduce global warming gases, particularly the more potent ones that have side-effects beyond trapping in greenhouse gases. Substances like methane and HCFCs not only trap heat into our planet 20-30 times more effectively then carbon dioxide, they also can be a nuisance and toxic in relatively small quantities.

In addition, there is no question that we must reduce our carbon dioxide emissions, particularly from industrial sources. We all exhale carbon dioxide, but the industrial use of energy outputs so much greenhouse gases that is increasing our carbon dioxide emissions in a measurable way globally. We can’t continue to expedentially increase such emission. That means a limit to growth on our energy consumption, which can be obtained largely through greater efficiency on how we currently consume energy, and societal choices that won’t grow our society in ways that greatly expand energy consumption.

If we take the right steps, we can stop the expansion of global warming gases that we are producing, and work towards reducing them to a more sustainable level. At the same time, we should be expanding the sustainability of our entire society. The key is to pursue policies that not only address global warming, but also our impact on the environment from solid waste to reducing community to reducing sprawl. We can reduce our impact on the world, and make the impact of our communities more limited.