Global Warming is . . .

. . . global warming is, well, global.

Before you reply "well, duh," consider that U.S. politicians have barely begun -- and that only at the local and state level, not the federal –- to think even about how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, much less what our own shorelines, agricultural and forest lands, and ecosystems will look like here in America in 20 or 40 years.

But global warming also has profound implications for American foreign policy, and almost all of them are entropic: mass displacement and famine, battles for scarce fresh water reserves, unprecedented migrations of human beings across borders. It is in the interests of the United States to not only wean itself from its destructive fossil fuel reliance, but also to start investing in the global infrastructure and expertise that will be needed not only to save millions of lives, but to do what US foreign policy has always tried, often not so benignly, to do: protect and advance U.S. economic interests. Oh, and saving democracy around the world would be nice, too, right?

(News flash: democracy gets less likely, and wars and autocrats get more likely, in times of grave crisis. . .)

In short, global warming requires, urgently, that the U.S. back not only a more ambitious follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012 and for which negotiations on a successor treaty have not even begun.

We also need a plan for global investment on a scale that will dwarf the Marshall Plan: Investment in clean renewable energy, investment in seawalls and relocations, investment in public health and availability of food and clean water in poorer areas. Investment in the global future we have disproportionately helped create. Without such an investment by the world's wealthiest countries, the cost in war, including terrorism, lost lives, human misery, and global economic losses will be incalculable.

For the next two and a half years, of course, we can rest secure that our federal government will do absolutely nothing, comfortable in its lobbyist-induced, oil-addled addiction to petro-profits. But the climates are changing rapidly, everywhere, and by 2009 we will need a real plan. Urgently. Time to get busy.

www.workingforchange.com