Global Climate Change; What’s Next?

Global “climate change”, previously termed “global warming”, has been designated as one of the major challenges facing both developed and developing nations. Some countries are planning to adopt a mandatory legislative route to address climate change while others are focused on leveraging advanced innovative technologies coupled with state-of-the-art projects as fiscally prudent and tangible methods whereby their country’s economic growth is not stunted nor curtailed. It has been said that any good legislation, as a precursor, must have some essential ingredients in order to be comprehensive, transparent, all encompassing with effective legal and regulatory framework with important ingredients; “Common Sense” coupled with “Common Goal” and “Common Ground” leads to the “Common Good”.

Climate change, greenhouse gases (GHG) and its causes, whether it is man-made or "anthropogenic", or natural and its solutions have been debated for many decades worldwide with fingers pointing both ways and it is beyond the scope of this article to address this controversy.

However, in coming years making practical and real sense of climate change and energy sustainability will have a definitive and important economic effect on the respective national, regional, and global economic stability, growth, security, as well as daily individual life on this planet.

There is, however, general consensus on all sides that tackling climate change and GHG is required to a reasonable and achievable extent possible, but, there is much disagreement on the specifics of which a few areas are; what shape, form, methodology, approach, type of legislation, impact on federal and state fiscal budgets, corporate and individual taxes, commercial market fundamentals, role of the private sector, role of government, role of advanced innovative technology, regulatory oversight, political and bureaucratic interference, practicality in execution and metrics for performance and results measurement.