The UK’s Guardian, among others, is reporting that President Bush will make a u-turn on climate change in the upcoming State of the Union Address. Bloggers are of course picking this up, along with the story that Exxon is dropping its support for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the geniuses behind the ads “We Call it Life” about the joys of carbon dioxide (if you haven’t seen these yet, they’re hiliarious — worthy of the best Saturday Night Live commercial spoofs. See them here).
If this is all true (and we’ll see what Bush has to say), this is truly momentous. For some time now, the only important pockets of resistance to the idea that climate change is real and dangerous have been a few (logical) industry holdouts, and the administration of the largest economy in the world. It looks like that’s finally coming to an end.
I’ve been predicting that we will see a carbon cap in the U.S. — under Bush. He will enter the pantheon of Republican Presidents signing the largest environmental laws in the land (Nixon on all the major statutes of the early 70s and Bush senior on the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990). This is all seeming less far-fetched now.
So the business world can get going. Uncertainty around regulatory environment will go away, and all industries will be able to focus their innovative energies on solving the problems in the most efficient way possible. As it always is in business, the winners will be the ones that get there first (or best), solve real customer problems, market their solutions well, and execute. Let the competition begin.
