by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow
As appearing in the Daily Sentinel

The bumper sticker on the car in front of me this morning read, “There is no Planet B.”

How profound. Senator Bill Armstrong once said, “We could change the world with a bumper sticker if we could figure out what to write on it.” He understood it is almost impossible for most people to ignore the philosophies stuck on strangers’ cars. They are as effective as billboards, such as the now-famous 1990 Greenpeace billboard in New York that scolded, “It wasn’t the Exxon Valdez captain’s driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill. It was yours.”

Shakespeare wrote in Richard II, “How long a time lies in one little word!” It’s a classic description of how serious concepts can be described in short slogans. To some degree, it shows that Americans love to psycho-analyze themselves and tend to believe the worst. When someone accuses us of destroying the planet by driving to work, we don’t take offense and say, “How dare you!” More often, we think to ourselves, “Oh, we’d better stop doing that.”
This morning’s bumper message was straightforward. We are running out of time to save the Earth and must take serious steps to reduce our carbon emissions. If that means putting coal miners out of work, switching power plants to natural gas, and then restricting the production of natural gas, too, so be it. Perhaps it requires subsidizing wind farms and solar panels across the country and mandating the expensive switch to electric cars by a certain date. Maybe it also suggests support for international climate conference policies demanding the U.S. pay reparations to the rest of the world for major weather events. Amazing how much international debate and controversy can be summed up on a five-word bumper sticker.

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