Emissions Reduction Deserves A Vote

To the editors:



Re: “The Uninformed Vote,” editorial, Nov. 15.

You are correct in your claim that costs should always be taken into account when evaluating measures to reduce such things as greenhouse gas emissions. To not keep these considerations in mind is foolhardy. Nevertheless, I do not believe that your editorial accurately connects the reality that costs should be considered with your final conclusion that the emissions reduction ballot initiative is unwarranted.

It is not necessarily the responsibility of the Environmental Action Committee (EAC) to come up with an accurate final cost for this project, because the emission goals are set 14 years into the future. The EAC has done a good job of suggesting ways to reduce emissions, but in the end, it will be the University that decides the cheapest ways to reduce emissions, regardless of what the EAC suggests. Nobody is telling Harvard how to reduce emissions; instead, the student body is giving administrators a goal. When we deal with climate change, we always deal in the long-term, and as the time scales lengthen, so do the unknowns. It is time that we all start accepting the fact that solving the climate change problem requires sacrifice.

You write that this measure will guarantee costs, but it will not guarantee savings. Of course it won’t guarantee savings. That is, unless you consider how much it will take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels once 2050 and much farther in the hole. It is impossible to know whether these measures will be cheaper in the future. Does this all mean that the Undergraduate Council should not have a question about climate change on its ballot? Of course not.



STEPHEN J. QUINLAN ’04

El Salvador

Nov. 15, 2006



The writer was co-chair of the Environmental Action Committee in 2003.