The View from WORC

By WORC Chair, Donley Darnell

I just returned from the June WORC meeting in Medora, N.D. The Cowboy Hall of Fame is a great facility, maybe the best place we have ever had a meeting. Thanks to everyone for making the meeting a meaningful event.

I found the Saturday morning session, “Is King Coal about to be dethroned?” very thought provoking.

Certainly, the scientific community is convinced by the preponderance of evidence that global warming is real and the time to act is upon us. The more difficult task seems to be to spread the word to the nonbelievers. A recent contributor to the Rapid City Journal wrote that since the temperature over the weekend was below normal, global warming theories had to be all wrong. He is confusing weather with climate.

Many of the large corporations have a major stake in the status quo and have spent huge amounts of effort to discredit global warming. They have been effective in muddying the water and slowing government action. Now we are seeing a big swing in public opinion and action is likely in the near future.

I have thought for some time that people would have to see a demonstration of the consequences of global warming before they would accept the changes necessary to make a difference. The severe storms and droughts of the last two decades may have been graphic enough to convince many and motivate some.

The other decision making group, and the really big gorilla, is the corporate business world. A corporation’s main obligation is to their stockholders, and their stockholders are the conscience of the corporation. The incentive for these major players in our decision-making process has got to be the ability to show a profit. Many multinational companies are now supporting climate proposals and government action to regulate carbon emissions may be near. The risks of investing in twentieth century technology may soon become too high to be desirable.

On a related topic, the DME Railroad was denied a federal loan because the project posed too great a risk to the taxpayers because, in part, they could not show that they could get contracts to haul coal. The DME has, till now at least, been unable to find private financing for their coal hauling proposal. Maybe the DME will be the first corporate casualty of global warming.