Answers to 'Greenhouse Guessing'

In "Greenhouse Guessing" [op-ed, Nov. 10], Robert J. Samuelson called for candor about the costs and benefits of addressing global climate change. Unfortunately, he fell victim to the fiction propagation of which he accused others.

Mr. Samuelson argued that we can't control emissions because our choices are bad, costly and defy political consensus. But he ignored the cost of the status quo: premature mortality due to fine-particulate inhalation, loss of marine habitat due to ocean acidification, the national security costs of our dependence on oil from the volatile Middle East, ecosystem damage from mountaintop removal and public health damage due to toxic runoff. Today's "wholesale cost" of energy is not even close to the actual price paid by Americans in our health, our security and our environment.

There is much we can do, and much more we can discuss. The Energy Department's "Five-Lab Study" and Clean Energy Futures report, which were shelved by the Bush administration, provide real choices that we should have been considering and implementing these past six years. These were practical and cost-effective even before recent energy price volatility. If Congress would fund the National Academy of Sciences study on energy use mandated by a provision that Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) and I guided to passage last year, that, too, could help us grapple with the economic, social and political dimensions of this issue.

If we don't deal with global climate change within the next decade, our children and grandchildren will deal with global catastrophe. Both parties have ducked the difficult choices and postponed the reckoning until the day after tomorrow. If you offend no one, you change nothing. Mr. Samuelson is mistaken; the world is changing and now the reckoning is real.

JOHN KERRY

U.S. Senator (D-Mass.)

Washington

Robert J. Samuelson wrote in his Nov. 10 column that Americans would have to "accept 'pain' now for benefits that won't materialize for decades" if they want to slow global warming.