Will we look back and see that we have finally joined
the rest of the advanced economies by creating systems of education, employment, child care and health care that support and strengthen families and give all women real choices in their lives.
You may wonder why the government finds the need to pursue such action since 1) U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have already topped out and have generally been on the decline for the past 7 - 8 years or so (from technological
advances in natural gas extraction and a slow
economy more so than from already - enacted government regulations and subsidies); 2) greenhouse gases from the
rest of the world (primarily driven by China) have been sky - rocketing over the same period, which lessens any impacts that our emissions reduction have); and 3) even in their totality, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have a negligible influence on local / regional / global climate change (even a immediate and permanent cessation
of all our carbon dioxide emissions would likely result in a mitigation
of global temperature rise
of less than one - quarter
of a degree C by the end
of the century).