Alarmist and alleged "climate change expert" David Wheeler weighs in

VOA News - Top Environmental Economist says Next US Administration must Focus on Climate Change - PART 3 of 5

[David Wheeler, a senior fellow at a leading US think tank, the Center for Global Development (CGD)] says the new president “can’t afford to waste a minute” as the world continues to slide towards what could be “environmental disaster” in the near future.

“We have very few more years, at this rate, before we will probably go past an irreversible tipping point to lead to enormous increases in global temperatures and probably a series of environmental catastrophes. So this is really the time we need to move,” says the specialist in environmental economics, climate change and natural resource conservation.
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He says the first step the next American administration must take with regard to global warming is “absolutely clear: In the United States we must pass meaningful carbon regulation that sets a substantial price for carbon and begins to create incentives for us to switch from dirty to clean fuels in the power sector and other sectors.”

Wheeler maintains that if the US does not do this, it will have “no credibility” in the eyes of the rest of the world at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in November 2009.

“We will be unable to persuade developing countries to undertake any (carbon) limitations if we are not ourselves willing to do that.”

Center for Global Development : CGD Experts: David Wheeler

After completing his PhD in 1974, David taught economics for two years at the National University of Zaire in Kinshasa. He joined the economics faculty at Boston University in 1976, and taught there until he joined the World Bank in 1990. While on the BU faculty, he was a visiting professor in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning (1978-79), a co-founder and principal of the Boston Institute for Developing Economies (1987-1990), and Jakarta field director of the Development Studies Project for BAPPENAS, Indonesia's Planning Ministry (1987-1989).

1. Should we just take it on faith that this guy can reliably separate human influences on climate from natural variation?

2. If it's vitally important that the U.S. gain credibility by seriously lowering our country's carbon footprint, shouldn't it also be vitally important that Al Gore gain credibility by seriously lowering his own personal carbon footprint?