 This is our best chance to stave off extinction. However, it's politically impossible, at least for now. Although as the consequences of global warming further manifest themselves, political will for a hard cap will undoubtedly build, just like it did with sulfur dioxide that caused acid rain back in the 1980s. It's rarely discussed in the press, but President George Herbert Walker Bush successfully pushed through a cap-and-trade program for sulfur dioxide, which radically curbed acid rain.