Posted by
Jason Ivey on Thursday, February 01, 2007 5:56:56 PM
One can no longer make an innocuous comment about the state of the weather without identifying where they stand on the climate change issue. Both warm and cold days in a weather-extreme month illicit revealing political responses. To suggest that this issue has only recently turned political would be to suggest you’ve been living in a cave for the last fifteen or twenty years. True, what was once a fringe debate has moved to the front burner like never before. Like most issues, reason and sanity get lost in the tug-of-war between Right and Left. Conservatives can do more toward fighting their arguments for the sake of the sane and sober.
Those of us who believe in the virtues of capitalism and eschew doomsday predictions and conspiracy theories are quick to jump on the hysteria-induced calamity soothsayers. Whether it’s Al Gore saying we only have ten years left until climatological Armageddon or The Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen calling recently for having all meteorologists decertified who dare question whether human activity has resulted in a warmer Earth, we scoff at both the alarmism and dogmatism inherent in such statements. We chuckle at the liberals, like the Kennedy’s, who push for alternative sources of energy, like windmills, as long as they’re in someone else’s backyard. The twenty four hour news cycle, along with the twenty four hour weather cycle, has fueled the fire. Every major storm, mudslide and power outage becomes evidence of new climate and environmental forces at work. Never mind that more people than ever before live in vulnerable areas and their plights are instantly broadcast around the world.
By now, we should all be pretty familiar with the argument of the pro-human induced global warming theory. Carbon based energy sources like oil and coal have been spewing carbon waste into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution. These greenhouse gases reflect heat energy back toward the earth, blocking their path into space, resulting in trapped heat that in time heats the earth’s oceans and land. Over time, this warming trend causes the polar ice caps and glaciers to melt, resulting in rising sea levels. The increased ocean temperature results in more intense storms. Coastal areas will eventually be underwater, certain species of animals will not survive. The deserts will expand, changing the cycle of weather patterns forever. We’ll have a water shortage in certain parts of the world, leading to more death. That’s basically it in a nutshell.
What I don’t find satisfying about the straightforward nature of this argument is the marginalizing of other factors that alter atmospheric conditions and have led to periods of warming (and cooling) in the past. First, there are natural (or non-human) induced gas emissions from the earth, like carbon dioxide and methane emitted from the oceans themselves, and from volcanic activity. Fluctuations in their levels are due to many earthbound factors (like a period of increased volcanic activity). Second, outside factors like sun spots, solar flares, and other cosmic rays can have an effect on the earth’s atmosphere. These factors are rarely, if ever, noted by the global warming crowd. In addition, they’re very adept at quoting numbers from the last 150 years or so when temperature record keeping began. But you must consider that that represents an infinitesimal amount of time on a cosmic or geological scale, not to mention the steadily proliferating practice, and improvement, of record keeping around the world in the first place. This emphasis is magnified even more when the focus is last the last fifty years or so, as often is. Rarely do we hear references to the many extreme climate fluctuations the earth has gone through in its multi-billion year history as evidenced by the geologic record. There have been ice ages, and mini ice ages (the last one occurring around five hundred years ago). The earth has survived extreme warming periods, as well as the severe climate effects of being pummeled by multiple meteor impacts. Somehow, life managed to survive and continue evolving. You can’t accuse others of cherry-picking evidence when many of your arguments ride on a single track.
The other reason so many remain skeptical of the global warming arguments: their motives. They’ve lost legitimacy by presenting themselves as anti-capitalist, anti-American, and in some cases, anti-people. Their solutions to the “problem” involve a reduction in greenhouse gas emitting activity, which basically means a scaling back in industry in general, whether it be through emissions caps or behavior inducing measures like taxes. They want the government, not private industry, to instead invest in alternate sources of energy like wind, solar, or ethanol, none of which would come remotely close to the energy output of oil or coal. They want the U.S. to engage in agreements with other nations (i.e. the Kyoto Protocol) that would force developed, first world countries, like the U.S., to scale back their carbon emissions while allowing “developing” countries, like China, to continue to pollute. When they oppose sources of energy comparable to that of oil or coal (nuclear), it appears suspicious that they’re more interested in hurting the U.S.’s economic standing relative to the rest of the world; at their most extreme they seem intent on creating a world where everyone rides bikes and grows their own food, that is if they see a place for us humans on the earth at all. Their arguments would strike a chord of legitimacy if they directed some of them at countries like Russia, China and India, who are producing at an ever expanding rate without the controls and standards that we have in the U.S. Finally, the Left has been making doomsday predictions for decades. At the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, the primary culprit was “global cooling.” Then the warming debate flourished, and predictions were made that some rivers would be boiling by 1990. We should all collectively have skin cancer by now if we were to believe the predictions in the late 80’s and early 90’s about the shrinking ozone layer. The Left would be wise to tone down some of the apocalyptic rhetoric, although it does make good theater.
This is not to suggest that the Right has either popular support or the facts entirely on its side. Two things are becoming more and more clear: (1) A general warming trend has been taking place over the last few decades; and (2) more and more people believe, including more scientists, that human related activity is to blame. The global warming deniers on the Right love to point out how nice it is to have 65 degree days in New York in January -- that we should just embrace our liberation from winter. They also have fun highlighting every major cold snap and blizzard that occurs, as though these occurrences directly contradict a broader trend. While it may be fun to tweak the hysterical Left, it unfortunately underlines a lack of understanding in regards to the complex relationships that determine the state of the weather, like fluctuations in the jet stream or the gulf stream, and the effect that temperature changes have on these currents, just to name a couple of such complexities. While it’s a worthy point that “scientific consensus” does not equal “scientific fact” (new evidence often arises that can completely reframe a debate), the right can’t keep pointing to a few scientists who don’t agree, as though this were evidence enough that human-induced global warming was all a hoax.
If we continue to debate the global warming Left using arguments like “What about solar warming?” and “It’s just a cycle” and “It’s twenty degrees outside” and “There are scientists who don’t agree”; then we will lose this argument, as it appears we’re doing now. In a practical sense, this will quickly lead to things like tax increases on gasoline and curbs on greenhouse emissions, which is just another way to tax the rest of us. Long term, these measures will result in negative downturn in the world economy. The Right has done a worthy job of pointing out the hysteria and highlighting other reasons for a possible warming trend, but in doing so they seem to have ignored the most reasonable part of the global warming debate: they have not effectively stated why industry-created carbon emissions have not had an effect on the climate, at least to the point of accelerating natural trends. This could be a little like trying to prove a negative, but at least to me, the theory seems plausible, true or not. At the very least, it appears as though this theory cannot yet be disproved based upon the evidence on hand.
A more reasonable approach for the sober minded non-hysterics to take would be to reframe the debate somewhat, and focus on how we can promote more efficient and cleaner energy sources without sacrificing both our way of life and the economic progress being made in the developing world.
First of all, as conservatives, we should not look directly to the government for solutions to improving our energy situation. Subsidizing farmers so that they’ll produce more ethanol will solve very little. As a practical matter, the federal government’s power to tax oil imports, establish positive diplomatic relations with oil exporting countries, subsidize industries, pass laws that curb behavior (like emissions levels), and grant federal lands to energy companies for the purposes of drilling, obviously all have a significant impact on the greater state of energy creation and consumption. While it would be silly to argue that a gasoline tax for instance would not have an affect on consumption, we could argue that this would have a greater affect on slowing down the overall economy than it would have toward finding viable alternatives. Of course, it’s always easier to frame these issues around “What the government should do” rather than “What energy companies should do” or “What consumers should do.” So as conservatives, we should look to the government as a limited force that can have a limited impact, not as the primary force for change.
The laws of supply and demand will work their magic like they have throughout history. If cheaper, more efficient sources of energy can be developed that can pack the same punch as carbon based fuels, people will buy them. It has to be in the consumers’ best interest to expect people to really change behavior. As an example, more and more people in California are installing solar panels at their homes. While not enough to completely power their houses, they subsidize the power they already receive off of the electrical grid from the power company. The power company in effect buys back the power produced individually through solar. While initially expensive to install (currently only the wealthy can afford an installation running in the tens of thousands), this arrangement saves these consumers thousands of dollars over the years, the installation having paid for itself after a certain amount of time. Therefore, these consumers are acting within their own economic self interests. (While these homeowners are probably liberals who would claim they are acting in the interest of the environment, they are also acting within their own economic self-interests). The government’s role in this arrangement was to force the power company to honor this system of credit. So really, the policy of the government is best served when it allows a framework for market forces to take hold. Simply punishing behavior through straight taxation would arguably do more harm than good.
As conservatives, we should be more aggressive about the effects many of the measures called for by the global warming Left would have. The global warming crowd says that even though there are still scientific questions left to be answered, we must act now before it’s too late. Acting now, to them, means essentially slowing down the world economy. So what is the morally superior option? Do we force a slowdown of the world’s economy at the expense of not just the wealthy, but of the entire labor force in this country that relies on the relatively cheap flow of goods and services and maintains the jobs that support this infrastructure? We can’t allow the argument to persist that things like gasoline taxes primarily affect the wealthy and that taxing energy companies through emissions caps would only hurt corporate profiteers. The point should be driven home that the burgeoning world economy, led by the United States, has resulted in a much higher standard of living not only in this country, but throughout the developing world. By punishing the United States directly, you’re punishing the third world as well, and stunting their chances for further growth. So, is the morally superior option to curb carbon use at the expense of the greater economy if it means hurting those struggling to free themselves from the grip of poverty? By allowing the Left to use American Consumerism as their bogey-man, we have forfeited the argument that trickle down economics is a reality. Further economic growth will serve to drive innovation and investment in new and better technologies. The fact remains that the robust economy, led by the U.S., has resulted in a better standard of living throughout the world. Slowing it down serves only to hurt those you claim to want to help.
Conservatives cannot cede the scientific or the philosophical debate here. The Left has been relying on a scientifically narrow portion of the climate argument for too long. They have taken a dogmatic approach and continually attempt to smear those who question the validity of their extreme claims, and we have failed to correctly question the end results of their proposals. It is not enough to simply note that there’s disagreement within the scientific community. Unfortunately, the scientific counter-arguments have not effectively made it into the mainstream. Nor have we sufficiently questioned the logic or the morality of their proposed solutions. We could do better by understanding the full scientific basis for their claims, and attacking them head on. We should be the ideology of sensible conservation, not hysteria. We should continue to note that humans are part of nature, part of the life cycle, and that altering the environment is not the same thing as destroying it. We should be the ideology of scientific and technological progress rather than ceding this realm of thought to the Left, as we have for too long.