9
Jun
The Commons
Topic: Politics
In an attempt to increase global warming by getting my blood boiling, a friend of my sent me a link to The Commons. The presentation is slick and seemingly environmentally friendly, yet the content consist of little more than attacks on environmentalists. I’ll try to keep this as brief as I can:
- I freely admit that many on both sides of the climate change debate are prone to hyperbole, highly selective use of information, and drawing unjustified conclusions. Many environmentalists will talk about a heat wave here or a melting glacier there, and then say the sky is falling. This is irresponsible. But the Commons blog is guilty of using these same tactics (an island here that isn’t sinking, a glacier there that isn’t melting). You’ve got to look at the overall patterns. I saw little in the Commons blog that substantially addressed the analyses behind the UN’s reports on sea level rise, global temperature increases, the sea level rise reports on (George Bush’s) EPA site, the National Research Council’s report on global warming, or the report on the rapid loss of Arctic sea ice. I could go on, but I’ll stop there. (I should note that in one entry the Commons authors denied that there have been recent increases in global temperature, and in another they acknowledged it, albeit dismissively, so I don’t know what they really think).
- I freely admit that there are a variety of forces that act on the Earth’s climate - from active volcanos to minor fluctuations in the energy output of the sun - that can potentially dwarf any human impacts on the environment.
- I’ve found that those who are not concerned about the impact of human activity on the environment rely on two arguments that go something like this:
- “The Earth has a long history of significant climate fluctuation, so what does it really matter if another fluctuation is coming, or whether we’re contributing to it?”
- “Environmental science is not, at this time, capable of making specific or reliable predictions about exactly how human activity may be affecting the environment, so why should we invest in possibly very expensive changes to our economy, to counter a poorly defined threat?”
- My problems with these arguments: There are over 6 billion people across the globe, and we are highly dependent on the biosphere the way it is. If climate change were to occur incrementally over hundreds or thousands of years, then we could adapt incrementally, and - assuming it didn’t add up to catastrophic change - that would be more or less ok. But if we’re talking about major changes that are going to happen in a narrower time window of say, one or two hundred years, then we’re potentially talking about numerous densely populated coastal and low-lying areas going underwater, major agricultural dislocations, and other problems. The costs - in economic terms and in human misery - would be incalculable. If it turns out these things happen due to forces beyond our control (like changes in solar energy output), then I guess that’s too bad for us. But if it turns out to be something we bring upon ourselves because we’re too busy chasing the next quarter’s profit margin, then we suck. Given a hard-to-quantify but potentially very serious threat, I say prepare for the worst. Traditionally, this is how strategic military planning is approached. Unlike some of my fellow liberals, I’m consistent in this regard: I’ve always been an advocate of a “strong and sensible” defense posture (and I spent time on it - I used to work for Business Executives for National Security). If you can’t say with total confidence that your behavior is not going to wreck the environment (i.e. the world we all live in), then you should change your behavior. To me, that’s the true “conservative” position.
- My recommendations: if we focus on two key areas - 1. making investments to improve alternative energy technologies, and 2. doing whatever we can to curb global overpopulation - then we’ll not only reduce the negative consequences of human behavior on the environment, we’ll also go a long way towards solving a wide range of political problems (i.e. effective programs in these areas would provide a foundation for a more clear-headed US foreign policy in the Middle East, and for quality of life improvements in places like China, India, and Africa that currently have their resources heavily strained by overpopulation problems).
A postscript: the one thing I saw in the Commons that really got under my skin was their charge that environmentalists are elitists that aren’t interested in the plight of the poor. There are, for example, plenty of environmentalists who are concerned about the negative health effects experienced by the mostly poor folks who live near factories that belch out a variety of toxins. And many are trying to do something about it.
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