In the following discussion, I’m going to attempt to tie environmentalism to conservative political ideology. I’m sort of making this up, here, folks, so if there are critiques, or if you think I’m just full of beans, I’d appreciate some feedback. Before we get started, though, let me explain what I mean by “conservative.”
When I say “conservative,” I am not talking about the political philosophy of George W. Bush, and I also do not mean the current political philosophy espoused by the the Republican party. Both of these, I think, have wandered so far away from conservatism as an ideology as to be unrecognizable and incoherent. Conservative ideology, as I understand it, is not espoused by either of the mainstream political parties right now – at the moment, it’s closest to the libertarian party, but really only by default. In any case, it can be simplified – possibly oversimplified – to the following basic points:
>> The government should be smaller and have less power. There is no real reason, for example, that it’s the government’s job to be telling us how many carbohydrates we should be eating per day. (Interestingly enough, I have not found anyone, of any political affiliation, that thinks that this is the government’s job. This tells me that we have a problem, here.)
>> Change isn’t bad in and of itself, but the world is a complicated place, and we should have a healthy respect for what we do not know and what we do not completely understand. Change, when necessary, should be carefully considered, because there is no guarentee that we will understand all the possible consequences of changing a complex system. To use a trivial example, raising or lowering taxes does more than simply give the IRS more or less money, and we may not have anticipated all the possible results. To use an example that’s closer to home, take the invasion of another country – say, Iraq, for example – is an activity that should be undertaken with extreme caution, because it might cost more than we think or have ramifications that we have not yet thought of. Obviously, this reluctance to embrace change can be extended too far, in which case the result is paralysis and an unwillingness to do anything, and that isn’t what anyone is hoping for. All this point is asking us to consider is the idea that it’s lots easier to inadvertedly make the world worse than it is to intentionally make it better.
>> An important function of the government – its most important function, or possibly its only function – is to protect the citizens of its country from each other, and to protect the citizens of its country from the citizens (or military, I suppose) of any other country. Or, to put it another way: the protection of individual liberties is the most important function of the government, and quite possibly is the primary reason for the government to exist in the first place.
With that arguably oversimplified background, let’s go ahead and jump into a seemingly different topic that will eventually (really!) tie back in:
Remember a few months ago – right after the primaries were over, if I recall – when Obama and McCain both appeared with Pastor Rick Warren? The purpose of the forum (at least as far as I could tell) was to have both candidates discuss issues that were of concern to evangelical voters, and there was a bunch of media-generated malarkey about this being the first time that McCain and Obama appeared on the same stage together. (If memory serves, the only interaction that they had at all was to shake hands.) There was a point during the evening when Warren asked both candidates when they thought life begins, and the candidates gave the following answers, which I may be inadvertendly paraphrasing because I cannot seem to find an exact transcript of the discussion:
McCain’s answer: Life begins at conception.
Obama’s answer: I believe that it is the responsibility of someone who has a job whose pay grade is above mine is to determine when life beings.
Obama was accused of dodging the question, but all he did, really, is reserve judgement or say “I don’t know” in an eloquent way. That’s valid. As we all know, however, Obama isn’t opposed to abortion, and I don’t think he’s drawing a conclusion from this that follows from answer to the question. Here’s why:
If we don’t know when life beings – and Obama, for one, certainly doesn’t want to be pinned to a specific point – then abortion is not, from a standpoint of morality, acceptable. It’s the termination of . . . something, when no one is sure if it’s a alive. (I’m assuming, here, that Warren is using the terms “life” and “personhood” interchangeably – the terms, at least as far as I can tell, were not precisely defined during the forum, which is a bit of a disappointment.) It’s morally equivalent to the actions of a hunter shooting something in the bushes when he does not know what it is. It could be a deer. It could also be another hunter. If he doesn’t know if what he’s shooting at is human or not, we would say that he’s irresponsible for shooting at whatever it is. The only responsible thing to do is to not shoot it.
Using this logic, it seems clear to me that in any sort of debate about the morality of abortion, the burden of proof is on those that want to show that life (or personhood, however you’re looking at it) doesn’t begin until after the point at which they wish an abortion to take place. Obama’s answer of reserving judgement on the question cannot, logically, lead to the answer that he wishes to embrace.
As far as I can tell, this is the most logically coherent argument for the pro-life position. It is also based very strongly on what the philosophy of conservativism actually is: it involves an awareness and respect of what we don’t know – and a refusal to jump off of what may be a morally ambiguous cliff until all the ramifications are completely understood.
Where this gets interesting here is that if I use this logic as my reason for opposing abortion, I am assuming that the logic is valid anywhere, and I’m therefore forced to use the exact same logic with regards to global warming. Here’s why:
Popular wisdom – presuming, of course, that this isn’t a contradiction in terms – maintains that global warming has been caused exclusively by human activity, and that the future, unless we all stop driving SUVs, put solar panels in our backyards, and change our light bulbs like Al Gore has told us to, everything is going to be extremely bad. All the polar bears will probably be dead. Any objection to this orthodoxy has been ridiculed because so many of the people making the objections are lobbyists that are on the payroll of large oil companies, which suggests that they are probably about as unbiased as the scientists – funded by tobacco companies – that have told us that smoking isn’t harmful. While quite a few of the objections to the climate change orthodoxy come from this sector, it’s a mistake to assume that all of them do. Probably the most well-known example of the contrary view is Bjorn Lomborg, who has penned a rather controversial book called The Skeptical Environmentalist a few years ago.
In The Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg argues that the case for global warming has been overstated by those that are espousing the commonly held view. It’s worth pointing out that he’s not arguing that global warming doesn’t exist, or that it’s not bad. He just is saying that it’s not quite as bad as everyone has been saying that it is, and that some of it may be due to cyclical climate change that is just the way that the planet works. Putting him in the category of “global warming denier” is, as far as I can tell, a bit of a stretch.
Lomborg may be right. Without getting a degree in the field of atmospheric science and then taking on a full-time job in that field, I am frankly unlikely, with any reasonable degree of certainty, to know more. But even if I’m honestly not sure, if I’m using the same logic that I was in the previous example, if I’m not sure it even matters. The debate isn’t about whether global warming exists, or if it’s going to be even more harmful in the future than it is now. Everyone agrees on that, and that’s why I bring Lomborg up in the first place: he’s got impeccable credentials from the perspective of someone that is motivated to be skeptical about global warming, and even Lomborg acknowledges that it exists, and is due (at least partly) to human activity. No one is still saying that it’s not happening, the debate among people with any degree of credulity is just a question of how bad it’s going to be. But even if I thought that it was possible that global warming was a complete myth, it would seem that the burden of proof would be on those that think it’s a myth, or that if it happens, it won’t be that bad. If the choice is to decide whether or not to do something about the environment – just like in the previous example, the burden of proof is on those that want to show us that nothing has changed or that the change that we are seeing won’t be bad or dangerous. No one on that side of the debate is doing that. Lomborg, for example, is just saying that it may not be quite as bad as common wisdom suggests that it is, or pointing out that it’s going to be more difficult and more expensive to solve global warming than other problems, such as the spread of AIDS in Africa.
(Note to conservatives and/or members of the clergy that are frowning and/or muttering at this point: I’m not saying that having an abortion and driving an SUV are necessarily morally equivellent issues, here. What I am saying is that the logic that gets me to conclude that abortion is wrong – because we don’t know when something is considered to be a person – can also be applied to global warming. If we’re not sure if what we’re doing harms the planet, then the morally responsible thing to do is stop.)
It’s a measure of how confused ideaology is in our current political climate that the same logic, applied to different situations, can get me to what is considered to be the “conservative” view on one issue, and the “liberal” issue on another issue. This should give us pause.
In any case, in a continued attempt to understand more about global warming, we’re going to go ahead and make reference to a couple of different books. Most of you guys that know me know that I never think that I know anything about a topic until I read at least two books on it – preferably, at least two books written from two different points of view. If we define a good book as one that coherently defines a given point of view – even when one does not agree with the specific point of view – then the best books that I’ve found on the topic of environmentalism – at least so far, have been:
>> Bjorn Lomborg’s Cool It – this is written by the previously mentioned Danish guy. In this book – a more recent book, as opposed to Skeptical Environmentalist – he argues that although global warming is a problem, if we look at it from a economic cost/benefit analysis point of view, there are many other problems facing humanity that can be solved using less money and result in a larger benefit in terms of quality of life for a larger number of people. Again, it’s worth stressing that Lomborg doesn’t say that global warming doesn’t exist, or that we shouldn’t do anything. It’s just the application of a cost/benefit way of thinking towards a problem that doesn’t usually get that kind of analysis. In addition, it’s also worth considering, on the other side of the debate,
>> Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded in which he argues that (among other things) things like global warming and gas prices are going to get worse faster than we think they are. This is due, primarily, to the massive number of Chinese and Indians who are about to become members of the middle class, thanks to globalization. When these folks hit the middle class, they’re going to start increasing the rate at which they buying cars, gas, and household appliances. The biggest problem isn’t overpopulation, but improved quality of life – at least in terms of being measured by the amount of consumables used – for the population that is already here. Considering the impacts of population growth by itself doesn’t give as complete a view of the problem as does looking at the impact of the increased population growth while considering that the average amount of resources used by any one person – due to the growth of the middle class – is going to go up.
Both of these books are worth reading even though they don’t agree with each other all of the time. I think they’re essential reading for anyone who wants to be informed about the most coherent positions in the current discussions about climate change. As far as I can tell they’re slightly better than listening to Al Gore ask us to change our light bulbs, and much better than listening to President Bush tell us that what we really need is more clean coal plants.
However, when you’re listening to a debate, the interesting thing isn’t to hear where the people in the debate disagree: the far more interesting part is to observe the assumptions that they both hold, and as a result, do not debate. In any case, in the similarities between Lomborg and Friedman, here’s something of a list. This isn’t anything close to an exhaustive list, here, but it should be enough to keep an (arguably) interesting discussion going:
>> Both Friedman and Lomborg assume (or say explicitly) that alternative forms of energy won’t really take off until they are economically viable. In anything but a completely socialist system, this seems likely to be true. This point, as far as I can tell, is commonly accepted across the political spectrum. The trick, at least as far as I can tell, is trying to figure out how to make alternative energy systems environmentally feasible without having to become socialists. That’s probably going to be more difficult than we think it’s going to be.
>> Migrating to a system that is actually environmentally friendly is going to be lots harder than we think it will be. Lomborg points out that the much ballyhooed Kyoto treaty – which was not adapted by the United States, just in case anyone has forgotten – would cost the world $180 billion, yearly, for the next 50 years. This will, by the end of that 50 years, delay the effect of global warming by about 0.1 degree, Fahrenheit. (By way of reference, this means that – if projections are right – that we will only delay global warming, by 2050, by 3 years.) Think about this, for a moment: for all the money it would cost, and for all the economic advantage that it would cost the United States, specifically, we will get to the same average temperature by 2053, instead of 2050. We’ll still get there. Of course, this still assumes that not only would the treaty be adapted, but it would be able to be enforced among all countries that adapted the treaty. This is, at best, unlikely. Friedman, on the other hand, points out that what we are having right now is not a green revolution, but a green party. If you pick up one of the myriad of “How to go Green” books that are available at any major bookstore (and there are an unbelievably large number of these books – one wonders how many trees they killed?), they all involve simple solutions that do not harm anyone, but involve solutions like “turn your thermostat up in the summer” or “drive 5 mph below the speed limit.” When was there ever a revolution that didn’t harm anyone? Any sort of drastic change in society – and I’m pretty sure that world history backs me up on this – comes at the expense of someone. It’s not going to be possible to effect the changes that need to be made in a completely painless way. At some point, an actual revolution is going to involve someone – or,more likely, some corporation – getting hurt or losing money. This means it’s going to be difficult to accomplish politically (we’ve already seen this, frankly), and the political part, sadly, is likely to be the easy part of actually getting this done.
>> Both Friedman and Lomborg discuss, with varying degrees of approval, and with varying details on the specifics, the viability of the idea of paying for carbon offsets as a way to help control the emission of greenhouse gases. Carbon offsets are a bugaboo of political conservatives – no one seems to like the idea if they’re sitting on that side of the aisle – so it’ll take a bit in the way of mental aerobatics to link them to what conservatives, according to their own ideology, should be doing. That’s our next step.
The first link between carbon offsets and conservative political ideology comes from an extremely unlikely source, and that is the British theologian and author G. K. Chesterson, who lived around the turn of the century. Chesterton was the first person talk about a fascinating concept that he memorably termed “the democracy of the dead.” The best way to to picture how it works is to envision, just as a random example, a discussion between Chesterton and an American living in the present day:
Present-day American: So, I think that relativism is true because most people think that it’s true.
Chesterton: Certainly you’re right, given those criterion. If you’re counting noses based on people that are living today, I would agree that most people think that it’s true. But what if you count people from my generation?
American: Why do I care about them?
Chesterton: Well, if you’re trying to get everyone’s consensus, why would you exclude someone’s vote just because they have died? Why not count everyone’s vote? The people from the generation that lived before you, and then the generation before that?
American: Well . . . uh, I guess that makes sense.
Chesterton: I think that you’ll find that if you don’t exclude people from your vote – based on such a trivial fact that they died, then you’ll find that most people do not, in fact, believe in relativism.
American: Oh.
Whether relativism is true or not isn’t the point, here. (If one is going to argue against it, taking a majority vote to determine what is true is a horrible way to go about doing it, as far as I can tell.) But Chesterton’s idea – even though it would not be practical for, say, the next presidential election – is that if we take a snapshot of the opinion of people that just happen to be living around us right now, we may not get an accurate view of what most people, over time, have actually thought.
Let’s take Chesterton’s idea, and flip it around in the opposite direction: i.e., now we’re not taking a snapshot of everyone alive today, but we’re trying to get the consensus of those that have not yet been born? If we take the votes of our great-grandkids, how much of a priority should climate change be? If we combine this idea of the “democracy of the unborn,” for example, with the idea that it’s a government’s responsibility to protect its citizens from each other – then shouldn’t we be taking those future citizens into account? Shouldn’t they be protected from whatever we’re dumping into the atmosphere? Why is it okay to exclude their vote?
Or, to come at the point from a slightly different direction, let’s apply this to the idea of collectively owned public property: it’s clearly not a right, under the U.S. Constitution, to damage property that isn’t yours. This applies to collectively owned property, such as public parks. You’ve got rights, but the right to go tear up the monkey bars because it’s fun to do just isn’t one of those rights. But who owns, for example, the ozone layer?
Even if the majority of people living today want to damage the ozone layer, for example, if we take our “democracy of the unborn” concept into account, any consensus that we come up with should take into account those people that will have to deal with the ramifications. The ozone layer isn’t just owned – collectively – by the people alive today, it’s the property of the people that aren’t around yet, and we don’t have a unlimited rights to trash their property. All conservatives understand that individual rights don’t trump the individual rights of someone else – i.e., my right to swing my fist ends at your nose, to use the cliche – but it seems equally self-evident that individual rights shouldn’t stomp all over group rights, either: what are group rights, after all, other than a large collection of individual rights?
Clearly, even if we’re making climate change a priority, it can be made in a such a way that stomps all over everyone’s rights or completely wrecks the economy. At its best, this “democracy of the unborn” tells us only that environmentalism should be a concern. It doesn’t give us any coherent advice about how to make renewable energy financially viable without all becoming socialists. Keep in mind that conservative philosophy, as I understand it, doesn’t want to change society – in the sense of pursuing change for its own sake – any more than it wants to change the environment. In this instance, though, changing certain aspects of society may keep us from changing the environment; conversely, not changing society is going to result in further change of the environment. These two concepts have to be balanced in an intelligent way.
Passing legislation that outlaws gasoline in cars, for example, or says that no one can live in a house larger than 3,000 square feet, for example, isn’t such a great plan. (To be fair, I don’t think anyone reasonable is saying this – it’s sure not going to be any politicians that have big houses and get driven around in limos.) Sure, it would help climate change, but it would also put all the car manufacturers out of business, and I’m not sure anyone – of any political persuasion – wants the government telling them what size house they should have.
I think that the idea of carbon offsets is the easiest way to link up concern with the environment with conservative political ideology. Here’s how we are going to do it:
Carbon offsets, as they’re popularly understood, have a lot – on a philosophical level – with something like the federal government subsidizing corn, or with federal funding of welfare, or with (to use the example of something that gets less people upset) the National Endowment for the Arts. What all of these have in common is that they assume a failure, on some level, of the capitalist system: i.e., if supply and demand worked as it should, the right number of people would grow corn so that the price of it would result in them being paid enough that they wouldn’t need offsets. Ideally, no one would be on welfare, and ideally, enough people would support the arts so that federal funding wouldn’t be necessary.
To group carbon offsets in this same philosophical pile, though, is a drastic misunderstanding of what carbon offests actually are. Communism, as most everyone knows, failed because a centrally managed economy was not able to accurately reflect what the cost of items actually was. It failed because communism wasn’t able to accurately reflect the true economic cost of items. Capitalism does well (in general – unless we’re talking about corn subsidies, I suppose) with reflecting the true economic cost of items but there is nothing built into the capitalistic system that reflects the true environmental cost of any items. That’s what carbon offsets are an attempt to correct.
To put this in to a real-world example: buying a Toyota Prius, for example, is pretty compairable to buying a Ford Explorer. It’s a little bit more expensive to buy than an Explorer, but it’s cheaper to operate than a Ford Explorer – just because of the cost of gas. On the other hand, if you consider that the Explorer has a bit more cargo capacity – they’re probably pretty similar to operate per square foot of cargo capacity. Economically, the cost of operating these vehicles is similar, but that’s not any sort of guarentee that the environmental cost is anything close. That’s what carbon offsets are: an effort to reflect the true environmental cost of an item. The true cost of operating a car, for example, doesn’t just entail the economic impact of paying for gasoline, oil, tires, and a multitude of other costs, but also should take into account the environmental cost of dumping carbon from the burned gasoline into the atmosphere. (What this is, specifically, isn’t easy to pinpoint, but Lomborg – with is cost/benefit analysis – takes a more convincing whack at it than anyone else that I’ve heard.)
The lack of any sort of carbon tax actually undercuts the ability of corporations to invest in newer, environmentally friendly technologies. This seems logical, but it actually happens in a way that may not be completely intuitive. Here’s how it works:
>> First of all – to cite the obvious reason – if environmental reasons aren’t translated into economic reasons, there are no real incentives to develop green technologies that cost – economically – the same. If cars that get less than 30 MPG, for example, are subjected to an extra carbon tax, not only is there an economic incentive for customers to buy smaller cars, but there’s also an economic incentive for car manufacturers to try to make larger cars more fuel efficient. Two observations, however: (a) this doesn’t make competition go away. It just means that we’re competing based on the actual cost of an item, not the supposed cost of an item that doesn’t take environmental factors into account. Additionally, (b) it also means that in order for this sort of competition to be fair, it has to be implemented across the board. This is likely to require more international cooperation than we have seen in the past.
>> Secondly, there’s a somewhat less obvious reason: the fluctuation of oil prices means that economic investment into new technologies is going to be limited. That is: let’s say that because gas prices are up – like they were a few months ago, so I decide to invest in a company that makes, say, solar panels. But then let’s say, that the bottom drops out of the economy and global demand for oil slows, so the prices drops. Suddenly, whatever I invested in will go bust because there’s no longer a demand. This is why, I’m convinced, we’re not seeing more investment in green technologies. This isn’t all that farfetched. In fact, as Friedman points out, it’s already happened. When oil prices spiked when Carter was president, there was lots of investment there, and then when they dropped, the companies all went bankrupt and were bought by Europeans.
This isn’t to say that additional drilling – by itself – will prevent any sort of investment in green technologies. However, keep in mind that (a) the stability of oil prices would be greatly improved by a carbon offset tax, and (b) the more volatile that oil prices are, the less corporations are going to be willing to invest in alternative forms of energy. I don’t think anyone in the mainstream media has bothered to explain this. If we’re looking for a economically responsible way to encourage investment in alternative forms of energy, then it wouldn’t be responsible to encourage so much new drilling to get the bottom to drop out of oil prices – keep in mind that the environmental cost of burning the oil isn’t the only environmental cost: there’s also the environmental cost of pulling it out of the ground.
Long term, though, the bottom dropping out of oil prices isn’t likely to happen anyway: given the number of Chinese and Indians that are coming into the middle class, though, I think that the demand for oil is going to increase faster than it has previously. Keep in mind that if demand keeps increasing at a constant rate – even if it doesn’t increase, which it will – then in 30 years, gas will be $50 a gallon.
The changing demand for gas is going to change the price, which is going to change the way we use it – all of these changes that are going to happen irrespective of what we do. To paraphrase a thought from Chesterton: conservatism, as a philosophy, assumes that we can leave things alone, and, consequently, they won’t change. But if we leave things alone, Chesterton notes, we leave them to a torrent of change. Implementing carbon offsets is a change, if society has never done it before. But if the goal is to change the process to avoid changing the end result, then maybe carbon offsets have more to do with conservatism than we have originally thought.
Garrett, very intriguing argument. First, I agree that a conservative thinker should be concerned with future environmental impact of current decisions. I think we may disagree on how much risk we should be willing to take as conservative thinkers in the “I don’t know so I must take the conservative approach” game. Pretty minor nuance, really.
I am also not sure I agree that the “cost of a product” as related to the inefficiency of communism is a valid comparison to the “cost of a product” to future generations in environmental impact. Traditional economic costs of a product are paid by the supplier at time of production and recouped when the supplier sells at a profit. The environmental costs of a product aren’t “paid” until much later, possibly after both the supplier and buyer are dead and buried. They are also “paid” by people that had nothing to do with the transaction and in ways (environmental impact) that are economically unrelated to the transaction. In essence, I would require some more convincing on that point to think it’s an apples to apples comparison.
As an interesting aside, Thomas Jefferson believed that all debts were only valid for the life of the lender. He said that any debts repaid after the original lender had died were charity. He also thought that each succeeding generation should renew its government so that everyone always lived under a government of his own choosing. He set the timeframe for this renewal at every 19 years. I don’t subscribe to these ideas, but it’s interesting that our founding fathers also pondered the rights of future generations.
Great food for thought. Thanks for posting.
Jeff -
Jefferson’s idea of debt going away after the life of the lender is interesting, and I’d be curious to know how he would adapt that principle to corporations that lend today. The idea of debt forgiveness is actually also mentioned in the Old Testament Pentateuch, although judging from Jefferson’s (lack of) religion I’m pretty sure that’s not where he got it. The “Year of Jubilee” in ancient Israel was designed to forgive debts every 7 years, I believe it was. (It’s also interesting that all these laws assume the idea of private property, which seems to undercut those that want to interpret Christianity through a socialist lens.)
All that to say that I think that debt forgiveness is – just as a generalization – a pretty good idea. Maybe this is a good way to preserve the essence of capitalism (at least sort of?) while still keeping the disparity between rich and poor not get too great – the “within the lifetime” principle seems like it may do better at giving everyone equal opportunity. I’m not sure.
On the other hand, after reading your comments, I’m not sure I can convince either one of us that the communism/economic and capitalism/environmental comparison is an apples to apples comparison. I’m not sure it has to be, though: because leftover debt, as it were, has to be paid by succeeding generations, the best option we have is to pay off everything that we generate within our lifetimes to avoid exploiting the system. Otherwise we’re just running into a situation where we’re just racking up debt with the understanding that it’s someone else’s responsibility to forgive it. Payment within our lifetimes may be a good goal, but I’m not sure it’s realistic.
This problem is made more complicated by the fact that there do not seem to be black and white issues – it’s all a question of balancing priorities: economy vs environment, quality of life now vs quality of life later, etc.
This was a very good post. It got me thinking pretty heavily about it, as I have always felt strongly about climate change, but I couldn’t really pin down my thoughts to one side of the debate. I want to read both of the mentioned books in the post.
My feelings about environmentalism come from a variety of directions. My feelings about conservatism, however, are a bit simpler. I feel that government/group actions should be taken to solve large scale problems in effective ways, but that overly-risky endeavors are not necessarily within the realm of the group’s rights, as the pursuit of risky endeavors assumes the “group” has the permission of those within it to accept the risk. Sort of like the stock market. I am not a risky investor or a gambler and would not join a group of people who, as a group, invest in things beyond my accepted risk level. I cannot choose my government, though, without moving. So, I feel like a just government must take my permission into consideration at least a little bit. I also feel that the government as a whole (organizations dedicated to handling a particular problem, such as the DoD) may know more about many things than the average population does, but that does not mean that they know best. Or that they know anything better than some of the exceptional minds in the regular population. Acting on poor, or even mediocre, advice can be worse than not acting at all in some cases.
What exactly is the risk associated with climate change and the attempt to prevent climate change? As you and many others have said, this is not known. Some people, however, state that we do know what these risks are. That we know what the results will be either way. What role should the governments of the world play when it comes to using the resources of the people to attempt to affect climate change? Well, I think you might get roughly 6 billion different answers to that question.
You state that a conservative approach to climate change would likely result in the decision to apply environmental policies at the governmental level with the goal of slowing climate change, so as to stabilize the world system in the long term. Short-term change in order to slow long-term change. To provide an illustration, the process would be like bracing for a car crash; or at least putting on a seat belt when you know, for certain, in 30 seconds you are going to run into a brick wall.
To arrive at this idea, you sort of apply a cost/benefit analysis like Lomborg did. What if the costs and benefits are different, though?
Let’s go back 100 years and look at things from a fictional governmental level on a hypothetical planet other than our own. We currently use horses, mules, etc. for all heavy work. Oil is discovered and people begin to understand how to use it productively. As our planet’s atmosphere is invincible, it could not be affected by silly carbon dioxide.
The natural thing to do would be to consider oil a standard resource just like limestone or wood. From an economic perspective, investing in oil would yield economic benefits in the form of improvements in productivity, transportation, physical comfort, etc. It could spur the growth of entire industries around the resource (cars, electric infrastructure). I would say the only argument for not using it would be the fear that we would grow too accustomed to it and be weakened by our dependance. Also fear that the oil would run out might fuel some concern, but by and large I believe most people would agree that if it is there, it should be used, and that any investment would be returned many fold.
From an environmental perspective, the only real concern would be the actual modification of the earth to get the oil out and pollution from accidents. This could be a large impact, but as we have seen from real life, liberal oil refining wins the day.
There could also be religious concerns, which would completely depend on the people group involved, but by and large I would consider this scenario acceptable to various conservative thinkers. Once the oil machine starts, the only problem would be what to do as supplies begin to dwindle.
Now lets move on to a world similar to that some believe we live in today. A world where the atmosphere and environment are not as resilient as on our previous world. One where, due to sacred data from ancient civilizations’ various sci-fi-like experiments, human kind has determined that it has a direct and measurable impact on the climate, and that it all comes down to greenhouse gases.
In this kind of world, the arguments proposed by your blog post would be correct and provable due to what we know. Conservative environmentalists would be very worried about the impact our actions would have and would demand that alternative energy sources be used. Economic conservatives, however, might have a hard time with it. Investing in energy technologies could be very costly and might not have any return on investment, etc. The government could fund research in the field, but the more the government gets involved, the more socialist we would be.
A subsidized/regulated power industry doesn’t have to be a bad thing, in this case. In the kind of world where we know the impact of the decision, I think the government absolutely has a right to take into account the ramifications of climate change on our progeny. It is, after all, the charge of the government to protect the rights of individuals and using your “democracy of the unborn” argument, it would seem like the government’s responsibility to curb the production of greenhouse gases. This could be considered a conservative decision from many aspects if it was assumed that there existed a properly functioning and fair government. One of the only aspects from which I would consider the decision to control greenhouse gases liberal would be foreign policy. How do you convince other countries of the ramifications of their actions? If the knowledge of climate change were solid enough, in this case, there could possibly be a case made for coercive action, or war, to defend our kids from the destruction of their climate by our current neighbors.
I’m thinking very much in black and white, here. There are a few unknowns. The first is obvious. How much control over the climate do we really have? If humans all disappeared overnight, would global warming continue as if we were still driving to work every day and powering our home air conditioners? Secondly, but perhaps more importantly, what is the severity of the result? What will really happen if the temperature goes up 3 degrees? What about 5 or 10?
Let’s say some particular predictions are correct, and implementing the Kyoto treaty at $180 billion a year would result in a 3 year delay in global warming. Is it worth it? If human nature is such that we are going to use whatever makes things easier now, regardless of the consequences, will it really help things to try to slow that down. To refer to my previous illustration, if we are driving in a car going about, say, the speed of sound (I know, just stick with me) and no one but you thinks there is an unavoidably large concrete object a few miles ahead, does it make sense to struggle over the steering wheel and make everyone jump out of the car, only to then hit the road while moving at 600 miles an hour? Even if you just jump out by yourself, you end up nothing more than a smear on the road.
This seems drastic, but if greenhouse gas emissions are really that difficult to completely stop, if it is going to require such drastic changes to the entire developed world, and you know that at least some large percent of the world doesn’t care, and you aren’t entirely sure exactly what the results or severity of them are, then what ends up being labeled a conservative environmental decision or a liberal economic decision? Frankly, I personally don’t believe that the cost benefit analyses used by people at this point are adequate to judge the scale of this problem. This is not to say that I don’t think there is a problem or that we shouldn’t do something. But from a 3rd person perspective looking at the world and its people from the outside, knowing how people think and behave, is there really anything that can be done without completely ignoring the rights of people who are alive and well right now?
My thoughts here also do not take into account such things as corruption, failings of the capitalist system to adapt to price quickly enough, and the risk that occurs due to fluctuations in oil prices. You talked about that, an it is indeed a significant problem. One nice thing about government investment and regulation is that you spread the consequences of the short term risk over the population of the people you tax. If the end result is positive, everyone benefits eventually.
All this to say, I don’t know. I want oil. I love sports cars and airplanes and air conditioning and, heck, I just love stuff that blows up! (No I am not a terrorist) Another part of me doesn’t like the strategic ramifications of depending so heavily on a foreign resource, and yet another part of me, similar to the part that loves sports cars, loves efficient systems. The thought of powering all of humanity’s operations off of the sun, either via some form of harvested and refined vegetation, or via solar panels, rain, wind, etc, is endlessly interesting to me. That is to say that I would personally support some degree of investment into alternative energy/lifestyles just from a sheer personal concern and entertainment perspective. But from strictly an economic and environmental perspective, and at a macro scale, the choices are a lot more complicated.
Also, a note on some other stuff. This post is getting long, but the thoughts posted about personal property are also interesting to me. You claim the possibility that the Bible either directly or indirectly supports the concept of private property (albeit with love and charity in our hearts, blah blah). That may be true, but consider this perspective. The Bible also supports and disapproves of killing. The commandments clearly state that we should not be killing people, yet there are instances in the Bible where people needed to die. Why does God want a person to kill another person in some instance, but still maintain that killing is not a good thing?
My personal feelings on the matter of such things, without a whole lot of study (I really have not studied the Bible very much), are that there seems to be general statements of what is right and wrong, that is true. But that there are also guidelines given to certain people that seem to take into account the reality of the situation. Does the fact that Jesus does not tell the Roman soldier to abandon his killing ways mean that Jesus thinks that the Roman army is just? Perhaps that man was just. Perhaps he wasn’t. He did have faith, though. Jesus was, at least, impressed with one aspect of the man. Nothing was said of his profession or other circumstances.
My example is to say that the man was a centurion regardless of whether or not God feels that centurions should exist at all. A slave is a slave regardless of whether God thinks that any human should own another human. But in the capacity of that man’s position, he at least showed faith in God. Even as a slave, a person may or may not be faithful. God’s love and commandments transcend our circumstances, but our circumstances still exist and we are not always called to change the entire world. We can also not go back in time, but we can make the choices that are presented to us.
I sort of feel the same way about communism. I am not entirely convinced that the Bible indicates that we are all entitled or should have our own possessions as opposed to using a communally owned possession. The Bible does, however, call us to follow God’s word regardless. Can we live according to God’s word in a communist environment? I believe so. What about in total anarchy? Of course. Is one society or economic model “better” than the others with respect to the group or to God’s word? Quite probably. However, I feel that if we were all the good and holy people God had meant us to be, it wouldn’t matter what situation we were stuck in; we would behave, and we would take care of each other. We would also glorify God, either with our own possessions or those of the group’s. In fact, I think we would find whatever system we were in to be inadequate and would want to make it better glorify God, whatever that meant in our situation, and I also believe that the concept of personal property would, in that case, not be one of the primary factors.
I do not live in a way as holy as I write. Neither do I think communism is feasible as a large scale system in our current world, at least as it is right now. But, I’m not convinced that it is explicitly condemned, or that any way like we do things now is endorsed. But, I have also not read most of the Bible, and my study is limited. This outlook could be completely wrong.
Dylan –
I think that quite a bit of the misunderstandings that result in the debates about environmentalism are due to the great frequency with which everyone asks the wrong questions: “Are you saying you don’t want to save the polar bears?”
You’re asking the right questions, and I think that you’d really like Lomborg’s book, as he spends quite a bit of time discussing the cost/benefit analysis that you’re talking about, here. There’s a limitation in his book, though, that is a limit of cost/benefit analysis in general: a cost/benefit analysis is only as accurate as the list of the costs and benefits on which the analysis is based. I’m not sure that we understand all the ways in which climate change will impact the planet, so when Lomborg gives us what’s allegedly a complete list of what climate change will impact, there’s no compelling reason to think that he (or anyone else) has a complete list. (As far as I can tell, Another reason for being conservative about the whole situation, really.)
I like explosions, airplanes and fast cars, like you, but I think that there is quite a bit of progress to be made in terms of weaning ourselves off of foreign oil that can be done without blowing up all the airplanes and cars. How about buying organic food? If it’s organic food, that means that it wasn’t grown with chemicals . . . that are made largely from oil. Or buying food that was grown locally – so you’re not using oil to ship it across the country?
New topic: With regards to Christianity, private property, and communism, I’d encourage you to investigate the idea of distributism, a economic system that was advocated by G. K. Chesterton, among others. Some of the ideas behind this way of thinking are tied, to a certain extent, to fringe elements of the republican party: see Rod Dreher’s excellent book Crunchy Cons – interestingly enough, Dreher articulates many of the same views that I’m trying to explain here, and I highly recommend his book.
I come late to this discussion, having arrived from a Facebook link. Just a couple of random thoughts here, from someone not nearly so academically rigorous nor well-read.
Quote: “The government should be smaller and have less power. There is no real reason, for example, that it’s the government’s job to be telling us how many carbohydrates we should be eating per day. (Interestingly enough, I have not found anyone, of any political affiliation, that thinks that this is the government’s job..).”
You’re right, of course, but people do think it’s the government’s job. For a multitude of reasons, people in Western cultures don’t generally eat a healthy diet. This causes medical problems, the solutions to which are usually attempted by publicly-funded research. And of course we should fund medical research, because trying to keep people from getting sick and dying is one of the few things that a majority still believes to be a high moral obligation. We ask for governmental resources to be used to keep us all healthy, and out pops the FDA (among other things).
With regard to the climate change debate: I’d agree that climate change is real, and has probably been happening at some rate in some direction for most of the world’s history. Whether or not the change we now face is more anthropogenic than in the past seems to be the point of contention (as well as whether we can do anything about it). The answer may not even be worth looking for. If climate change is a given, at least for the foreseeable future, it will only be one more stressor on an Earth system in which humans have systematically eliminated long-term resilience in favor of short-term economic prosperity. For example: variance in sea level wouldn’t matter nearly as much if we didn’t have millions of people living in coastal cities, in population densities that would be completely impossible to sustain were it not for the massive amounts of energy we pump in. Creating this cultural myth of unending progress and limitless growth (of population, economy, consumption… ) has been the Western world’s fundamental mis-step, and it seems likely to be our undoing.
More on your topic of conservative environmentalism: If you haven’t already encountered it, you might be interested to read the short piece “The Theory of Anyway” at http://www.energybulletin.net/node/25115.
Josh -
“The Theory of Anyway” hits the nail right on the head. First time I’ve heard of it, but I like the idea. It’s refreshing to hear someone talk about responsibilities and what we should be doing instead of just what we have the right to do. Seems to me that rights and responsibilities have got to go together, and current political dialogue (on the conservative side of things, anyway) really only discusses one of them.
Additionally, I think you’re right in blaming western notions of progress: what I’ve heard from so many people is that even if this is a problem, the technology of the future will undoubtedly be able to solve it easily. I’m not sure this is based on any sort of understanding of how complex this problem is likely to be, and – even given extremely advanced technology – we’ll eventually bump up against the laws of physics.
With regards to the responsibilities of the FDA: you’re right in that most people seem to assume that it is the government’s job – at least until they stop and think about it. I think that you can make a pretty good case, though, that a better solution for this would be (in some instances, at least) less government action instead of more government action. Here’s why:
If you look at a graph of the obesity rates of Americans (and the plethora of accompanying maladies – heart disease, etc.) and compare this to the amount of meat that Americans eat per day, the graphs (which I don’t have in front of me now, unfortunately, but I saw them in the New York Times a few months ago) are – to a large degree – the same graph. The reason that Americans are eating more meat than they were 20 years ago is because the price of meat has, overall, dropped. This is due primarily to factory farming, which is made possible, in turn, by the availability of cheap corn. The reason corn is so cheap is because of the corn subsidies that the government dumps into the farming economy in an attempt to keep corn prices low.
Anyway, the FDA telling us to eat less meat, but the trends over the last 20 years seem to suggest to me that this approach hasn’t been all that effective. If the government stopped investing in corn subsidies (unlikely, as the Iowa caucuses are so early in the presidential race: you have to sign onto corn subsidies in order to do well in Iowa), then a hamburger at McDonald’s may actually cost more than a salad. It makes no sense that the FDA is telling us to eat less meat when federal funding is keeping meat prices artificially low.
In other words, what we’ve got here is a health problem that was, in large part, an unanticipated result of an action of the government. The perceived solution to this has been another program, which hasn’t really worked, when it seems to me that the government can probably accomplish more by doing less.