A Modest Proposal
Jonathan Swift’s infamous essay, A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country, and for making Them Beneficial to the Publik proposed a detailed plan for the impoverished Irish to sell their children to the wealthy for food. Swift even provided a list of possible preparations for children, and calculations showing the financial benefits of his plan.
With the urgent need to reduce CO2 emissions on the planet, environmentalists have proposed carbon offset markets, allowing the worst polluters to purchase offsets from relatively ‘clean’ emitters, and thus reduce their own carbon footprints. The carbon offset market has a potential estimated value in the billions.
But why take only half-way measures? There is no question people are the biggest problem, as they cause millions of tons of CO2 emissions each day, just by breathing, not to mention driving in air-conditioned cars, barbequing, heating and cooling their homes, and flying to exotic vacation destinations. The problem, then, is not carbon, it’s people. The more we can remove people from the planet, the better off the planet will be.
Many would consider this draconian. After all, who would make the decisions? My proposal advocates a voluntary People Offset Market (POM), where those wishing to make life better for the planet would voluntarily market themselves for elimination. What better example of the Free Market at work?
Here’s how it would work: those willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the planet, while at the same time reducing the human population, could freely market themselves on an exchange. Those purchasing people offsets could reduce their footprint. One person giving up his or her life hugely reduces carbon emissions; thousands, even millions of people voluntarily giving themselves over to Spaceship Earth--think of the immediate reductions in emissions!
Those selling their lives would have the funds go to the Al Gore Trust for Inconvenient People, which would set up subsidized People Offset Markets in developing countries. I'm contacting Planned Parenthood to see if we can include aborted fetuses in this, too. After all, one abortion equals a huge lifetime carbon savings!
Some countries could benefit from retroactive credits: think of Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, or Hirohito’s Japan. Surely we cannot ignore the incalculable carbon offset benefits of eliminating a few hundred million people. In order to prevent retroactive offsets from swamping the market, however, one would have to account for all the CO2 emissions from decomposing bodies. Funeral Homes would face the same issue in calculating their own carbon offsets.
Those involved in traffic accidents with fatalities would have their sentences reduced if they bought offsets, with compensation to the victims’ families going to the Gore Trust. Genocide-inclined tyrants would get special UN support for the elimination of whole populations and special provisions in Kyoto II. The more Tibetans the Chinese eliminate, the more people offsets they get! Jumbo Jet goes down in the jungle? No problem! The airline accrues it to the bottom line!
And think of the savings the US could enjoy with just one atomic bomb strategically dropped on a concentrated population center! Why, the US military would practically corner the futures market in people offsets!
The UN should get to work right away on this proposal. There is no time to waste. An advisory panel with Robert Mugabe, Omar Al-Bashir, a few Serbian field commanders, some Al-Qaeda jihadists, NATO, the Russian General Staff (especially useful for identifying successful Soviet techniques), the EU Commission, and Dutch euthanasia doctors and nurses should get things kicked off. After that, we'll get booths set up in shopping malls, and the Little League can use this as a fund raiser. Not forgetting Hollywood: remarketing The Titanic as a noble People Offset Market event rather than a disaster will rake in millions!
Friday, July 25, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Punitive Behavior Modification
There are at least three groups of people who love high oil prices: energy companies, investors, and environmentalists. Companies because it allows further incentive for exploration; investors because it means record profits for oil companies and a better return for the pension funds they manage. And environmentalists because it means they can punish consumers.
Punative behavior modification is considered politically incorrect when it comes to rearing children, but for environmental jihadists it is the tool of choice: it will punish those least able to afford higher energy costs but have the salutary effect of forcing them to change their wasteful behavior. Consumers thus become the pawns in the eco-war on carbon.
Along with the threat of climate change, which is a big stick eco-jihadists wield to bludgeon corporations, high energy costs can be used to bludgeon consumers. In combination the blunt instruments of behavior modification can be flashed in the corridors of government where regulatory and legal reforms must be made immediately if we are to fulfill the eco-jihadist fantasy of control: how else can we get working mothers to give up their car and cycle to work? I'm sure this is possible. When I lived in Holland many mothers picked up their children from school on bicycles. There would be no difficulty applying this model to, say, downtown Phoenix.
The eco-jihadist war on carbon is a war on middle-class values and the aspirations of all people seeking a better life. In the name of some globalist reverie about "responsibility" to emerging countries, of some notion of "saving" the planet, they dream a dream of global governance where people would be accountable not to their neighbors or their communities but to a class of rootless cosmocrats promoting every kind of politically correct behavior imaginable.
Ultimately, then, the war on carbon is an assult on the values of freedom and responsibility. It is an attack on the profitable and efficient companies that deliver energy. Eco-jihadists, of course, deny that they wish us to change our lifestyle; they merely want us to behave and do it their way, with "alternative" energy supplies (now supplying less than one percent of US energy requirements) and sacrifice. The costs of change will be underwritten by the "excess profits" of oil companies. Actually, these "excess profits" are very attractive for my investment portfolio, and I wouldn't consider for one minute holding stock in a company that gives in to the hostile demand to relinquish profits and punish shareholders.
Like other forms of jihad, eco-jihad is a war on our way of life, on private property and ownership, and on individual responsibility for the environment. Roger Scruton makes similar points in a brilliant essay, "Conservatives Are Conservationists" the link for which is here: http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=577&theme=home&loc=b
Punative behavior modification is considered politically incorrect when it comes to rearing children, but for environmental jihadists it is the tool of choice: it will punish those least able to afford higher energy costs but have the salutary effect of forcing them to change their wasteful behavior. Consumers thus become the pawns in the eco-war on carbon.
Along with the threat of climate change, which is a big stick eco-jihadists wield to bludgeon corporations, high energy costs can be used to bludgeon consumers. In combination the blunt instruments of behavior modification can be flashed in the corridors of government where regulatory and legal reforms must be made immediately if we are to fulfill the eco-jihadist fantasy of control: how else can we get working mothers to give up their car and cycle to work? I'm sure this is possible. When I lived in Holland many mothers picked up their children from school on bicycles. There would be no difficulty applying this model to, say, downtown Phoenix.
The eco-jihadist war on carbon is a war on middle-class values and the aspirations of all people seeking a better life. In the name of some globalist reverie about "responsibility" to emerging countries, of some notion of "saving" the planet, they dream a dream of global governance where people would be accountable not to their neighbors or their communities but to a class of rootless cosmocrats promoting every kind of politically correct behavior imaginable.
Ultimately, then, the war on carbon is an assult on the values of freedom and responsibility. It is an attack on the profitable and efficient companies that deliver energy. Eco-jihadists, of course, deny that they wish us to change our lifestyle; they merely want us to behave and do it their way, with "alternative" energy supplies (now supplying less than one percent of US energy requirements) and sacrifice. The costs of change will be underwritten by the "excess profits" of oil companies. Actually, these "excess profits" are very attractive for my investment portfolio, and I wouldn't consider for one minute holding stock in a company that gives in to the hostile demand to relinquish profits and punish shareholders.
Like other forms of jihad, eco-jihad is a war on our way of life, on private property and ownership, and on individual responsibility for the environment. Roger Scruton makes similar points in a brilliant essay, "Conservatives Are Conservationists" the link for which is here: http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=577&theme=home&loc=b
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Punishing the Poor
Environmental jihadists want to punish you. They look mirthfully upon oil at $135 a barrel and squeal with glee. At some undefined point petroleum products will become so expensive that people will change their behavior, quit driving cars, change to energy-efficient light bulbs, and bunker down with the thermostat at 50 degrees. There is nothing like punishing people to get them to change. This is why environmental jihadists love rising energy prices.
Contrast this with the approach of most consumer-driven business. The prices of clothing, electronics, and home goods are now lower than ever, thanks to Gap, Uniclo, Wal-Mart, and Dell. Despite lower prices, people have changed their behavior--they buy more. I'm sure we long to be punished with higher prices, so we won't consume so much, but no one will offer to raise prices! Fortunately, there is the war on carbon to ensure that those struggling to make ends meet will be suitably beaten down.
Notably, the rise in the price of a barrel of oil has nothing to do with environmental jihadists and their longed-for policies. They didn't cause the rise, much as they would like to find a way to do so. There is no shortage of ideas to keep the cost of energy going up: carbon cap-and-trade markets, new regulations and laws, international agreements designed to curb free markets. Compared to this global guerilla war, the invasion of Iraq is a mere bagatelle.
We are scolded that we are addicted to "cheap" energy. Cheap compared to what? There is absolutely not a shred of evidence that energy has ever been cheap, because no one has defined what cheap means. I recall in the 1970s when the great benchmark of disaster was gasoline at $1 a gallon. That milestone, along with Y2K, came and went, and the economy continued to grow, and the sun rose each morning. However, there is bad news: more governments promise more intervention in energy markets. This will no doubt cause an outbreak of good behavior! Because with the double whammy of rising prices and government regulation, there will be no need to drive, take buses, or fly. With our hunting clubs in hand, we'll just walk everywhere.
We'd like to take public transporation to the re-education camps, of course, but somehow the same governments that are keen to regulate can't muster the will or resources to build a transportation infrastructure worthy of the most advanced economy in the world. Families who choose to live in the suburbs in order to provide a decent quality of life and good schools to their children must suffer and pay more.
The great thing about paying more for energy is just how much it benefits the developing world. In the hitherto blighted economies of the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia, citizens no longer have to sacrifice. Awash in cheap money, they can now afford to construct megacities, buy automobiles, and fly on jets to distant vacation spots. The recent promising discovery of tar sand oil in the Congo means that the jungle will soon be abuzz with extraction. The single-mother computer technician at Dell can take great comfort that her children will no longer leave green vegetables on their plates knowing a little Bedouin is starving, and that she can happily drive to work knowing that she's supporting educational opportunities for children of sheiks. How could that be punishment?
Here's just one pithy view from Nat Keohane of the Environmental Defense Fund: "If electricy prices don't rise, people don't have the incentive to conserve or to buy energy-efficient appliances". Of course, people will have "options", such as using revenues generated from new regulatory regimes to lower taxes and provide rebates. "If you raise prices and don't people options, all you are going to get are complaints. We don't advicate raising the price of food as a cure for obesity."
If there is a bigger crock of shit than this, it's hard to know where to find it. Now we have environmental jihadists using decision economics to engage in more social engineering. Next they'll want to rewire the brain to reject SUVs.
In the end, it's the same story: those who are impatient for the rapid overthrow of the existing order inflict violence on those who are least capable of mounting an effective defense. American political leadership from McCain to Obama to every governer wanna-be climate change jihadist is failing to represent the consumer. Environmental elites are free to continue their war on carbon, mounting continual assaults on energy companies via shareholder resolutions, demanding punative and wasteful regulatory regimes based on questionable science, and promoting "solutions" at the expense of people.
No one questions the need for prudent energy use, conservation, and the strongest possible environmental protection for animals, the oceans, and the forests. No one questions rational approaches to conservation such as the framework established by the Marine Stewardship Council, a partnership with business. And no one should have any hesitation about investing in all manner of "alternative" energy, along with carbon, one of nature's great gifts to the planet. Meantime, I'm quite certain that no one driving an SUV filled with $5 a gallon gas would dream of running down the behavior modification specialists over at the re-education camps.
Contrast this with the approach of most consumer-driven business. The prices of clothing, electronics, and home goods are now lower than ever, thanks to Gap, Uniclo, Wal-Mart, and Dell. Despite lower prices, people have changed their behavior--they buy more. I'm sure we long to be punished with higher prices, so we won't consume so much, but no one will offer to raise prices! Fortunately, there is the war on carbon to ensure that those struggling to make ends meet will be suitably beaten down.
Notably, the rise in the price of a barrel of oil has nothing to do with environmental jihadists and their longed-for policies. They didn't cause the rise, much as they would like to find a way to do so. There is no shortage of ideas to keep the cost of energy going up: carbon cap-and-trade markets, new regulations and laws, international agreements designed to curb free markets. Compared to this global guerilla war, the invasion of Iraq is a mere bagatelle.
We are scolded that we are addicted to "cheap" energy. Cheap compared to what? There is absolutely not a shred of evidence that energy has ever been cheap, because no one has defined what cheap means. I recall in the 1970s when the great benchmark of disaster was gasoline at $1 a gallon. That milestone, along with Y2K, came and went, and the economy continued to grow, and the sun rose each morning. However, there is bad news: more governments promise more intervention in energy markets. This will no doubt cause an outbreak of good behavior! Because with the double whammy of rising prices and government regulation, there will be no need to drive, take buses, or fly. With our hunting clubs in hand, we'll just walk everywhere.
We'd like to take public transporation to the re-education camps, of course, but somehow the same governments that are keen to regulate can't muster the will or resources to build a transportation infrastructure worthy of the most advanced economy in the world. Families who choose to live in the suburbs in order to provide a decent quality of life and good schools to their children must suffer and pay more.
The great thing about paying more for energy is just how much it benefits the developing world. In the hitherto blighted economies of the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia, citizens no longer have to sacrifice. Awash in cheap money, they can now afford to construct megacities, buy automobiles, and fly on jets to distant vacation spots. The recent promising discovery of tar sand oil in the Congo means that the jungle will soon be abuzz with extraction. The single-mother computer technician at Dell can take great comfort that her children will no longer leave green vegetables on their plates knowing a little Bedouin is starving, and that she can happily drive to work knowing that she's supporting educational opportunities for children of sheiks. How could that be punishment?
Here's just one pithy view from Nat Keohane of the Environmental Defense Fund: "If electricy prices don't rise, people don't have the incentive to conserve or to buy energy-efficient appliances". Of course, people will have "options", such as using revenues generated from new regulatory regimes to lower taxes and provide rebates. "If you raise prices and don't people options, all you are going to get are complaints. We don't advicate raising the price of food as a cure for obesity."
If there is a bigger crock of shit than this, it's hard to know where to find it. Now we have environmental jihadists using decision economics to engage in more social engineering. Next they'll want to rewire the brain to reject SUVs.
In the end, it's the same story: those who are impatient for the rapid overthrow of the existing order inflict violence on those who are least capable of mounting an effective defense. American political leadership from McCain to Obama to every governer wanna-be climate change jihadist is failing to represent the consumer. Environmental elites are free to continue their war on carbon, mounting continual assaults on energy companies via shareholder resolutions, demanding punative and wasteful regulatory regimes based on questionable science, and promoting "solutions" at the expense of people.
No one questions the need for prudent energy use, conservation, and the strongest possible environmental protection for animals, the oceans, and the forests. No one questions rational approaches to conservation such as the framework established by the Marine Stewardship Council, a partnership with business. And no one should have any hesitation about investing in all manner of "alternative" energy, along with carbon, one of nature's great gifts to the planet. Meantime, I'm quite certain that no one driving an SUV filled with $5 a gallon gas would dream of running down the behavior modification specialists over at the re-education camps.
Friday, March 7, 2008
The OECD Launches a Political Campaign
With his statements of March 5, 2008 and the OECD report on climate change, Angel Gurria has launched a politically-motivated campaign. This is a clear violation of the spirit of the OECD, whose mission is described as "for a better world economy". Gurria's political position on climate change is clearly contrary to those of the US and Japan which countries, it is worth noting, provide well in excess of 25 percent of OECD funding. Both countries should immediately press an inquiry into the latest OECD foray into the world of political issues and public policy.
This is from the OECD website:
The OECD brings together the governments of
countries committed to democracy and the
market economy from around the world to:
• Support sustainable economic growth
• Boost employment
• Raise living standards
• Maintain financial stability
• Assist other countries' economic development
• Contribute to growth in world trade
Where does it mention the promotion of particular political positions or the mounting of a "war" on a particular sector of the global economy?
The OECD governance structure allows the US and Japan one seat each on the OECD Council, which sets priorities for the OECD's work. Decisions are taken "by consensus". With the new OECD war on carbon, as expressed by its Secretary General, the OECD is taking a strong political position, which deserves review both by its Council and the the US Congress, which appropriates funding for the OECD.
Floriana Institute will launch a new OECD watch site to chronicle the declared war on carbon and to follow how the OECD will spend funds to wage this war. In addition, we will advocate a review of the process by which the OECD is governed by a group of its leading members, led by the US. There is no reason that the US, where millions of livelihoods depend on the products of carbon, needs to continue to support the activities of a politically-motivated organization that acts against US interests.
This is from the OECD website:
The OECD brings together the governments of
countries committed to democracy and the
market economy from around the world to:
• Support sustainable economic growth
• Boost employment
• Raise living standards
• Maintain financial stability
• Assist other countries' economic development
• Contribute to growth in world trade
Where does it mention the promotion of particular political positions or the mounting of a "war" on a particular sector of the global economy?
The OECD governance structure allows the US and Japan one seat each on the OECD Council, which sets priorities for the OECD's work. Decisions are taken "by consensus". With the new OECD war on carbon, as expressed by its Secretary General, the OECD is taking a strong political position, which deserves review both by its Council and the the US Congress, which appropriates funding for the OECD.
Floriana Institute will launch a new OECD watch site to chronicle the declared war on carbon and to follow how the OECD will spend funds to wage this war. In addition, we will advocate a review of the process by which the OECD is governed by a group of its leading members, led by the US. There is no reason that the US, where millions of livelihoods depend on the products of carbon, needs to continue to support the activities of a politically-motivated organization that acts against US interests.
The Globalcrat War on Carbon and Regulatory Colonialism
"The enemy is known. It it called carbon." Thus spake the General Secretary of the OECD, Angel Gurria, on March 5, 2008 as quoted in Le Monde, announcing a new report on the threats to the planet. I hadn't realized that the OECD had a particular expertise in the science of climate change or carbon, but apparently jumping on the anti-carbon bandwagon is the latest trend for those who style themselves global leaders and serious thinkers. Of course, the enemy must be attacked with taxes, the proceeds from which will go to governments that in turn fund the OECD.
Where will all those carbon tax proceeds go, anyway? No doubt serious global leaders will want to set up serious a global fund so that lots of money will be devoted to saving the planet from carbon. I can't wait to hear an announcement that the UN, so well-known for fiscal responsibility and outstanding management of the Oil-For-Food fund, will act as fiduciary.
Angel Gurria now adds his voice to the irresponsible alarmist hoarde of Globalcrats whose support for democratic values and free markets in the OECD member countries is sorely wanting. I'm sure lots of serious people will read the OECD report--I know I will--especially the self-selected planetary saviors whose regulatory mentality and nanny state approach to policy is one of the most serious threats to our well-being.
I wonder what these Globalcrats, Europeans mostly, but not exclusively, are saving the planet for? Surely not for the exhausted welfare state socialism of the EU; surely not for the ageing populations of Europe, for the European model does not point the way to the future. The spiritual vacuity and directionless socialism that characterizes Europe means that a cause worth fighting for must be invented, and climate change fits the bill.
What better way for the old colonial powers to revive their influence than through Regulatory Colonialism at the level of the planet? This movitivation is the only convincing one I can find for the zealousness with which Globalcrats in cushy positions promote the war on carbon. In fact, they hate profits, they loathe capitalism, they resent western oil companies (how they feel about other, state owned oil companies, i.e. those with access to vast reserves, is unknown, as the EU and most OECD countries depend heavily on importing the oil produced by those companies), and they present us with no better ideas than limits, regulation, and further extraction of dues from those they consider most able to pay--the rich countries of the west. Where is their plan to tax China?
A minor, yet looming threat, is the reign of the Globalcrats and their insidious ideas for planetary regulation. They are grandstanding politicians who have haven't the least hesitation about leading a life devoted to consumption and enjoying the benefits of the carbon-based economy (the head of the OECD enjoys a luxurious, subsidized flat in Paris). They are in fact parasites, living off the host body of competitive capitalism, while contributing nothing to it. Their arrogance knows no bounds. Gurria says the way to fight the War on Carbon is through higher prices. Astonishingly, that is precisely what is happening in global oil markets, as the price of a barrel of oil exceeds $104 or so. Even more astonishingly, this desirable result was produced without the least reference to Globalcrats and their drive for global governance.
The real battle worth fighting these days is on the hot air produced by Globalcrats. This parade of preening global socialists apparently has many members. It is time to question the mandate of the OECD and US support for it in light of the clear anti-market values it now promotes.
Where will all those carbon tax proceeds go, anyway? No doubt serious global leaders will want to set up serious a global fund so that lots of money will be devoted to saving the planet from carbon. I can't wait to hear an announcement that the UN, so well-known for fiscal responsibility and outstanding management of the Oil-For-Food fund, will act as fiduciary.
Angel Gurria now adds his voice to the irresponsible alarmist hoarde of Globalcrats whose support for democratic values and free markets in the OECD member countries is sorely wanting. I'm sure lots of serious people will read the OECD report--I know I will--especially the self-selected planetary saviors whose regulatory mentality and nanny state approach to policy is one of the most serious threats to our well-being.
I wonder what these Globalcrats, Europeans mostly, but not exclusively, are saving the planet for? Surely not for the exhausted welfare state socialism of the EU; surely not for the ageing populations of Europe, for the European model does not point the way to the future. The spiritual vacuity and directionless socialism that characterizes Europe means that a cause worth fighting for must be invented, and climate change fits the bill.
What better way for the old colonial powers to revive their influence than through Regulatory Colonialism at the level of the planet? This movitivation is the only convincing one I can find for the zealousness with which Globalcrats in cushy positions promote the war on carbon. In fact, they hate profits, they loathe capitalism, they resent western oil companies (how they feel about other, state owned oil companies, i.e. those with access to vast reserves, is unknown, as the EU and most OECD countries depend heavily on importing the oil produced by those companies), and they present us with no better ideas than limits, regulation, and further extraction of dues from those they consider most able to pay--the rich countries of the west. Where is their plan to tax China?
A minor, yet looming threat, is the reign of the Globalcrats and their insidious ideas for planetary regulation. They are grandstanding politicians who have haven't the least hesitation about leading a life devoted to consumption and enjoying the benefits of the carbon-based economy (the head of the OECD enjoys a luxurious, subsidized flat in Paris). They are in fact parasites, living off the host body of competitive capitalism, while contributing nothing to it. Their arrogance knows no bounds. Gurria says the way to fight the War on Carbon is through higher prices. Astonishingly, that is precisely what is happening in global oil markets, as the price of a barrel of oil exceeds $104 or so. Even more astonishingly, this desirable result was produced without the least reference to Globalcrats and their drive for global governance.
The real battle worth fighting these days is on the hot air produced by Globalcrats. This parade of preening global socialists apparently has many members. It is time to question the mandate of the OECD and US support for it in light of the clear anti-market values it now promotes.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
A Revolution in Weather
As a connoisseur of crackpot theories, as well as a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal of white European extraction, I pride myself on being behind the times. I'm a late-adopter of technology, would prefer a 1961 Austin Healy to a contemporary Porsche, and even though I love e mail and the internet, I'd happily move to an island with a load of books and a sack of postage stamps to send missives to my friends.
So when I have an idea, the instantaneous internet interface allows me to see how many people have already thought of it. Thus it was that I began to wonder how much evidence I could find in a five minute internet search that a significant number of people thought the Great Flood of Noah was caused by climate change. My research was not in vain. But I hardly expected to find legitimate scientists promoting the idea. Of course weather "caused" the Great Flood--what else? I wasn't that surprised to find more claims that climate change has caused everything from the bubonic plague to the persecution of witches (quick, prove you're not controlling the weather!), to the Dust Bowl in 1930s America. Now one must admit that these and other cataclysmic events weren't really "caused" by climate change, but by many factors including, in the Dust Bowl case, a shift in the Gulf Stream and, of course, no rain, or more scientifically, the supply of moist air from the Gulf of Mexico was reduced.
Weather happens. Growing up on the Gulf Coast I was impressed and fascinated with the extreme weather that brought hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, booming thunderstorms sometimes lasting three days, as well as amazing golden sunsets and crystal clear blue skies. Of course I just supposed that weather happened. Just as I supposed that oil, the stuff that turned the Gulf Coast from a swampy backwater to an industrial powerhouse, was a wondrous substance coaxed from the ground by rugged wildcatters who by dint of imagination, hard work, and daring, had powered the industrial rise of America.
You may gauge how benighted I was. For even long before oil, even in the age of whale oil and coal-powered sailing ships (think The Great White Fleet), man's industrial activities were altering the weather, so we now know. Of course, this would have been quite a stretch to imagine then, since the number of industrialized countries amounted to about five, if you count the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, and Japan, maybe throwing in a bit of Russia or adding a province or two in France. Yet the earth's weather, known for its booming, crashing, fickle, changeable ways, was on its way to even more extreme patterns. And despite half the Balkans being washed away in the Great Flood, despite the population displacements due to constant, localized changes in weather for ages, despite the harshest punishments inflicted on humankind by weather, we now apparently peer over the edge to the abyss.
We are no longer nomads with the ability to take our goats and head on down the road at the first sign of lack of moisture from the Gulf. We have settled by the hundreds of millions in fragile zones, coastal marshlands, earthquake zones, flood zones, and even in Manhattan. We are now more than ever exposed to the effects of extreme weather, a fact that must keep many insurance company executives awake at night. If we could only stop climate change we could all just go about building our beach houses and be done with it. Snow would return to the ski resorts (not noticeably absent this year, I'm told by ardent skiers), the arid plains would be watered again and made safe for GM corn and wheat crops, we wouldn't need to build roads in Bangladesh because people there wouldn't dream of disrupting the climate for the sake of plowing with tractors or taking a drive to the grocery store, and and we could go on developing Caribbean resorts, eco-friendly naturally, scudding about the planet in jets (burning ethanol based fuel), and consuming at an even greater rate while putting bad Mr. Extreme Weather in the dunce corner.
That human history has been bound up with extreme weather is apparent to any schoolchild. But now we have unlocked the key to human-designed weather alteration. It is not a revolutionary invention or an innovation in technology. It is carbon based fossil fuel, and if we can get rid of it we can re-engineer the weather back to its good old, pre-industrial extremes, and we won't have ourselves to blame for another Hurricane Katrina. If one happens, hey, we didn't do it. Don't blame us, we cycle to work. In the paradise of clean technology, which is not to be dismissed lightly as a desirable goal, carbon offsets will be as quaint as the telegraph. Our descendants will chuckle approvingly at our crude, as it were, attempts to cope with climate change, just as an internet-savvy teenager is agog at the idea of the telegraph. But the will admire our daring vision that extreme weather could be acted upon by humankind and brought to heel.
When we're told that past cataclysmic events were brought about by extreme weather, the message is conveyed that things are bound to get even worse now if we don't act. Impatience is one of the great tools of the revolutionary who wishes to move on as quickly as possible to the post-revolutionary vision of paradise. After all, if we can clearly see paradise and we know how to get there, why wait? Earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis may still be with us (I'm sure somewhere there is a link to climate change if only I would search the internet sufficiently) but through our heroic efforts to eliminate the burning of carbon-based resources we can otherwise be about destroying the environment through other human activity just as we've always done. But we are told we must move more hastily to reach post-revolutionary nirvana and save humankind, along with the rest of the planet. What more noble goal than to be a planetary hero and join the revolution?
As H. Michael Mogil writes in his beautifully-produced book, Extreme Weather, "Although we can work to stop global warming and climate change, the question to ask is 'should we?' We may prefer a specific climate or we may dislike another. But do we have the right to decide which climates stay and which ones go?" The IPCC states that we know with 95 percent certainty that humans are the cause of our current global warming period and that global warming is the cause of the apparent increase in extreme weather.
Humans have done plenty to screw up the planet, and we have caused every species of plant or creature to suffer. There are many things to which we can devote our energies and resources to improve the environment--land conservation, limits on the built environment, drastic reduction in water and air pollution, species conservation, and stricter regulation on chemicals commonly used in everything from computers to household cleaning products. The list could go on. Since it is highly unlikely that we will see the elimination of carbon-based fuels in this century, we might as well be about engineering cleaner-burning fuels and regulating and taxing emissions that pollute the air and water, causing ripple effects throughout the ecosystem. Using climate change as a club with which to beat us over the head while demanding immediate change becomes a useful tool to draw attention to environmental problems which are most probably emergencies. But we must realize that it is a crude instrument of policy which has other, ahem, knock-on effects when seen through the prism of many centuries of extreme weather.
So when I have an idea, the instantaneous internet interface allows me to see how many people have already thought of it. Thus it was that I began to wonder how much evidence I could find in a five minute internet search that a significant number of people thought the Great Flood of Noah was caused by climate change. My research was not in vain. But I hardly expected to find legitimate scientists promoting the idea. Of course weather "caused" the Great Flood--what else? I wasn't that surprised to find more claims that climate change has caused everything from the bubonic plague to the persecution of witches (quick, prove you're not controlling the weather!), to the Dust Bowl in 1930s America. Now one must admit that these and other cataclysmic events weren't really "caused" by climate change, but by many factors including, in the Dust Bowl case, a shift in the Gulf Stream and, of course, no rain, or more scientifically, the supply of moist air from the Gulf of Mexico was reduced.
Weather happens. Growing up on the Gulf Coast I was impressed and fascinated with the extreme weather that brought hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, booming thunderstorms sometimes lasting three days, as well as amazing golden sunsets and crystal clear blue skies. Of course I just supposed that weather happened. Just as I supposed that oil, the stuff that turned the Gulf Coast from a swampy backwater to an industrial powerhouse, was a wondrous substance coaxed from the ground by rugged wildcatters who by dint of imagination, hard work, and daring, had powered the industrial rise of America.
You may gauge how benighted I was. For even long before oil, even in the age of whale oil and coal-powered sailing ships (think The Great White Fleet), man's industrial activities were altering the weather, so we now know. Of course, this would have been quite a stretch to imagine then, since the number of industrialized countries amounted to about five, if you count the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, and Japan, maybe throwing in a bit of Russia or adding a province or two in France. Yet the earth's weather, known for its booming, crashing, fickle, changeable ways, was on its way to even more extreme patterns. And despite half the Balkans being washed away in the Great Flood, despite the population displacements due to constant, localized changes in weather for ages, despite the harshest punishments inflicted on humankind by weather, we now apparently peer over the edge to the abyss.
We are no longer nomads with the ability to take our goats and head on down the road at the first sign of lack of moisture from the Gulf. We have settled by the hundreds of millions in fragile zones, coastal marshlands, earthquake zones, flood zones, and even in Manhattan. We are now more than ever exposed to the effects of extreme weather, a fact that must keep many insurance company executives awake at night. If we could only stop climate change we could all just go about building our beach houses and be done with it. Snow would return to the ski resorts (not noticeably absent this year, I'm told by ardent skiers), the arid plains would be watered again and made safe for GM corn and wheat crops, we wouldn't need to build roads in Bangladesh because people there wouldn't dream of disrupting the climate for the sake of plowing with tractors or taking a drive to the grocery store, and and we could go on developing Caribbean resorts, eco-friendly naturally, scudding about the planet in jets (burning ethanol based fuel), and consuming at an even greater rate while putting bad Mr. Extreme Weather in the dunce corner.
That human history has been bound up with extreme weather is apparent to any schoolchild. But now we have unlocked the key to human-designed weather alteration. It is not a revolutionary invention or an innovation in technology. It is carbon based fossil fuel, and if we can get rid of it we can re-engineer the weather back to its good old, pre-industrial extremes, and we won't have ourselves to blame for another Hurricane Katrina. If one happens, hey, we didn't do it. Don't blame us, we cycle to work. In the paradise of clean technology, which is not to be dismissed lightly as a desirable goal, carbon offsets will be as quaint as the telegraph. Our descendants will chuckle approvingly at our crude, as it were, attempts to cope with climate change, just as an internet-savvy teenager is agog at the idea of the telegraph. But the will admire our daring vision that extreme weather could be acted upon by humankind and brought to heel.
When we're told that past cataclysmic events were brought about by extreme weather, the message is conveyed that things are bound to get even worse now if we don't act. Impatience is one of the great tools of the revolutionary who wishes to move on as quickly as possible to the post-revolutionary vision of paradise. After all, if we can clearly see paradise and we know how to get there, why wait? Earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis may still be with us (I'm sure somewhere there is a link to climate change if only I would search the internet sufficiently) but through our heroic efforts to eliminate the burning of carbon-based resources we can otherwise be about destroying the environment through other human activity just as we've always done. But we are told we must move more hastily to reach post-revolutionary nirvana and save humankind, along with the rest of the planet. What more noble goal than to be a planetary hero and join the revolution?
As H. Michael Mogil writes in his beautifully-produced book, Extreme Weather, "Although we can work to stop global warming and climate change, the question to ask is 'should we?' We may prefer a specific climate or we may dislike another. But do we have the right to decide which climates stay and which ones go?" The IPCC states that we know with 95 percent certainty that humans are the cause of our current global warming period and that global warming is the cause of the apparent increase in extreme weather.
Humans have done plenty to screw up the planet, and we have caused every species of plant or creature to suffer. There are many things to which we can devote our energies and resources to improve the environment--land conservation, limits on the built environment, drastic reduction in water and air pollution, species conservation, and stricter regulation on chemicals commonly used in everything from computers to household cleaning products. The list could go on. Since it is highly unlikely that we will see the elimination of carbon-based fuels in this century, we might as well be about engineering cleaner-burning fuels and regulating and taxing emissions that pollute the air and water, causing ripple effects throughout the ecosystem. Using climate change as a club with which to beat us over the head while demanding immediate change becomes a useful tool to draw attention to environmental problems which are most probably emergencies. But we must realize that it is a crude instrument of policy which has other, ahem, knock-on effects when seen through the prism of many centuries of extreme weather.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
The Low Risk Political Strategy
By talking about climate change and global warming as the greatest risk facing humanity, politicians run a low risk. Who is not for polar bears, the ice caps, and preventing flooding and famine? Who is for the destruction of the planet? Climate change is the perfect amorphous issue and it presents no risk to the politician who advocates it. What better political position that to act responsibly on behalf of future generations. It is old political wine in new bottles.
Business is another matter. The zeal with which investment houses, pension funds, and insurance companies have adopted the climate change mantra is disturbing. Clearly they see huge business opportunities in carbon trading, re-insurance, and clean technology. While I am all for private markets addressing pressing problems,and all for private money chasing whatever it wishes, one needs to question the basis on which pension funds and investors make decisions, not to say corporations who spend shareholder funds to spin their version of the threat. Once they have adopted a particular approach, they will bring to bear their lobbying resources to the public debate with attempts to shape the business landscape in order to profit, while positioning themselves as the good guys riding to the rescue of planetary peril.
The Investor Network on Climate Risk, for example, represents a thoughtful group of people who now stand ready to invest other people's money on the basis of a political position. One wonders how many members of this network are attending the Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change this week, where they will hear actual policy options as well as the science debated. Updates are here
http://www.reason.com/news/show/125281.html
where Ronald Bailey is reporting from the conference.
The low risk political statements from politicians coupled with the trillions of dollars that investors can bring to bear on the debate should inspire dread in anyone hoping for sound public policy in the interests of consumers. One notes little consistency among investment houses and corporations when it comes to environment.
The same investment firm willing to discourse on climate change risk is quite willing to hold stock in Shell, one of the largest developers of the Alberta Tar Sands, a filthy, but perhaps necessary, project if ever there was one. The same corporations promoting corporate responsibilty are usually those whose operations vitally disrupt communities and environments where they operate. In busines as in politics, it seems, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
Business is another matter. The zeal with which investment houses, pension funds, and insurance companies have adopted the climate change mantra is disturbing. Clearly they see huge business opportunities in carbon trading, re-insurance, and clean technology. While I am all for private markets addressing pressing problems,and all for private money chasing whatever it wishes, one needs to question the basis on which pension funds and investors make decisions, not to say corporations who spend shareholder funds to spin their version of the threat. Once they have adopted a particular approach, they will bring to bear their lobbying resources to the public debate with attempts to shape the business landscape in order to profit, while positioning themselves as the good guys riding to the rescue of planetary peril.
The Investor Network on Climate Risk, for example, represents a thoughtful group of people who now stand ready to invest other people's money on the basis of a political position. One wonders how many members of this network are attending the Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change this week, where they will hear actual policy options as well as the science debated. Updates are here
http://www.reason.com/news/show/125281.html
where Ronald Bailey is reporting from the conference.
The low risk political statements from politicians coupled with the trillions of dollars that investors can bring to bear on the debate should inspire dread in anyone hoping for sound public policy in the interests of consumers. One notes little consistency among investment houses and corporations when it comes to environment.
The same investment firm willing to discourse on climate change risk is quite willing to hold stock in Shell, one of the largest developers of the Alberta Tar Sands, a filthy, but perhaps necessary, project if ever there was one. The same corporations promoting corporate responsibilty are usually those whose operations vitally disrupt communities and environments where they operate. In busines as in politics, it seems, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
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