Those who believe in human-caused climate change often point out that skeptics are most likely to be economic conservatives who don’t like the idea of problems that can’t be solved by the free market. But the accusation goes the other way as well: believers are most likely to be self-described progressives who love big government and are thrilled by the idea of a problem that can only be solved by making government bigger.
This was recently pointed out by Michael Shellenberger & Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute (and co-authors of “The Death of Environmentalism“). One of their main exhibits is a 2011 article from The Nation by Naomi Klein.
“Climate change is a collective problem, and it demands collective action,” says Klein. “Climate change supercharges the pre-existing case for virtually every progressive demand on the books, binding them into a coherent agenda based on a clear scientific imperative.” Those “progressive demands” include “publicly funded elections and stripping corporations of their status as ‘people’ under the law”; “ending the cult of shopping” along with all economic growth except “for parts of the world still pulling themselves out of poverty”; and of course “subways, streetcars and light-rail systems that are not only everywhere but affordable to everyone [and] energy-efficient affordable housing along those transit lines.”
It boosts endurance, stamina and energy to focus on details only, thus reducing your stress levels as cialis without prescription well. 2. Ajanta pharmacy is canadian discount cialis the manufacturer of this highly effective substance ensures the best results in bed. If medications don’t work, more aggressive treatments may be recommended, including penile browse this order cheap cialis implants and surgery. Prostate cancer is only definitively diagnosed by finding cancer cells on a lowest prices for cialis biopsy sample taken from the prostate gland. Klein is a journalist, not a climatologist, yet she firmly believes human-caused climate change is real. But it doesn’t take much to wonder how firmly she would believe in it if it didn’t support her preconceived agenda.
Meanwhile, Harvard University historian Niall Ferguson worries that America is losing its way by becoming more regulatory and bureaucratic–just what the progressives want. He points out that in 2006 it took 366 days to “start a business, register a property, pay taxes, get an import and export license and enforce a contract”; today it takes 433, which makes this nation one of the few countries in the world that are getting more, not less, bureaucratic. Not surprisingly, within the U.S., the fastest-growing states tend to be the ones with the least regulation.
A couple of years ago, Ferguson gave a Ted talk outlining the “six killer apps of prosperity,” in other words, the six institutions needed for economic growth. Those six are competition, the scientific revolution, property rights, modern medicine, a consumer society, and the work ethic. Klein’s progressives would like to outlaw at least three of those (competition, property rights, and consumer society), and their idea of “science” is to call people names like “deniers” if they disagree with them.
The Antiplanner is not convinced that human-caused climate change is real. But even if I were convinced, the progressive solution is likely to do far more damage to our economy and, because poor people are not as gentle with the environment as the wealthy, our world than climate change. There are things we can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are relatively cost free, and other things that are very low in cost. Klein’s solutions instead impose the absolute highest costs possible, including the destruction of our economy.
Hey, maybe after trillions in “investments” in streetcars, TOD, chasing away the all-evil element carbon, and pushing “forward” to the new, agrarian, walking & transit based economy, we can finally reap the planner-promised rewards and enjoy being the new Soviet men. What say you?
“Climate change is a collective problem, and it demands collective action,” says Klein. “Climate change supercharges the pre-existing case for virtually every progressive demand on the books, binding them into a coherent agenda based on a clear scientific imperative.” Those “progressive demands” include “publicly funded elections and stripping corporations of their status as ‘people’ under the law”; “ending the cult of shopping” along with all economic growth except “for parts of the world still pulling themselves out of poverty”; and of course “subways, streetcars and light-rail systems that are not only everywhere but affordable to everyone [and] energy-efficient affordable housing along those transit lines.”
What do the above have to do with climate change?
I hate to break the news to her, but in large areas of the United States, the “subways, streetcars and light-rail systems” are powered by fossil fuels.
That’s a rather arrogant summing up, assuming the government bigger could fix environmental woes. It might be helpful to remember that the worst polluter on planet Earth is not a major corporation, but the United States federal government. If we’re going to be serious about reducing our impact on the environment, we need to advocate for less, not more government and we’re not talking about how many trees they consume for paperwork, hardly. The federal government is the single largest consumer of energy with 500,000 buildings and 600,000 vehicles. In 2009 alone, the government’s bill for utilities and fuel totaled $24 billion, so it’s no surprise that the government’s carbon footprint is 123.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year.
And their attitude towards environmental trends are recent. They built more dams causing more ecological harm than any private landowner and now are in the business of spending even more of your money to demolish them. With the exception of nuclear power and SuperFund sites environmentalist activism directed against the government’s pollution is virtually nonexistent. Of course the Soviet Union did more environmental harm in it’s 70 years of existence than the US did in 200. Half the world’s oil spilled occurs in Russia where they spill more in a month than the entire BP Gulf spill, about 30 million barrels a year. Laced the entire countryside with 600 million tons of radioactive waste from it’s antiquated nuclear reactor technology such as the RBMK reactor that led to the Chernobyl disaster. Whole reactors and nuclear powered vessels were dumped in to the Barents and Kara Sea.
The US military spent the last 50 years building one of the largest toxic chemical arsenals on the face of the Earth. Then there’s Dioxin’s and it’s worst public relations backlash in history…Agent Orange. Depleted uranium a toxic heavy metal and what did they decide to do with it, use it as ammunition. In spite of the evidence, the environmental impact of the US military goes largely unaddressed by environmental organizations and was not focus of discussion. The Department of Defense produces more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined. Nuclear tests in Nevada in the 1950?s were deliberately done when the wind was blowing into Utah upon a “low use segment of the population” as an internal memo at the time put it. One fatality was Utah governor Scott Matheson, exposed as a child, who died years later from an exotic type of cancer.? His son, also a politician, believes his father died due to exposure to nuclear blast radiation.
That being said is it in the nature of people to care for the environment in a business sense, for some perhaps but look past the perceived benefits or noble intentions. Is GE lobbying to remove incandescent lights to save the planet. Hell no. They’re doing it to cut out the competitors. The Energy Independence and Security Act signed into law under president Bush in 2007 requires light bulbs to use 25% less energy and that endangers the good old-fashioned incandescent bulb. All CFL bulbs are made overseas where as the US retains production of incandescent lights through GE, Sylvania, and various generic makers. With the bulb ban comes the bulb making ban. So GE saves money by slashing jobs so they can make CFL bulbs in China. They don’t give a damn about the environment (especially since CFL bulbs contain mercury; break one and you basically need a hazmat team to clean it up). Once again, government telling me what to do, even in the privacy of my own home! What’s next?… Telling me which health insurance I can get? Oh wait…
And for those breaking out the shovels, tree’s will do relatively little to help with CO2 emissions. Even if you replanted all of North America you’d sequester all of the US’ emissions. But not enough to handle Canada, China, India, Europe and Australia. It’s the soil, which has 3-4 times more carbon than the vegetation above them. If disturbed by planting activities they’ll release carbon with a vengeance. And trees have a habit of dying and decomposing, which puts a lot of that CO2 back into the atmosphere so decades of planting can easily be undermined. And since our goal is to pull CO2 permanently, trees are not the best solution unless they’re buried like the Carboniferous period. Most of the planets oxygen was/is produced from bacteria, algae, diatoms, and plankton that live in the sea. They absorb more carbon in a day than the Amazon does in a month. When they sequester carbon they also sequester minerals to build “skeletons”. Assuming they aren’t eaten (which most of them are which provides most of the worlds biomass) they die naturally and sink to the bottom of the sea in a phenomena known as “marine snow” to be buried under sediment for hundreds of thousands of years hopefully before they are eaten by bottom dwelling marine life. Locked in mineral form buried on the sea floor is how much of the globes carbon has been handled throughout geologic history and where most of our oil and gas came from. It’s not to say tree’s aren’t useful. They can shade a house or be a windbreak reducing heating/AC costs 10-15% so indirectly they can lower emissions. They provide habitat, food, situate micro-climate, absorb pollution and volatile organics, provide shade, aesthetically attractive, prevent soil erosion, restore river habitat and that’s enough reason to plant them. People don’t burn down the rainforest cause they’re evil, this isn’t Captain Planet. They do it because they’re desperately poor. Rich people can afford wind turbines, hybrid cars, electric appliances, carbon offsets, Poor people can afford wood, the primary fuel and construction source of much of the world.
In 2010, the American Association for Advancement of Science got into a bit of a pinch when its magazine, Science, was caught photoshoped with a faked image of a lone polar bear on a tiny ice block. Maybe the problem is that enough polar bears aren’t drowning. Populations are booming, especially in the Canadian arctic, the problem is we shoot 1,000 bears a year, that’s manageable and the polar bears are surviving well on a new food source, human garbage. Like many species that thrive on the fringe of human habitation, Coyotes, Raccoons, Possums, Foxes, Owls. There’s a mountain of data indicating that Arctic ice was reduced far beyond even its current limits for millennia after the end of the ice age. In fact, the Arctic Ocean may have been virtually ice-free in September. The evidence is from dead trees buried in the Eurasian tundra where it is too cold for them to grow today. They carbon-date back to millennia after the end of the ice age, about 9-10 thousand years ago. We know how warm it had to be for there to be trees thriving for centuries in the Russian tundra. Summer temperatures in the high arctic would have to have been as much as 12 degrees warmer than they were in our pre-climate change hysteria in order to support the long term growth of trees there. Despite this near complete absence of ice in the summer, the Polar Bear survived, so did the Walrus, Inuit culture flourished and human habitation expanded past the equatorial regions.
I visit this site for several reasons, but in the end I suppose, for a perspective on bizarro world. (Since I don’t live in the US, Faux News is not an option.)
And this post does not disappoint! A master recipe today from Randal: start with a couple of strawmen, add some gratuitous digs, fold-in some blithe assertions unsupported by facts, season with some unrelated points, top-off with a hefty dash of hyperbole. Sit back and enjoy one fine s..t souffle.
So many whoppers that it would be like shooting fish in a barrel trying to unpack this. Just picking one somewhat at random “(Klein’s progressives) idea of “science” is to call people names like “deniers” if they disagree with them.”
Since when did I join Naomi Klein’s posse?
Seriously, there is science and there is policy. We can disagree about the possible policy approaches to climate change, but the fact is there is NO disagreement about the science — at least the fact that the earth is getting hotter and it’s largely caused by humans; open questions are how fast and to what affect (current prevailing views: faster then expected, and dire). In the face of a huge body of scientific research — the question “AGW: real or not”? is settled — anyone who “disagrees” with this evidence rightly deserves to be labelled a “denier.”
OK, one more I can’t pass up. The assertion that “… poor people are not as gentle with the environment as the wealthy.” Good thing I wasn’t drinking anything when I read this, might have spewed all over my computer. Two words: Al Gore.
“at least the fact that the earth is getting hotter and it’s largely caused by humans; open questions are how fast and to what affect (current prevailing views: faster then expected, and dire).”
“Largely”? Yeah, no. Our guesses about how much human activity has contributed are just that – guesses. And as for the “current prevailing views” both on whether the increasing temperatures will continue, for how long, how high, and to what effect, those prevailing views are extremely weak, scientifically. Our ability to predict climate trends and calculate what actual effect that would have are, to be charitable, unproven. They are, in fact, well on their way to being affirmatively disproven as climate model after climate model slips toward and past the 5% confidence mark.
You’re right that we can confidently say the earth has warmed and that human activity has had some not-insignificant effect. Everything else is just guesswork, and to claim otherwise is just as bad of a treatment of science as to be in utter denial of global warming.
why did they change the phrase in recent years from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change”, cause even if they’re wrong about a general warming they can still attribute destructive weather (even winter weather like blizzards or heavy snow or frosts) to human interaction with the climate. Which is true, it’s not a question of belief, we are changing our climate, there’s no debate about that. The question is, how much is attributed by man versus how much is attributed to nature which also pumps out greenhouse gases and anti-greenhouse gases. For the last fifty years Sulfur and nitrous emissions from coal and automobiles did help lower the Earth’s temperature by about a degree. Pollution controls solved most of those problems and the temperature rose again. There’s four types of people in the climate wars.
1) Deniers: it’s a myth ,a conspiracy, not happening, excuse to tax businesses or as the Republicans say, more research is needed. Express the least degree of concern and probably denounce other environmental concerns as well.
2) Luke-warmers: It exists, it’s a concern, but it’s not the most pressing issue society faces, compared to poverty, air quality, food security, trade, peace, other environmental problems such as conservation, species or habitat or energy policy. And they run the gamut of those with little to no concern to moderate to severe concern; in the long run.
3) Clueless masses: The majority of people, who agree with overwhelming influence of media or Hollywood that argue in favor of taxation or spending to alleviate the supposed societal impacts. Or do things in everyday life as passionate advocates of climate stewardship. They buy the hybrid, turn the lights off, take shorter showers or engage in behaviors that please their sense of conscience; as do some of the luke-wamers.
4) Doomdayers: Virtually cult like behavior, some are the neo-luddites advocating return to simplified lifestyles, others are fanatics engaged in vivid discussions and argue human activity is a curse to environmental stability; Often tying other phobias to illustrate that the problem cannot be solved even if we wanted to anyway, circumstances such as Peak oil, peak potable water, glacier recession, desertification, mass extinction, food insecurity, water wars.
Boy oh boy! The culture warriors have come out guns a blazin’ today. I used to come to this site for a thoughtful argument about planning issues. Today’s post and subsequent comments is why I’m participating less and less. Today it’s the two sides of the culture wars basically calling each other assholes. This blog is falling hard.
Mr. O’Toole has abandoned his deft use of data and fiscal argumentation and resorted to, “America is losing its way… just what the progressives want.” This of course elicits the obligatory Fox News blast. The wheels just keep on spinning but the vehicle doesn’t move. I’m just worried the wheels are going to spin off and the blog is going to be reduced to just another angry political cesspool filled with hate.
Soapbox dismount. Bennett out.
Naomi Klein is one of those writers for whom I have a hard time finding much respect because the individuals who cite her work tend to be such gasbags as Bill Maher and random, brain-dead Twitter users who use “KOCH LIES!” or “FAUX NEWS!” in lieu of actual arguments.
e.g. “Hard-hitting, politically charged actor John Cusack gives a big thumbs up to Naomi Klein’s ‘Shock Doctrine’!”
*fart, collapse, hit head on counter, pass out*
I’d read the WSJ article by Niall Ferguson that Randal cited, making the case that overregulation is strangling our economy, based on data from a World Bank report. He cited data showing it’s gotten longer to start a business in the US, but I found it odd he didn’t cite how the US did compared to other countries. So I looked at the summary rankings in the World Bank report, and found that the US ranked 4th (after Singapore, Hong Kong, and New Zealand) overall on the “ease of doing business” out of 185 countries rated. What Ferguson did was cherry-pick one data point to make his case, when looking at the whole of the data paints an entirely different picture. There are plenty of conservative writers who fairly and honestly make their case who I respect. Ferguson isn’t one of them.
Randal also mentions Ferguson’s TED Talk on his “six killer apps.” I didn’t see that, but I did see a program on PBS where Ferguson covered the same theory. The last app isn’t really the work ethic, it’s Protestantism, from which he believes the work ethic derives. I found his arguments to be unsupported with anything other than conjecture and utterly unpersuasive and, as a non-Protestant, offensive. Look at all the wealth that’s been generated by the likes of Apple and Google in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, hardly the heart of the Bible Belt, to cite just one example.
believers are most likely to be self-described progressives who love big government and are thrilled by the idea of a problem that can only be solved by making government bigger.
Randal, the vast majority of humans on this planet accept the scientific consensus that man-made climate change is happening. Are you claiming that the vast majority of humans on the planet are librul gummint-lovin’ hippies? How strange!
DS
Dan, you peddled that crap back in December of 2009. You wheeled out a survey that cherry picked countries and cities.
That is: There is NO reliable evidence to support the assertion that “the vast majority of humans on this planet accept the scientific consensus that man-made climate change is happening.”
Shorter form: You are full of crap.
Say hi to Mom for me.
Awh! You know Frank that is still as dishonest today as it was then to assert the survey cherry-picked. And mendacious. Nonetheless: the CAPMUS Standard has been met!
There is NO reliable evidence to support the assertion that “the vast majority of humans on this planet accept the scientific consensus that man-made climate change is happening.”
Sure there is: 1., 2., 3., 4., 5., 6..
Tsk, tsk. So little work, so easy to find. So much amusement.
So anyway, Randal, back to reality: how is the carbon tax doing in Australia? Economy going down the tubes?
DS
Wow, Dan. You’re the liar. Click on the link to the Gallup survey referenced in the Wiki article you listed, and you get the title:
“Awareness, Opinions About Global Warming Vary Worldwide
Many unaware, do not necessarily blame human activities”
Note the word MANY. A “substantial minority” is a term used by another article linked from the Wiki page.
At any rate, even though you’re wrong about “the vast majority”, you’re using an appeal to the majority fallacy. Even if “the vast majority” believes, that is proof of nothing except their beliefs and faith in science performed by consensus rather than falsifiable experimentation.
Enjoy your massive CO2 footprint suburban SFH.
Speaking of lying and cherry-picking, I wonder if it is dishonest to focus on a couple phrases cherry-picked from two of six refs given (seven if you follow the link Frank wants you to believe was cherry-picked) instead of the aggregate, which clearly refutes the false assertion of There is NO reliable evidence.
You’ve already met your CAPMUs Standard. Why pile on with the making up stuff?
And thanks for the LOLz about ‘appeal to majority fallacy’. Hoot!
Now, back to objective reality: Randal, how’s the Australian economy holding up under the carbon tax?
DS
You’re making shit up. And you’re an AGW zealot. Anyone who posts AGW-related links to their Facebook as frequently as you clearly has a disorder not yet cataloged for the DSM-IV. Why don’t you take another trip across the world to see whales or drive the pickup parked in front of your house or go on another Jeep Wrangler excursion?
Speaking of carbon taxes, I hope they apply to the vitriolic gas spewed by loud mouthed, hypocritical planners like Dan Staley.
Can’t address point, makes up sh–, pouts and flails.
CAPMUS-PAF. Thanks for that new designation.
But back to objective reality and away from pouting spam: Randal, how’s the Australian economy – run by government lovin hippies – holding up under the carbon tax?
DS
[deleted]
Whatever they think about climate change, the vast majority of people on the planet are not climatologists. Enough climatologists do not believe in human-caused climate change that I feel comfortable in maintaining my skepticism.
Randal, only a few climatologists don’t think man is causing the current warming/changes. A couple percent.
DS
I see how it works around here. Dan goes around calling “widdle namey names” (his words, not mine) and emasculating people (“boy”) and posting while drunk on Merlot, and that’s fine.
Dan calls me a liar, so I post publicly available information (which is easily found when searching “dan staley” + resume) and I get [deleted].
I realize this thread is dead but …
http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/11/15/why-climate-deniers-have-no-credibility-science-one-pie-chart
Out of 13,950 peer-reviewed climate studies published between 1991-2012, 24 (0.17%) “clearly reject global warming or endorse a cause other than CO2 emissions for observed warming.”