Global warming and conservatives
I’ve been following Jim Manzi’s series of posts on global warming over at the American Scene with some interest, mostly because I think it’ll get liberals in a tizzy. It is now socially irresponsible, the left would have us believe, to not do absolutely everything we can to ensure global warming doesn’t take place. Emissions must be slashed! Carbon must be capped! Density is the solution! etc., etc.
I’m not going to comment on the economics now, other than to say that what the enviro set is proposing is to drastically damage our economy now for an exceptionally mild amelioration of the warming and some possible economic benefit to future generations. Manzi’s posts do a good job of summarizing the issues, and for more you should check out this Freeman Dyson piece.
One of the commenters on Manzi’s post today wrote “you’re going to grant that climate change will lead to catastrophic effects, then convince the public to accept them using an economic rationale? Good luck getting your guy to shout ‘DISCOUNT RATE‘ from the podium to the cheering throngs.” But this commenter has it entirely backwards: politicians need to make the case for sacrifice to the American people. I’m firmly convinced the American people will do absolutely nothing about global warming on their own–it’s simply not a salient issue. In the most recent WSJ/NBC News poll, “the environment and global warming” was the seventh most important issue, falling behind jobs, Iraq, the cost of gas, health care, terrorism, and illegal immigration.
So my question for those on the left is a pretty simple one: How do you make a compelling case for wrecking our economy now over an issue no one cares about so people who live near the equator 150 years from now might have a marginally better life? How do you do it?
Furthermore, how, specifically, would you implement your proposals? It’s all well and good to say that density is the answer, but in the real world that’s not a solution. Gas prices aren’t driven entirely by people living in the suburbs, and even if they were how would you fix the problem? Forcibly move everyone living and working within a 50 mile radius of a city into said city? And how does this help the people who live in rural America and are paying just as high a price for gas and have nowhere to move? Do we just eliminate those tiny towns dotting the midwest where tens of millions of our citizens live? Force them into the cities as well? Try the opposite of Mao’s cultural revolution?
That’s just gasoline. I defy you to convince Americans that it’s worth radically raising the prices of everyday goods–the real life effect of strict carbon caps–to marginally allay the costs of global warming in the distant future. This is why global warming is a winning issue for conservatives: inertia will lead to resistance towards radical change, a resistance that conservatives share.