Climate Change: Are We Focused on What Matters?
I’m woefully under-educated on the science of climate change, but I’ve read enough to suspect we might be engaged in the wrong debates.
Today, we argue about whether or not the planet is warming, and — if it is warming — how much of that trend is caused by (and thus can be controlled by) human action or counteraction.
These arguments, like all arguments, are made by terribly imperfect people. What’s more, in the case of climate change, those terribly imperfect people have great passion for their respective points of view. Inevitably, that combination — great passion plus terrible imperfection — leads to petty, distracting, spin-off spats about impolitical emails and the like.
Enough already. We need to re-direct the terms of these debates to different and perhaps more pragmatic ground.
For instance: We know there are universal (beyond-global) factors at play here; e.g., the sun, our planet’s orbit, etc. We have zero control over those universal factors and they might just contribute more significantly to climate change than any actions we do or don’t take. Accordingly, shouldn’t we spend at least as much, if not more, time debating ways to survive climate change than we do ways to prevent it? (Why does the debate about how to prevent the melting of polar ice caps take precedent over the debate about how to keep Manhattan functioning despite rising sea levels?)
Another example: We know our current addiction to oil shifts significant money and power away from us and into the hands of what Thomas Friedman labels “petro-dictators.” And domestic drilling might not change this power-and-money shift by any meaningful measure. Accordingly, shouldn’t we spend as much, if not more, time debating ways to develop alternative fuel technologies for the sake of national security and prosperity than for the sake of climate change?
Finally, while we’re at — i.e., developing alternative fuels for the sake of national security and prosperity — wouldn’t it be a nice gift to our children and grandchildren (climate change or not) to emphasize cleaner, sustainable alternatives?
Call me naive. I am. Regardless, I think these and related questions have merit and deserve greater attention than they currently receive.
74 Responses to “Climate Change: Are We Focused on What Matters?”
Humans have been adapting to climate change since the first humans showed up and will be doing that in the foreseeable future. I could not agree more that it is preferable to look at adaptation strategies, if in fact there is a radical shift in climate. Holland has done an amazing job of adapting to sea level, have they not? Imagine winter wheat crops moving north into the fertile Canadian Plains. Imagine the huge growth in habitable environment in places like Siberia, unlocked by the gentle warming of the planet over the next hundred years. And there is the enourmous reduction in heating bills around the world, easing pressure on energy prices. Adaptation to climate change might well be considered as taking advantage of it, if the UN doesn't screw it up.
I'm not sure that I agree with the concept that fully exploiting domestic resources would not have a major impact on importation of oil. In fact, it would seem to be the easiest and most technologically feasible means of pursuing such a goal. Radical environmentalism stands in the way of progress but we should be able to lower imports, create jobs, increase revenue, and reduce funding to our enemies in this manner. It won't last forever, but neither did whale oil. Meanwhile it gives us time to grow and develop again.
I'm all for promoting “clean” energy resources when they produce competitively priced, market driven alternatives. The most obvious of these is nuclear power. Once again, radical environmentalists block the way, insisting on alternative sources requiring massive subsidies and potentially crippling the economy. The challenge is almost entirely a political one — how do we overcome the Green Agenda and start making progress?
I would like to add one other point. To the extent that major climate change is likely to be addressed constructively, it will most likely involve an advanced technological approach. Several examples exist, such as a means of creating carbon sinks, or of seeding cloud formation to increase solar ray reflection. The key here is that advanced technology is produced by and made feasible by prosperous and innovative economies. It is not likely to arise from hippie havens, tree huggers, or elites focused on restricting the use of toilet paper to 'save the planet'. Pursuing nonsensical and pretend 'solutions' like Cap and Trade, higher taxes, and worldwide redistribution of wealth as advocated by many AGW alarmists might ironically cripple our future ability to create and implement advanced technological solutions to climate change. In brief, pursuing the alarmist agenda could well mean shooting ourselves in the foot.
The best gift we can leave our children is a world in which we return to the rational thought and free inquiry that goes hand in glove with a vigorous capitalist system maximizing wealth, and spurring superior technology. Imagine if our parents had not left Americans such an opportunity but had demanded every species and every tree and every snail darter be preserved for all eternity, as if we were the keepers of a museum and not the lead explorers of a strange and wonderful planet — and beyond.
Any worthwhile look at environmental problems requires honesty and good information. Look at what we are doing to the oceans, look at continued rain forest destruction, look at all the evidence of warming documented within the last several decades, look at the incredible amount of habitat loss around the world. This isn't just about a few minor species or about vacationland in Siberia. To the extent that alarmism exists, the reactions to it are just as counterproductive as the alarmism to begin if they are little more than a pendulum swing in the opposite direction. These problems are real and understanding them is the key to addressing them.
What I keep emphasizing when I have these discussions with people is the ethics of doing nothing versus trying to slow or halt climate change. It's not just Manhattan, but much of Florida, the Netherlands, whole countries in the Pacific, California's central valley (where they grow so much of the food we eat) & every low lying patch of land in the world. Millions could be displaced. Fortunes could be entirely lost. Yet people are still saying “prove it.” (which is not what science does, it shows indications, trends, etc. “scientific fact” rarely is.)
It is our ethical challenge, our moral imperative, to change things to a more sustainable path. We already know that the world oil reserves won't last forever, but we still act unethically when we pretend (or imagine or don't even think about it) that they will.
Thank you for this post.
I agree that more arguments should be used about developing alternatives in order to increase security and stability. However, I have grown strongly convinced that the common wisdom about the effects of global warming is way too sanguine.
The official IPCC project suggests that Europe, North America and Northern Asia will benefit from rising temperatures which will lead to longer growing times, while Southern areas will experience more drought. Pretty much the industrialized countries are supposed to get off better and the underdeveloped ones worse. Figures.
However, there are signs this isn't going to happen at all. Leaving out global effects (such as the acidification of the oceans, which is already killing off coral and would eventually lead to many lifeless zones) even the areas that are supposed to get warmer and/or wetter are changing so rapidly that their ecosystems are collapsing. Canada/the Rockies have massive tree dieoffs from pine beetles that spread rapidly without old weather while aspens are dying at an amazing rate, leaving huge tinder boxes.
The bulk of rice (and apparently wheat/corn, as just revealed) production in the world would fall 60-70% if it wasn't moved. And while the models officially called for extreme weather “variability” in practice that means massive droughts followed by massive flooding. In the last decade, we're already seeing many instances of 100-1000 year droughts followed by 100-1000 year rainfalls leading to flooding.
I also recently read someone that pointed out that timing of precipitation and seasons will also matter. He noted that most of the mountain west relies on the spring melt, and that if the temperatures rise 3-4 weeks earlier, then most of the water will have runoff before it the plants come up. After all, temperature isn't the only limiting factor, so is the amount of sunlight — and that won't change.
I am growing increasingly convinced that “mitigation” does not mean building more levees and desalinating a bit more water. Instead it means the mass migration of cities and farms across the whole world, as well as extremely expensive damming and food storage in order to deal with weather variability. And of course the realization that there will be more violent weather keeping us on edge, and (continuing) collapse of the ocean as a food supply.
Commenter DLS has one of the strangest positions I've ever heard, wherein he fully agrees with the projections I've outlined but said it was no big deal because we'd just move our civilization in that manner. Ok, well the cost of doing that is enormous and mind boggling even if we do it successfully, let alone the fact that it will lead to massive conflict over how to do it, and surely world war.
I agree that many “solutions” are highly politicized and don't make sense from a scientific standpoint, however I am also becoming intimately involved in this field and am discovering that there are tons of ways to make cheap, sustainable solutions that we need to start migrating to. They already aren't much worse than grid parity, and large scaling will make them much cheaper. Clean energy is far cheaper than dirty, even without clean up costs.
And all that can be done with an investment far less than the amount we send trying to prop up the bloated and inefficient financial, agricultural and military complexes. It is really becoming quite obscene that we are throwing around trillions of dollars on those things, while we could see massive energy production out of geothermal, concentrated solar energy and new cars for a combined 10-20 billion.
Yet people are still saying “prove it.” (which is not what science does, it shows indications, trends, etc. “scientific fact” rarely is.)
But how can they not say “prove it”? The costs of doing nothing may be enormous, but so are the costs of doing something. The skeptics are not unreasonably concerned that trillions spent on carbon reduction might buy no more than a few years' delay in the inevitable. Given uncertain climate models and much guesswork about the future, surely the moral obligation doesn't go only one direction.
Basically, my complaint is people insisting that bad science isn't. If the stats, indicators, models & whatever, point to the climate warming, & that the amount of carbon in however many forms which we have put into the air is shown to be a major contributor, then denying such is bad science.
People are asking for rock solid proof, science doesn't do that except in our imaginations. There does exist as solid of evidence as one can wish, but evidence does not equal proof to the non-scientific mind. Even as people denied the miracles of Jesus which they themselves had witnessed, people are denying what is right before them today.
Yes, the moral obligation does go both ways, but sometimes all the one side can do is wave the evidence around & try to get the other side to notice it. If you have another suggestion, I, for one, would love to hear it.
denying such is bad science.
Phrasing it that way makes it sound very tidy, but climate change is much more than a scientific issue. The major controversy isn't about the science, it's about the political and economic implications of the options open to us. Trying to frame the issue as settled science is one reason the left is having trouble getting buy-in.
Another reason is a penchant for finding problems of this sort. The climate joins a long list of things which had been taking care of themselves for centuries and now, suddenly, require intervention in the form of usually dubious government programs. Having cried wolf so many times, the left's credibility is worn raw and hoarse.
Please, this entire politization of science relating to the environment is doing nobody any good. We can find endless excuses to turn away from responsible stewardship, that's easy. But we are all effected and future generations are going to be even more adversely effected if we do that. As for that “long list of things which had been taking care of themselves for centuries” – that doesn't include the relatively short time period of time the industrial age has shifted into a gear high enough to impact the environment on such a huge scale.
Please, this entire politization of science relating to the environment is doing nobody any good.
Huh? Scientists are suggesting we redirect theeconomy of the entire planet. How could that not be a political issue? As much respect as I have for science, its proper role is to advise on likely outcomes, not to dictate policy.
that doesn't take into account the relatively short time period of time the industrial age has shifted into a gear high enough to impact the environment
Sure, I understand the arguments that this time the wolf is real. And it may be. Of course, the tragedy in the fable was that one of the wolves eventually turned out to be real.
What credibility issues are you referring to exactly, Dr J? The two that come to my mind are “global cooling” in the 70s and the ozone. Basically, this is how the global cooling issue went: Some climate scientists 3 decades ago saw potential for global cooling due to increasing particulates in the air which blocked sunlight. Many other scientists agreed with the effect but thought the model wasn't developed enough. One particular scientist who had seen a potential for cooling had based the projections off of data which wasn't global in nature. Others pointed out the sampling problem and the guy (sorry can't remember name) said, “oh, you are right,” and fixed his model. There was no “consensus”, no independent corroboration over 20 years of the trend, etc. This is exactly how science is supposed to work. To me, proposing a model, having others point out its flaws, and getting rid of the model is evidence that this is good work being done.
As for the ozone, my understanding is that the problem was real. CFCs were actually depleting the ozone. After years of political work, CFCs were reduced, and the ozone problem has been mitigated. Again, this means the models were correct. We don't worry so much about the ozone now because we actually took the required action.
But those are just the two cases that come to my mind. What do you have in mind? My best guess is population concerns?
Going back to Pete's post, unfortunately, the best “adaptation” strategy is to stop doing the thing forcing us to adapt. Yes, factors outside of human control do change the climate system of the Earth, but there are no comprehensive models that indicate this is triggering the actual warming we are seeing today. The decent ones that do exist are all piecemeal. It seems it would be better therefore not to spend time developing strategies to handle something that isn't happening now, even though it will one day, because “one day” in this case is on the scale of thousands of years. If it helps on a political framework to pretend we are going to build huge seawalls because of the sun, then I guess we can pretend. At the same time, though, it would certainly be better to take that money going towards seawalls and use it to convert coal plants to “clean coal”.
What credibility issues are you referring to exactly, Dr J?
Many verses in the liberal canon repeat the theme that something that used to manage itself now needs direction from American liberals. Democracy used to work well, but now the corporations have too loud a voice, and we must therefore have term limits and campaign finance laws and other meters on free speech. Free markets may have delivered billions of people from poverty over the past centuries, but now greed has poisoned the well, and they can no longer do the job without heavy regulation or government takeover. The planet's ecosystem has been adapting to changing conditions for billions of years, yet unless we aggressively manage our limited supplies of water and trees and so on right away, collapse is certain. People used to be able to sign legally binding contracts, but suddenly renters are getting evicted and having to find other places to live, so obviously the government has to start dictating the terms of leases. Humanity has been climbing steadily out of barbarism and violence for centuries, yet suddenly violent video games are holding the species back and must be regulated. I used to get myself the half mile to kindergarten on my own, but today there's a child molester in every van, and parents who let their 8-year-old find his way to the corner risk social services intervention.
Plenty of things on the list actually *are* problems, of course, in the sense that they fall short of the ideal. But the danger comes in losing perspective on the problems, panicking about them, and failing to ask hard but important questions about the proposed solutions. Rent control laws, for example, let existing renters rest easier, but at the expense of making rental units harder to find and driving rents overall up.
I'm personally agnostic on climate change, I just note it's following an alarmingly similar pattern. The left is panicked about a sudden problem, is convinced only government intervention can solve it, and is not asking hard questions about the proposed solutions.
Scientists are suggesting we redirect the economy of the entire planet. How could that not be a political issue? As much respect as I have for science, its proper role is to advise on likely outcomes, not to dictate policy.
Yeah, but that's nothing new. Scientists and historians have been trying to force earth residents to redirect the economy of their planet, or portions of it, for centuries.
Consider Easter Island, for example. If the ancient Polynesian peoples who settled Easter Island between 400 and 800 C.E. had listened to the scientists of their day and stopped cutting down the palm trees that covered the island when first discovered by humans, they would not have been able to create their thriving economy based on agriculture and a vibrant spiritual belief system that led them to build those huge carved stone monuments that cover the island today. “You're destroying your own means of survival!” the eco-terrorists kept yelling. “Stop cutting down all the palm trees!”
But they needed to cut down the palm trees because the palm trees were the basis for their economy. Where would they have been if they had listened to those tree-huggers?
http://www.google.com/search?q=Easter+Island&hl…
I disagree with your characterizations, here are mine:
“Democracy used to work well…”
Democracy didn't work very well for most of the 19th century, in which not only was most of the population disenfranchised, but voting was highly sectarian. It was the federal government stepping in that helped break a lot of that.
“Free markets may have delivered billions of people from poverty over the past centuries…”
The industrial revolution was terrible for its workers and there was mass exploitation. It was regulations and the support for unions that enabled a middle class, and countries that don't have that still see large amounts of child labor and exploitative conditions.
“The planet's ecosystem has been adapting to changing conditions for billions of years…”
People have been causing localized ecosystem collapse for tens of thousands of years, leading to their own downfall in those regions. Malthus was completely correct in describing those dynamics, and personally I think he was only wrong going forward because of our massive usage of fossil fuels. We are entirely dependent on them for everything at this point. These days our localized ecosystems are the globe.
That said, I believe that a) we now have the technology (both physical and intellectual) to transition to a sustainable economy at a relatively minimal cost over the intermediate term and a huge boon over the next 50 years and b) that our current solutions are way too centralized and our political policies are a HUGE barrier to that transition. I honestly don't believe that the government really needs to do much in this area outside of increasing basic research, there is totally enough private investment money to take care of it.
“I could not agree more that it is preferable to look at adaptation strategies, if in fact there is a radical shift in climate.”
There is no reason to fear a radical change or succumb to the hype and idiocy, presented much of the time to convince people to accept true radical change to our economy and society, which has been sought since the later part of the 1960s.
Of course adaptation is better than “mitigation” (the commonplace word for the more extreme to radical “solutions” that are sought — as “prevention” is too much to claim, even by those seeking it).
And that's beside the plain fact that any possible global warming provides benefits as well as costs.
Are we focused on what matters? To the extent that anything relevent matters, the answer is no. (We are not focused on addressing _real_ pollution, as opposed to “greenhouse gases” and other “climate change” politics in place of science, and are not focused on sensible economy practices, rather than more extreme, unnecessary, harmful constraints and self-crippling and wasted time on other issues.)
“I just note it's following an alarmingly similar pattern.”
I've noted this as well. Those who can't or won't face the truth won't accept it, and the worst attack the truthful messengers.
Going back to the point of the original post, are there ways that we could agree with. I, for one, would like to see some incentives to purchase personal solar/wind/hydro generation and storage, which would reduce our dependency on both foreign oil and energy companies.
You've made some really insightful and cogent points here, Dr J. I am especially struck by two of your points.
First, about free markets. Free markets certainly have “delivered billions of people from poverty over the past centuries,” and as you suggest, the greed that serves as the necessary fuel for free markets to work their magic has always been there; it's nothing new, but the point is, it's not a bad thing as so many people believe it to be. Indeed, greed is just another way of talking about the generosity of the human spirit and the charity of loving human minds and hearts. If you want proof, just look at the novels of Charles Dickens. That man built a career (and aren't we glad he did!) on showing, through the lives of his characters living in the mid-19th century, the terrible fates that can and do befall the less fortunate among us when well-meaning do-gooders muzzle human greed and stifle free market enterprise. Oliver Twist, Pip, the young lad in that school run by Mr. Gradgrind in Bleak House — can't remember the lad's name right now — but these fictional characters are virtually metaphors for capitalism's ability to lift people out of poverty, oppression, and exploitation.
I used to get myself the half mile to kindergarten on my own, but today there's a child molester in every van, and parents who let their 8-year-old find his way to the corner risk social services intervention.
I could not agree with you more, and I'm still regretting my overprotectiveness in picking my daughter up from school when she was 8 rather than letting her walk home by herself. Heck, I even waited for her at her bus stop a block from home when she was in fifth grade! I think it comes from having lost a child; it made me into a worrywort.I try to justify it now by telling myself I enjoyed that one-block walk home with her, and that she turned out well enough to be a straight-A student at Barnard/Columbia, so I didn't harm her too much!
I do want to correct one small point, though. I do think we can excuse parents who don't let their kindergarten-age children walk home from school alone. It's clear from your entire sentence that you are under the impression that kindergartners are 8 years old. They are not, actually. They are usually anywhere between 4 and 6, depending on when birthdays fall. I think we probably can agree that it's not unreasonable to worry about the possible safety issues associated with a 4, 5, or even 6-year-old walking home from school alone.
But that's my only criticism. Keep up the good work, Dr J.
The industrial revolution was terrible for its workers and there was mass exploitation. It was regulations and the support for unions that enabled a middle class, and countries that don't have that still see large amounts of child labor and exploitative conditions.
“Exploitation” is one of those magic words the left uses to decry capitalism, much the way the right uses “deviant” to decry homosexuals. It's not clear what it means exactly, but it sure sounds bad.
The word makes a cozy home in the familiar formula. Prior to the 19th century, people were doing great in their subsistence farming, serfdom was suiting them just fine, and although they lived in grueling poverty and their kids toiled in the fields all day, they were at least free of Exploitation. Suddenly capitalism ruined their proud way of life by offering them higher-paying jobs in factories, and the only solution was–and remains today–government intervention.
Here's another interpretation for your consideration, Mikkel. The engine of advancement for the middle class were the factories and the increased labor productivity they allowed. The unions were the brakes. If you've got a powerful engine, judiciously applied brakes are a good thing. But you can't get anywhere on brakes alone.
It's clear from your entire sentence that you are under the impression that kindergartners are 8 years old.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that. I was 5 in kindergarten, just pointing out that even older kids have less latitude today.
And my complaint is not about parents being overprotective of their own kids, since those are the calls they have to make–and often to worry about, as you're pointing out. It's about the societal pressure that robs them of the choice. My nieces are getting similarly overprotective treatment not because their parents think it's necessary, but because they don't dare do anything else.
Keep up the good work, Dr J.
Thank you!
From context, I'm guessing that by “societal pressure” you refer to public opinion, the fear that you will be criticized or, worse, arrested, if you let your kids walk home alone below a certain age.
I wouldn't say that's not a concern, but it's certainly not what motivated me to pick up my daughter from school or, when she took the school bus, pick her up at the stop. There were plenty of parents who let their kids walk home alone. I was probably in the minority in my community in the subset of school bus kids (as opposed to kids who got picked up at school).Maggie did not start walking home from school until she was in ninth grade — from school, not from the bus stop. The high school is just outside the distance limit to qualify for the school bus, but it's still a good hard walk — just short of a mile.
My concern was safety. Not what others thought of safety, but what I thought about safety. It only takes one incident to lose your child forever, and I was not willing to live with that risk when she was younger. Even more so since we had at least one incident in the town of a car slowing down and calling to a girl walking home to come closer. If I'm remembering correctly, he persisted, and she screamed and started running, and thank GOD, got away. I taught Maggie all the information she needed about personal safety, but I still wasn't willing to take the chance that something like that could happen to her.
The engine of advancement for the middle class was the factories and the increased labor productivity they allowed.
I know your frame of reference here is larger than just our own country, but in the U.S., the engine of advancement for the middle class was the post-WWII G.I. bill, and high-paying manufacturing jobs. There were unions in those days, too, but that could have just been a coincidence.
Uh they didn't get noticeably higher paying jobs in the factories once women and children became the prime targets. I realized after I wrote it you would jump on the exploitation word — I didn't actually mean to say that industrialization made things worse they just didn't make it remarkably better* until it was tamed.
Personally I don't understand the point of unions on a theoretical level. By that I mean that there should be no use for them, they are a sign of mismanagement and short sightedness, and hurt things in the long term. But I do think there is a good parallel between that and this issue.
Companies that realize they should treat workers decently reap rewards by getting more worker loyalty, flexibility and customers. It also keeps politicians off their backs and they can get by without unions. Companies that don't may make more money in the short term but have all those issues in the longer term.
It's the same thing with climate change and energy. All the energy issues have been well recognized for decades but there hasn't been a sustained push to change things. The faster that companies start doing it themselves, the more they will be admired and the less politicians will get involved.
That said, I would completely agree with the argument that part of the reason why alternatives haven't sprung up is because of massive government subsidies to the status quo and its taking on the cost of externalities, which contributes to market failure. I have said repeatedly in the past that I would like to see the government get rid of existing subsidies and step back (while overhauling regulations to make more sense about tackling externalities) rather than showing favoritism to industries.
* Better is of course a relative term. To me exploitation is a very specific meaning, it means that there is an asymmetrical relationship in power structure that allows one side to extract more than is “fair” and logical. In this case, the exploitation was exactly what you described — people didn't really have much of a choice because subsistence living is so hard. Look, I have a lot of friends from emerging countries and have talked to a lot of people that have come from villages still stuck in pre-industrial age. They make it very clear: you can either stay in the villages that have no electricity and sometimes no water and rely on luck that your crops will come through and you won't get sick, or you can move to crowded sweltering cities to be exploited and at least have some basics, even if sometimes they are worse than the days back in the villages when things are good.
To me that's still exploitation because they aren't getting a commensurate share for their labor. It has been proven time and time again that people don't evaluate things on an objective level, they do it based on ideas of fairness. Thus, they aren't really any happier. That's what I mean by “better.”
Other than that, I don't really have any ideological sympathies. I think that societies where the people in charge are good and just will be good and just, and ones that are corrupt and sociopathic will be corrupt and sociopathic. It's not clear that there is any structure that guarantees justice though. For what it's worth I don't think the issue is about government vs. business right now, it's about concentration of power vs. distribution of it.
To me it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between what has *actually* changed in time, and what has changed in perception. For instance, about 150-200 children are abducted by strangers every year…a number that has stayed nearly constant for fifty years (meaning of course per capita it's been halved). You could argue that the 50s golden era was actually more dangerous in that way.
Same for most other crimes against children. The only thing that has increased of course is visibility.
Children are literally a thousand times more vulnerable in cars, but we don't like to think about that.
I'm not criticizing your concern for your child, I'm just pointing out that Dr. J's point about perception is largely accurate (a lot of people have the inaccurate perception that pre-60s was some sort of heyday that liberalization of the 60s ruined, but that's a different point).
Oh, I completely agree. Having grown up in the 50s and 60s, I couldn't very well argue that children were safer then.
“personal solar/wind/hydro generation and storage”
One of the intriguing things about fuel cells someday (maybe two generations from now, say) is that they not only could power electric vehicles, but also power homes and other stationary sites, and implement an “off-grid” (or “no-grid”), i.e., “personal” or “individual” or fully decentralized, model.
“large amounts of child labor and exploitative conditions”
That's always a handy comeback (even if overused) against libertarian “purists” (more like anarchists).
The same is true for medicine, including the prospect of buying and selling organs for transplantation. (And what about skimping on safety, such as genetic compatibility and even blood typing checks?)
“[S]houldn’t we spend at least as much, if not more, time debating ways to survive climate change than we do ways to prevent it? (Why does the debate about how to prevent the melting of polar ice caps take precedent over the debate about how to keep Manhattan functioning despite rising sea levels?)”
The answer is yes, and more, in fact, much more. We should be realistic and prefer adaptation to mitigation, in addition to not panicking or letting ourselves be fooled or panicked into PC silliness and worse.
“[S]houldn’t we spend as much, if not more, time debating ways to develop alternative fuel technologies for the sake of national security and prosperity than for the sake of climate change?”
Yes. Although a similar, albeit lesser, caveat about politics infecting policy is in order here, too.
“[W]ouldn’t it be a nice gift to our children and grandchildren (climate change or not) to emphasize cleaner, sustainable alternatives?”
“Sustainable” is a loaded word (a synonym for other words or phrases meaning “pleasing environmentalists and alternative-energy advocates”). Cleaner, better (hopefully more economical, but with some alternatives, the benefits may justify the higher costs)? Yes. If it is cost-effective, practical, useful as well as realistic and economically justified as a substitute, and candidate for a replacement. Again, the need is to be realistic. (With 60s-onward darlings solar and wind, which do nothing anyway for transportation energy uses, just electricity production, what happens when it's dark or isn't windy?)
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Free markets haven't delivered anyone from poverty, technology and “socialism” have. If it was up to the “Free Market”, there would not be a single sewer system in the world, there probably would not be any agronomic research center in the world, there would not be single computer, nor an internet.
“Free Market”, there is no such thing, never has been, never will be and the closer we get to a “Free Market”, the more a handful of people steal everything that is not nailed down, and the more people live in poverty…
Well in the 19th century, “exploitation was getting people to work 12 to 16 hour work days for almost enough money to buy enough gruel to feed yourself, exploitation in the twentieth century is sending workers into coal mines without the appropriate gear knowing that they will get “black lungs” and discarding the instant the work you have sent thenn to do has killed them. In the twenty first century exploitation is tying children up to a loom so that they can weave rugs to be sold in the US. In the twenty first century exploitation is hire illegal aliens so that you can accelerate your lines in a slaughter house so that it is so dangerous that you have to replace your work force on a yearly basis. In the twenty first century exploitation is spraying fields with cancer causing chemicals while your temporary workforce is out working in the field. In the twenty first century exploitation is having young girls work around cancer causing chemicals without protection or proper ventilation for pennies while never telling them about the health risks they are taking. In the twenty first century exploitation is locking your employees up overnight in your facilities so that they don't steal anything, unfortunately they can't get out when the place goes up on fire.
Are these clear enough definitions of “EXPLOITATION” for you, or shall I go and find more…
You're assuming that the CEO's incentives are aligned with that of the company, the more money the company makes this quarter, the more money the CEO makes, by the time the workers organize and start creating a Union, he'll be someplace else or retired as a millionaire…
Are these clear enough definitions of “EXPLOITATION” for you?
No. Your examples include hazards people endured involuntarily or unknowingly (e.g., forced labor, or exposing workers to carcinogens) with hazards they signed up for with eyes open (e.g., long working hours). And if long working hours for low pay in a factory constitute exploitation, how about similar hours in the fields for even lower pay? Or does a hazard only constitute exploitation when a capitalist is on the scene?
If exposing people to hazardous environments without their knowledge isn't exploitation, I don't know what is. As for hours worked, as long as people have a meaningful choice, working 12 hour days may not be exploitation, the instant there is no meaningful choice, it's exploitation. If a farmer works 12 hours a day on his farm to grow food and bring it to market, it's not exploitation, if he works 12 hours a day to pay for seeds produced by Monsanto, it's exploitation, if he works 12 hours a day raising chickens for Perdue at the rate that Perdue forces upon him, it's exploitation.
You cannot have exploitation without a “capitalist”, whether that capitalist is a Feudal lord, a Modern American Corporation, or a Chinese state owned corporation. It's an issue of power relationship, if the entity that has the power is abusing it, it's exploitation. Rare is the entity that has power that does not abuse it.
Personally I don't understand the point of unions on a theoretical level. Companies that realize they should treat workers decently reap rewards.
The theoretical need starts because what's “decent” is not obvious. Workers want wages to be higher, managers and customers want them to be lower, and the ideal midpoint is one where everyone is sharing equal amounts of pain.
The thing is, no one knows how much pain the other side is really in, versus what they're claiming as a negotiating position. From an economic point of view, a labor strike is an economic sink hole where both workers and managers lose. But they occur because they're one of the few mechanisms for determining how much pain the other side is really bearing.
The other theoretical thing that keeps unions in business is their monopoly power. If you can corner the labor market in your local industry, you can negotiate a much better deal than you'd be able to in a competitive market. IMHO though unions corrected a serious excess in industrial revolution days, those are long behind us. In most industries these days, unions represent the interests of monopolists.
It has been proven time and time again that people don't evaluate things on an objective level, they do it based on ideas of fairness. Thus, they aren't really any happier. That's what I mean by “better.”
It's true that what constitutes “better” is a matter of point of view. You can measure from the ground up, in which case you'll see going from $1 per day in the fields to $1.50 in the factories as a dramatic improvement. Or you can measure from the sky down, in which case you'll say both are so far behind what we would consider a reasonable standard of living that they're basically equivalent.
I think in practical terms, people have to rise from poverty a step at a time. Factories may be only slightly less miserable than the fields were, but they're still a step in the right direction. And the alternative–to label the factory “exploitation” and demand it be reformed or removed–will often leave them with nothing.
Btw, there are any number of changes people could make on a personal scale with regard to their own lifestyles that when multiplied by millions of people could greatly reduce waste and energy consumption in this country. It wouldn't require great amounts of money, time, or bureaucracies to implement either. Our grandparents and their grandparents knew what those things were and incorporated them into a common sense approach to living. The modern term for it is “conservation”. What we consider normal these days would likely be considered mindless excess by Americans of only 60 or 70 years ago. In a nutshell, we are spoiled.
They may be imperfect people, but the analysis is far from imperfect. This is a repeat of the – Newton was an asshole, so gravity is a hoax.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2…
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc%5Ft…
“Commenter DLS has one of the strangest positions I've ever heard”~mikkel
*******
Yes…lol.
J Spencer, you make a good point. An excellent point. Here is one of my favorite pet projects, “operation Sil” if you like.. If people in urban and suburban areas, where population is the highest, were given incentives to take out all their ridiculous ornamental [and often toxic] landscaping and instead substitute food-bearing plants and vegetable gardens, here's just a few of the benefits that would inspire:
1. Less of a burden on agriculture, and shipping etc..alll the related burdens put on climate.
2. Precious fresh water would go to food instead of ornamentals. Underground cisterns in drought regions could capture significant rainfall and provide means for watering.
3. People would spend more time outdoors, tending their food. Instead of competing with their neighbors for the best looking shrubs, they could be competing for the best-looking oranges, beets or asparagus.
4. The fresher the food taken right to the table from the yard, the more vitamins and health-giving properties it will have for the people.
5. The more time spent gardening, the healthier the mind and the body will become, leading to less costs in healthcare. Obesity would be predicted to drop, as would alcoholism, smoking, drug abuse and other stress-related unhealthy behaviors.
And so on…
Micro-agriculture could retake a startling amount of acreage that is now put in yards. At farmer's markets people could also engage in healthy socializing and exchange what they have grown for what they didn't.
I don't know…just a fantasy.
Unfortunately, greed has caused humans to abandon their moral imperative to protect the earth that sustains us and our prosperity. The petty arguments over global warming have been engineered by those who have a vested interest in doing nothing, so that they can continue to profit at the planet's expense. Those vested interests hire lobbyists and PR firms that are paid to spread the seeds of doubt, in order to continue our inaction.
Pete is correct: this is not about a few caribou up in the Yukon; it is about the myriad effects that melting ice caps will have on our coastal cities, the resurgence of diseases that thrive in warm, moist air, and the desperation of those on the planet that won't be able to afford to adapt. We have a Darwinian pandemic ahead of us that most can barely visualize.
You cannot have exploitation without a “capitalist”, whether that capitalist is a Feudal lord, a Modern American Corporation, or a Chinese state owned corporation.
You aren't suggesting the *government* can exploit people, are you? Here I thought you had a tidy self-contained definition: exploitation is what capitalists do, and capitalists are bad because they exploit people. But if you're suggesting a government can exploit people–perhaps by confiscating their salary four months out of the year?–I'm going to have to reconsider.
Also this.
“Commenter DLS has one of the strangest positions I've ever heard, wherein he fully agrees with the projections I've outlined but said it was no big deal because we'd just move our civilization in that manner. Ok, well the cost of doing that is enormous and mind boggling even if we do it successfully, let alone the fact that it will lead to massive conflict over how to do it, and surely world war.”
Adaptation is obviously a superior choice to “mitigation,” which in practice is controversial and perverse. Any global warming that may happen, for whatever reasons, can confer benefits as well as bring costs.
There is nothing strange about this position whatsoever.
As for Sil, sorry, but she's behind others who already have enjoyed gardening for ages, including in urban as well as suburban locations. (Maybe someday, in a few more years if she hurries, she'll conceive of operating greenhouses so that food never is out of season locally.)
Comparing TAXATION WITH REPRESENTATION to the exploitation of vulnerable workers by wealthy & powerful corporations/individuals is despicable, but not surprising coming from a conservative.
If you have a problem with the amount of taxes you pay, go out and elect more Conservatives, I am sure that they will reduce the amount of taxes the to 5% pay and start a couple of pointless wars in some third world rat hole with money borrowed from the Chinese…
“Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
PS. Amongst industrialized countries, the US has the lowest rate of taxation which might account for it being one of the least civilized…
“Btw, there are any number of changes people could make on a personal scale with regard to their own lifestyles that when multiplied by millions of people could greatly reduce waste and energy consumption in this country. It wouldn't require great amounts of money, time, or bureaucracies to implement either. Our grandparents and their grandparents knew what those things were and incorporated them into a common sense approach to living. The modern term for it is “conservation”. What we consider normal these days would likely be considered mindless excess by Americans of only 60 or 70 years ago. In a nutshell, we are spoiled.”
Only by continuing to tolerate global warming denial, we are spinning our wheels so that even the relatively painless measures have no chance of being enacted. Maybe we need to also learn from countries like Brazil that have confronted the problem head on without making it a partisan hot button issue. This really is going to affect our children and grandchildren so why do we view it in the US as a red/blue issue and not a global one?
Comparing TAXATION WITH REPRESENTATION to the exploitation of vulnerable workers by wealthy & powerful corporations/individuals is despicable
That's a relief, Don, I was afraid you might surprise me there with a lapse in your dogma.
Anyway, I don't recognize your moral authority to pre-empt workers' own job decisions. They're closer to the job conditions than you are, and they have rather more at stake than you do in the outcome. If they figure they're better off in the factory than the fields, who are you to say otherwise? To lobby to close the factory, with the likely result of forcing them back to the fields, is despicable.
Your examples include hazards people endured involuntarily or unknowingly (e.g., forced labor, or exposing workers to carcinogens) with hazards they signed up for with eyes open (e.g., long working hours)
I know this was addressed to Don Quijote, but I just thought I would point out that there is not a hugely meaningful difference between enduring hazards you don't know about and enduring hazards you “signed up for with eyes open,” IF there aren't any significantly better alternative choices.
Edited to add: I see DQ made the same point in the comment below.
I think in practical terms, people have to rise from poverty a step at a time.
Why do people have to rise from poverty a step at a time? Why the “have to”?
But if you're suggesting a government can exploit people–perhaps by confiscating their salary four months out of the year?–I'm going to have to reconsider.
That's not exploitation. It's operating expenses. Private businesses have operating expenses too, don't they?
To lobby to close the factory, with the likely result of forcing them back to the fields, is despicable.
But factories close all by themselves, with no lobbying — actually, with lobbying *not* to close — all the time, to move their businesses overseas or to states where workers can be paid less. Is that despicable?
“[B]y continuing to tolerate global warming denial, we are spinning our wheels so that even the relatively painless measures have no chance of being enacted.”
Not true. If you look at DaMav's original comment, it says it all better than I've said it (though I've given a decent account elsewhere in the past, too). The real problem here is alarmism used as a pretext for bad legislation and policy (in the same kind of form dreamed of by some since the late 1960s). Not only is a possible problem terribly over-hyped to panic or otherwise motivate “urgent action,” but what is sought is not sound, but threatens to make things worse, not better. I has never been (or should never have been, nor should be now) difficult to understand this (it is not only sound, but obvious), but this soundness has been subject to continuous battering of leftist political noise and PC brutal-conformist orthodoxy — like beach erosion punctuated frequently (not merely occasionally) with hurricane storm surges.
“''Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.'– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.”
Like midnight basketball, or a rain forest park in Iowa? [snicker]