Climate Change – What’s a Libertarian to do?

I’ve spent years trying to understand the case for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and the substantial criticisms of it. I’m a skeptic, so I’ve listened to the criticisms, hoping to find the truth and while I’ve seen valid criticism by the likes of Roy Spencer, Patrick Michaels and Richard Lindzen (to name but a few credible climate scientists who are highly critical of the IPCC science), I’ve also seen the rebuttals by AGW proponents that seem to be sensible – but I truly don’t have the scientific training to really evaluate any of it. I’m sure many of you find yourselves in the same boat. Worse yet,  it seems that actual dialog has broken down. The AGW camp has closed off debate, saying for years that the science is settled, and at this point, I’m only sure of one thing; the science isn’t settled. Even the IPCC report from ’07 states that the probability of their predictions being correct is 90% and in science, 10% leaves a lot of room for doubt. It certainly means things aren’t settled. Gravity is settled (sort of), thermodynamics is settled – and even these fields are subject to further refinement. It’s the height of arrogance for the scientists, politicians and activists to keep repeating this lie.

Furthermore, the politicization of this issue, at first from the left and more recently from the right has me deeply suspicious of all comers. I mean, Al Gore is a very poor spokesperson for AGW as he is a partisan and is not a scientist, and his movie was a filled with inaccuracies and exaggerations. For those of you not aware of it, the only impartial review of his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, took place in a court in the UK and the fact based evaluation of its content concluded that the movie was filled with hysterical exaggeration and outright lies. Just as appallingly, as of late, the loudmouths on the right have taken to saying that AGW has been disproved and that it’s all a hoax with, frankly, less credibility than Al Gore. For me, when I see a ‘true believer’, flushed with his/her righteousness about a topic like this, I run for the hills, particularly when they are a partisan and non-scientist. To make matters worse, many greens have blended this cause with their socialist/communist leanings and conclude that AGW is proof that capitalism is ruining the world, with the likes of that thuggish despot, Hugo Chavez getting a standing ovation in Copenhagen for dissing capitalism. We’ve managed to make this a left/right issue and it’s pretty scary for those of us who actually want to know what’s going on.

And yet, and yet  – this is really serious stuff, right? I mean, if the AGW folks are right, well we are in desperate straits.  Indeed, if their worst predictions are correct humanity itself is threatened when you look out over the next several hundred years, with some impacts being felt much closer such as ocean acidification, to name one. This issue is far more important than many of the issues that get the attention of our leaders but by allowing this issue to become so politicized, they have insured that creating consensus will not be achieved, preventing us from moving forward with policies that are sober and meaningful. As a Libertarian, I’m very nervous about the breadth and width of proposed government interventions that are being proposed, as once again, the left has conflated issues, continuously prattling on about ‘green jobs creation’ when the real examples we have of such policies in Spain and Germany have been abject failures (even though some people are brash enough to simply ignore the facts and claim victory). For those of you who don’t know, the Spanish program, in place for some years, has only created 1/8th the jobs it was supposed to yield. This again makes the policy prescription of many on the left about AGW solutions very suspect to me as a Libertarian. Btw, any free marketeer could have predicted the failure of these initiatives. Now we are embarking on a similar course, and there is no reason to think that our results will differ.

I also have witnessed outright hostility to those who suggest that we look at engineering solutions to solve the problem, which again makes me wonder, why? I mean, if we could reduce CO2 via technology while we gradually reduce emissions too,  this would be a ‘silver bullet’. Now the technology isn’t there yet and there is no guarantee that it will be, but one would think a dispassionate analysis of the solutions to this problems would conclude this is certainly the most desirable path. I’ve also witnessed this dialog morph into a familiar Manichean dyad, with the U.S. and the rest of the west owing the developed world payment for our CO2 glut. This is now being referred to under the rubric of ‘climate justice’ by the likes of that bleating idiot, Naomi Klein, as well as many others. If we are tallying up global financial scores, I do ask myself what are we owed for fighting back the tyranny of Germany, Japan, Russia and China in the last century? What is the west owed for the over one trillion in aid it’s spent in the ‘developing world’ over the past 40 years? Mind you, I’m not getting into whether we should have given the aid (my answer is a resounding NO) but when we are doing a financial accounting, it does seem that the ‘climate debt’ we supposedly owe the undeveloped world comes from pretty strange accounting. Once again, it reeks of anti-capitalist, anti-western, anti-development worldviews and while that may be a valid perspective, it diminishes the credibility of those claiming science is on their side.

So, given all of the above, my suggestion is that we should do the following:

1. Sponsor independent verification of the IPCC science – The recent CRU email scandal is only one of many episodes that have led a large number of scientists to question the validity of the science underlying the IPCC findings. I think that even if you wholeheartedly agree with everything that the IPCC claims, you should realize that to create government policy of this magnitude,  bipartisan and public consensus needs to be achieved. At this point, without some policing of this effort and independent verification, folks like me who want to do the right thing, as well as those ‘deniers’ out there, will never get on board. If the problem is as dire as its made out to be, and the necessary solution is as drastic as proposed, then spending a bit more time by opening this up to get more people on board is warranted.

2. Have a real debate – I wonder why major media outlets, policy institutions and others haven’t shamed both sides into publicly debating these issues. One would think that a PBS series or CNN forum on an ongoing basis would draw a solid audience. I would stipulate that no hacks or politicians can participate and rather, would only allow scientists to participate. I think we all would quickly realize that there is serious disagreement about AGW and it’s impacts, but I also think the right course of action would become apparent to a majority of policymakers and the voting public.

3. Adopt a ‘precautionary’ stance for policy – Given that the consequences of ignoring AGW are devastating,  even if the probability that the AGWers are right is low, we should be taking sensible steps that are low to moderately disruptive/expensive to gird ourselves against AGW as a precaution. I know, you true believers already claim ‘it’s too late’ and the only solution is massive policy shifts now, but the reality is that these policies will not be implemented until the AGWers bother to get the majority of folks on board. So until that time, government should be prudent by taking some significant actions, but stop short of destroying the economies of the West.

Can you imagine if Obama came out and called for this approach? His approval would skyrocket, but more importantly, he would signal that he understands the there are legitimate concerns about AGW, and that he realizes the case needs to be built based on facts, not rhetoric. It would be consistent with his campaign promise to be post-ideological and the right would be frozen for good on this issue, but unfortunately, I think Obama is going to go full steam ahead. The recent EPA decision to regulate CO2 as a pollutant presages AGW reduction policies being implemented via fiat versus legislation. This may turn out to be a huge mistake, because it opens up all AGW science to legal challenge and it will likely not hold up under a finding of fact in a court of law.

As a Libertarian, I think the underlying problem with all of the environment is the ‘tragedy of the commons’, wherein the lack of private ownership stakes in this outcome causes the neglect in the first place. Accordingly, I think that our approach should focus the following.

1. Fighting the corporatism that creates truly stupid solutions like ethanol subsidies and the other hundreds of pork projects being funded by the Federal government.

2. We should support mechanisms such as ‘cap and trade’ which have worked in other problem areas, once a real scientific finding is reached, as in intermediate step to monetize environmental outcomes.

3. In the end, we should support policies that encourage the most local and voluntary solutions, which take advantage of individual actions from the bottom up instead the top down model we have, which are hugely wasteful, coercive and usually wrongheaded.

Most of all, Libertarians need to speak up loudly on this issue because we are mostly not really participating yet. One could make the case that a Libertarian society would not suffer from these problems in the first place, but that is the topic for another article.