This argument over who funds the various camps in the climate debate is pointless. Their arguments can stand on their own. If they’ve published their findings, then prattling on about whatever agenda you think they have, whether socialist or evil capitalist, really doesn’t matter. You’ve got their argument in your hands - refute it. It can be authored by monkeys, for all I care.
Unfortunately for the nonbelievers, I think the science is in, and there can be no question that A) the earth is warming, and B) man has contributed some amount to that.
At this point, if you disagree with that statement, you’re way, way out on a scientific limb. That’s not necessarily a bad place to be - stifling dissent in scientific debate is apalling, no matter which side is doing it.
Now, once we get past that basic statement, you start drifting into the realm of opinion and politics. Is the temperature rise a real threat? Or just an acceptable cost of commerce? What do you do about it? Do you spend trillions on carbon output reduction, or on risk mitigation through improving the world’s ability to cope with temperature change? Is it better to cut back, or to spend the money on research into technologies for carbon sequestration or other methods of fighting the problem?
There are no clear answers for those questions - it depends on who you ask and what their agenda is. And make no mistake - once a stampede like this starts, all kinds of interests will be hitching their wagons to it. Europeans looking to punish the U.S. China looking for a competitive advantage. Countries with lots of natural carbon sinks lobbying for Kyoto because it costs them less to meet targets than competing countries. Democrats, Republicans… Everyone’s got an angle.
Here’s the fundamental problem as I see it: We simply can’t control fossil fuel consumption. Not without the cooperation of China and India for sure. What’s going to happen if we cut ourselves off completely from oil? The price of it will drop dramatically, which will act as an incentive for other countries to use more of it. And that’s exactly what they’ll do. That fossil fuel is going to get burned until it’s too expensive to burn. Period. It’s all going into the atmosphere at some point.
So what’s the best course of action? Continued pleading for worldwide reductions, which countries will agree to and then promptly violate? Check out the rates of increase of greenhouse gases in Europe, which is overwhelmingly in favor of Kyoto.
To me, the science still isn’t clear enough to state with certainly that the consquences will be bad enough to warrant killing economic growth throughout the world now. That carries its own risks. It may turn out to be far more cost effective to just wait for temperature to rise and deal with the effects. But possibly not. It could be much worse than that.
So the other thing you can do is work to come up with an alternative energy source that is more cost effective than oil. That’s the only way you’re going to curtail use of oil - make its use non-competitive.
You can spend money on technologies for counteracting the warming - carbon sequestration, generating ocean blooms, etc.
Hell, we might even find our biggest bang-for-the-buck to jumping on the ‘meat is murder’ bandwagon. Bovine flatulence is actually a very significant contributor to greenhouse gases. Put a methane tax on cow meat. There’s a lab that’s growing sheets of artificial muscle from stem cells. Let’s grow us some steaks, eat up all the remaining cows, and turn all that pasture into something more useful. That alone could have a bigger effect on warming than getting rid of all our cars.
Oh, and we should give up rice. Rice fields are a pretty serious contributor to atmospheric methane. Methane is 20 times more potent than C02, and its concentration in the atmosphere has increased something like 14% in the last century.
What bothers me about the debate is that it is simply presumed that if it exists, the only proper thing to do is to create large international treaties through the UN, expand government, punish business, and in general follow the typical left-wing dogma.
International treaties only work when it’s in everyone’s interest to not cheat. Look how well the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty worked. Or Kyoto, or the ABM treaty. Russia is an oil-producing nation. Do you really believe Putin is going to play this game? Urge the world to stop using his product? Do you think the Chinese government might decide access to suddenly very cheap oil might be more in its interest than adopting expensive carbon reduction measures?
In Alberta, the mere mention of Kyoto, carbon taxes, carbon caps, or anything that is seen as even remotely punishing the oil industry is met with fury by that industry and the provincial government. That fight is going to take place all over the world, wherever there are interests that benefit from the current oil consumption infrastructure. It’s political dynamite. If you can’t get Alberta on board, good luck with the Chinese.
The only way you’ll get a worldwide carbon treaty that actually means something is at the point of a gun. Otherwise, we’ll just futz around the margins and pat ourselves on the back like we’re doing something. Are we ready to do that? Start threatening people? Perhaps institute carbon tariffs on goods to and from countries that won’t play ball?
If you really think warming is a serious problem, then you might want to consider thinking about some backup plans if the whole ‘world-singing-kumbaya’ thing doesn’t work out. Because it won’t.
Personally, I think we need to attack this with technology. Nuclear power. Plug-in hybrids. More wind and solar. Find a way to make it competitive with oil. Then you can go ahead and cut your carbon emissions and it won’t cost a thing.
I don’t think we’re that far away. Plug-in hybrids are only a few years away. I predict they will be extremely popular, if sold right. The current power grid will actually be able to handle a large bit of the increase, because the cars will charge at night when there is little other power demand. Supplement the grid with nuclear power, and gradually phase out the worst-offending power sources and replace them with nuclear.
Compact flourescent bulbs haven’t been that popular in the past, because they threw a pretty ghastly light and were expensive. The new ones look just like regular bulbs, last four to ten times as long, and consume 1/5 the power. I just bought a 3-pack of them for $11. You’re going to see a sea-change in favor of those bulbs in the next two or three years. Wal-Mart is planning to sell 200 million of them next year - they’re going to push them heavily onto customers.
The answer isn’t always bigger government and a stronger UN.
