Global Warming 5

Until now, our take on Global Warming has often been colored in a troubling way by assumptions about what the nature of public and governmental reactions would be, once it is declared a "crisis." In a recent conversation with Geoff, we took the breakthrough step of posing the problem as a hypothetical: Suppose Al Gore is essentially correct, and that there is a crisis? We're not saying there is in fact a crisis; we're simply supposing there is in order to then consider what the economic ramifications and the appropriate political responses might be independently of what the science actually says. The economic and political aspects of the issue will be intimately commingled with each other, but both of these aspects are separate from the science. They will be heavily determined by the science, but the science is independent of them.

Said thus straightforwardly, it seems obvious. But saying it "out loud" frees up these three conversations to be conducted separately from each other. We can continue to track and critique the progress of scientific research about Global Warming, and simultaneously tackle questions about the economics and politics. Making the hypothetical assumption of a crisis allows us to consider alternative economic and political scenarios without having to wait until the scientific results "are in." Those results will in any case change constantly and incrementally, presenting us with an ever-moving conceptual target. Projected economic and political scenarios that are developed in the meanwhile can be adjusted according to the incremental changes in scientific research as it appears in the journals and the media.

Global Warming 4

I am currently reading The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming by Christopher Horner. It has the contemptuous tone of a rightist political screed, which makes for odious reading, but it is helpful in one respect--what it has in common with a theme of Geoff's: the fear of what Big Government will do once the issue gets traction in the public mind as a genuine "crisis." For Horner, Global Warming is just the best issue yet with which environmentalists and other leftists will try to leverage their way to greater government control over our lives (whether it's actually true or not). In a simultaneous debate about healthcare going on at my Unitarian church, I notice a similar theme in the conservative view expressed in that debate: The objective of the policy being debated doesn't matter; if the result of the policy would increase government involvement in or control over our lives in any way, then it must be strenuously resisted. This is an ideological consideration, and has no place in discussion about the nature, rate and causes of global warming itself. It may become relevant when it's time to consider government's appropriate role in the response to global warming, but I'm not up to that yet. For now, I must rule "out of court" any suggestions along the lines that, "We can't call Global Warming a 'crisis,' because that means government will do such-and-such, and that would be undesirable."