The Climate Change Debate Engaged

The debate is engaged. New York Times readers, having finished baying at the moon over Bret Stephens's views on climate change, are peppering the columnist and the paper with their questions. Good! These readers have every right to ask questions, even if those questions do not reveal very much deep thinking. It’s what happens when you live in a bubble and have never exchanged views in the marketplace of ideas.

And Stephens has responded to some of his detractors in the paper, or online. Again, good. It’s what debate is supposed to be.

The first detractor, named Len Sherman, feels that the ideological rigidity of climate change true believers is matched by Donald Trump’s disregard for facts, even by Trump’s failure to get his facts right. One recalls Barack Obama’s pronouncement that America had 58 states. The people who are trashing Trump’s obvious errors thought that Obama was right about the number of America’s states.

But, I digress.

Sherman is also discomfited by the fact that evangelical Christians dismiss science. While there must be some religious people who reject science, how many of today’s radical left believe in evolution? How many of them believe in Darwin’s theory about the difference between the sexes? How many of them believe that gender identity is a scientific fact? Or do they believe that it’s all a matter of belief? Since most of them do, they should shut up about who does or does not accept science.

But, I digress again.

Anyway, Sherman declares that, based on the scientific evidence that he has seen—one might wonder whether he has seen it all or whether he is qualified to evaluate it—the need for what he calls “righteous behavior” is a no-brainer. I assume that he means that people without a brain invoke the authority of science to justify what they consider to be “righteous behavior.” Does one not smell a whiff of piety?

Stephens responds by invoking an economic principle. We possess limited resources— this is true—and therefore we must judge where it would be best to invest those resources. It’s perfectly rational and even reasonable:

The human race is forced to confront multiple environmental threats with limited economic resources. We have to make hard choices about how we assess the threats and how we allocate the resources — knowing all the time that information is imperfect and economic and environmental conditions are subject to change over time. Climate change is one of those threats, but not the only one: think of malnutrition, “ordinary” pollution, land mismanagement and so on. We need a serious debate not only about how to allocate those resources, but also about whether we have the tools right now to make a switch to less carbon-intensive energy sources in a way that doesn’t impose its own set of grave and unanticipated economic and environmental problems.

In other words, if we accept the apocalyptic vision of pending climate doom, we should allocate all of our resources toward building windmills and installing solar panels. And  yet, what will this potential misallocation of resources cost those who inhabit the planet today?

Responding to the next questioner, Susan Fitzwater, Stephens notes that different counties have tried different ways to address global climate change, with not-so-encouraging results.

There were, for example, ethanol subsidies:

A decade ago we were plowing money into ethanol subsidies as one response to climate change. But that turned out to be not just environmentally destructive but was also arguably responsible for the spike in food prices that soon followed, as farmers turned away from cultivating corn for human consumption to cultivating it for ethanol production.

And then the British encouraged people to shift to diesel fuel, the better to diminish London’s pollution. How did that work out?

Stephens responds:

Another example: The New York Times recently reported on the massive increase in smog over London. The cause? Let me quote from the story:

“The British government provided financial incentives to encourage a shift to diesel engines because laboratory tests suggested that would cut harmful emissions and combat climate change. Yet, it turned out that diesel cars emit on average five times as much emissions in real-world driving conditions as in the tests, according to a British Department for Transport study.”

Next, Jason questions Stephens’s comparison of election polling with climate modeling. Since Stephens compared projections of the state of the climate with the prophetic powers of polling, Jason is asking a good question.

One suspects that Stephens was using a rhetorical ploy. But, anyway, here he uses the question to ask about the accuracy of climate modeling, especially those that pretend to predict the future to a scientific certainty:

The climate is an intensely complex system. Seemingly tiny differences in terms of inputs can make dramatic differences in terms of results. We should be humble about what we can know a year into the future, never mind a century, and we should be refining our assumptions continuously. That calls for more investment in science, not less.

I would add the obvious point, often noted her, drawn from the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, to the effect that there is no such thing as a scientific fact about the future. Stephens argues a slightly different point, namely, that the systems that produce the climate are so complex, what makes you think that your calculations have included all the elements? After all, we miscalculated on ethanol and diesel. Why do you think that we have not done the same with the computer modeling?

Then Nils asks what harm would be done if we simply make the world a better place, regardless of the truth of the science. Of course, nothing about science tells us what constitutes better or worse. The question does expose one of the unstated presuppositions in the current environmental movement: namely the wish to repeal the Industrial Revolution. Because nothing has created as much pollution as those giant engines and their “dark Satanic Mills.”

To which one must respond that there has been good and bad with the Industrial Revolution. True enough, cars and steam engines have created pollution. But the IR has also greatly enhanced the quality of life for hundreds of millions of people and has nearly doubled the human lifespan. While we are trashing the IR let’s not forget modern sanitation and medicine, to say nothing of heating and air conditioning. Let's not forget that bacteria and viruses are part of the pristine beauty of the natural world. The same is true of mosquitoes and feral hogs.

Stephens has a slightly different take:

Interesting question, because it helps explain why so many people are drawn to the subject of climate change. To wit, it’s not just a matter of pure science. It’s also about morality, or at least a particular version of it. That’s why I’ve always thought there’s a quasi-religious dimension at work in climate-change advocacy, which not only describes the science but offers a catalog of prescribed (or proscribed) behaviors, and which tends to demonize people who aren’t wholly in tune with their assumptions.

He continues:

After all, even if you’ve diagnosed the cancer correctly doesn’t mean you can’t harm the patient with the wrong prescription. I’m urging sensible readers to be thoughtful about this, to look before we leap, to be aware that “do something!” may be satisfying as a moral reaction to a given problem but rarely makes for smart policy.

Stephens is obviously correct to point out the moralizing and moralistic basis behind the climate change crusade.

Finally, Elizabeth Berg explains that we should have engaged in the battle sooner. If we had, she opines, it would now be far less costly. Obviously, Stephens responded to this question when he pointed out the error of our ways with ethanol subsidies and diesel fuel. 

To Berg he offers the example of Angela Merkel’s environmentalist effort to shut down the nation’s nuclear power plants and to replace them with vastly more expensive windmills and solar panels:

For yet another example of what I mean, consider Germany’s “energy revolution,” an incredibly ambitious bid by Angela Merkel’s government to wean itself from fossil fuels. An in-depth report in Der Spiegel (admittedly from 2013) notes some of the effects:

“German consumers already pay the highest electricity prices in Europe. But because the government is failing to get the costs of its new energy policy under control, rising prices are already on the horizon. Electricity is becoming a luxury good in Germany, and one of the country’s most important future-oriented projects is acutely at risk.”

Suffice it to say that this dialogue shows the good that comes from engaging in debate with someone who disagrees with them. For many Times readers this must have been the first time that they had their most cherished beliefs challenged cogently. It is a very good thing.