Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is a rising star in the Democratic Party. But she needs a history refresher. At an event on Monday, the congresswoman declared that addressing climate change “is our World War II.”
Sorry, but to compare World War II with addressing climate change is ambitiously absurd. (Then again, it’s gotten her some attention … perhaps the only point.)
It should go without saying, but let’s dig deeper to eliminate any doubt. For a start, there’s the divergent evidence of crisis between the two situations. Whatever you think about man-made climate change, and I think it’s real, there is no evidence to suggest that it is a crisis on the scale of the Second World War. Whereas the cause of global warming is widely agreed upon, reports from climate scientists continue to vary wildly in their appraisal of what impact it will have on ecological systems and human society. There is a clear consensus on the former, but not on the latter.
In contrast, the stakes of World War II were always obvious in their existentialism. Nazi Germany sought to dominate, at the very least, Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. And Nazism’s uncontested nature was equally unambiguous. It was manifested by the Gestapo, the Wehrmacht’s massed divisions, the Luftwaffe’s aerial onslaughts, and the silent killers of the U-Boat fleet. As the war drew on and the Allies learned more about what was happening within the Third Reich, Nazism’s threat was made manifest by the death camps.
Meanwhile, measured by vast battle fleets and marauding armies, imperial Japan’s threat was similarly evident. Japan sought an empire ranging from the Indian subcontinent to west Pacific. An empire that required U.S. subordination to Japanese hegemony and the oppression of hundreds of millions of civilians living under Japanese occupation.
But the issue here extends to the question of appropriate response. Because while climate change can either be confronted by technological innovation or by centrally planned economic constriction, the enemies of World War II could only be confronted by force of arms. History records that bloody constraint was how the peace was won.
Yet, the ultimate measure of Ocasio-Cortez’s error is the divergent quantifiable question of what might have been. Because even if we assess it will be negative, it’s not abundantly clear what policy we could even adopt that would substantially curb climate change, let alone what the consequences will be if we don’t.
But had the U.S. lost the Second World War, ours would most certainly be a very different world. Rather than a world of empowered democracies, alliance-enshrined peace, and escalating prosperity, ours would be a world of authoritarian terror — a world in which society was purified by slavery or extermination, and government marked by vast cathedrals of totalitarianism.
