Climate Signals

Like all good liberals, Bilton worries about climate change. But he’s also a tech writer, and like (almost) all good tech writers, Bilton likes Elon Musk. How much does—or rather, “did”—Bilton like Musk? Well, a couple years ago he went to great lengths to alibi Tesla when a driver died in one of the company’s cars. Last year he described Tesla’s position in the U.S. auto industry—the company sells 80,000 cars a year—by saying that it “has not yet definitively won, at least in the United States.” Four days ago he was calling Musk “a genius” and “the closest thing we do have to a Tony Stark.”

So Bilton has been onboard Musk’s Tesla train for everything. Except the revelation that Musk gave a few thousand bucks to help congressional Republicans.

It’s moments like these when you realize that some very large percentage of the people who claim to worry about climate change don’t actually worry about it all that much.

The left’s official position on climate change is that it’s real, it’s here, it’s man-made, and the effects are going to be somewhere between very, very bad and a Roland Emmerich movie. But if that’s what you really believe—if you think the planet is headed toward an immediate future in which millions (or billions) will die and that we have the capability to change this future if we make specific policy choices now—then that consideration should override pretty much every other political consideration: abortion, tax policy, mohair subsidies. Literally everything else in American politics is arguing about the furniture in the living room while the house is on fire.

And in that view, Tesla’s success could be important. An all-electric car company shifting the industry away from oil could, in theory, make a big dent in greenhouse gas emissions. (Nevermind that the overall environmental impact of EV’s is only marginally better than many gas-powered compact cars. Or that the big emissions gains come not from moving people from gas to electric, but from trucks and SUVs to higher-mpg car platforms.) So if you really care about climate change, then how could you possibly justify abandoning Tesla simply because the company’s CEO gave a few bucks to a political party you don’t like?

And don’t try some triple-bankshot, in-the-long-run argument about the environmental impact of $33,900 in campaign spending affecting future governmental policy. Because (1) at a macro policy level, the effect of that money approaches zero and (2) greenhouse gas emissions have fallen during the Trump administration. Now this is correlation, not causation. But it demolishes the idea that if the Evil Republicans have control of the government, emissions will skyrocket.

None of this is meant to pick on Bilton, who’s a good reporter and an engaging tech writer. But it is symptomatic of the larger problem with claims about climate eschatology from people who then behave very differently. The more famous is Al Gore, who lives in a mansion that requires more electricity to heat and cool in a year than the average American home uses in 20 years. There are the climate-change academics who spend their time flying around on jets rather than using Google hangouts like the rest of us. There’s your well-meaning uncle who talks about how terrible climate change is at Thanksgiving dinner, but then flies to the tropics for vacation. I mean, one coast-to-coast flight puts out more emissions than driving an oil-sucking car for an entire year. How could anyone who believes that climate change is real, dangerous, but preventable fly just for personal pleasure?

I understand, though. You can talk yourself into thinking that the world is so big and you’re just booking a seat on a plane that’s going to fly anyway and why shouldn’t you get to hang out in Costa Rica for a week in March when the weather in New York is so terrible. Asking people to give up vacations is a big ask, even with the fate of the planet on the line.

So why didn’t liberals vote for John McCain in 2008?

McCain was the first Republican presidential candidate to have bought into the liberal line on climate change. If you’re a climate-change believer, this was a big deal. Had McCain been elected president, his policy preferences would have become the official policies of the Republican party and the American political divide on climate change would have been bridged almost completely. However much better you think Obama would have been than McCain on the issue, that difference pales in comparison to the prospect of having converted the Republican party en masse.

And yet. Obama captured 89 percent of both self-identified Democrats and self-identified liberals.

All of which leaves us with only a couple of possible conclusions. It could be a “What’s the matter with Kansas” question for environmentalists, where they don’t understand what’s in their own best interests.

It could be that they believe that certain other policy goods—abortion access and same-sex marriage, for instance—are more important that the coming Day After Tomorrow-style apocalypse. I’m not being glib here; there might well be a progressive version of “Live free, or die.”

Ot could be that the people who say that climate change is real, imminent, dangerous, and reversible only really believe in, at most, three of the four legs of the stool. And that it’s virtue-signaling all the way down.