My car got stuck in the snow yesterday, obviously leading me to blame global warming — or maybe it was the lack of it.
That’s basically what the debate on climate change has come down to: an argument over the daily weather report and an attempt to apply questionable scientific conclusions to barely-related policy.
But when conservatives allow the climate change debate to be framed this way, they’re setting themselves up to be labeled ‘anti-science.’ They’re setting themselves up to lose.
The State Department recently released its 2014 Climate Action Report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The report explains the administration’s plan to fight climate change, including regulations that are meant to lower emissions.
The proposals should lead to a debate over what the United States should and should not be doing in relation to climate change, but instead it will likely lead to screams about scientific consensus and accusations of anti-science heresy. That distraction benefits liberals because it takes away from the central point of the policy debate we should be having, which is that liberal policy proposals do very little to actually affect climate change.
There are, of course, plenty of other aspects to the climate change debate. In recent years, many on the right have grown increasingly resentful of what they feel is unwarranted alarmism and data manipulation on the topic of climate change. Arguments continue about whether the planet is currently warming and whether humans are the primary cause of that warming.
The left has created a trap for the right on the subject by framing the policy discussion in terms of the above scientific debate, and conservatives often fall for it.
By focusing on whether warming is occurring and whether it is being driven by human activity, liberals manage to avoid the more pertinent concern over the potential costs and benefits of their proposed solutions. That focus also allows the left to accuse the right of being anti-science for questioning their policy agenda.
When people propose major policy changes on the basis of scientific hypotheses, it is perfectly reasonable to demand data that confirm those hypotheses. But there’s another question still more worth asking: Even if one assumes that the earth is warming and human activity is a primary cause, is there evidence that current policy proposals to reduce U.S. carbon emissions will do much to solve the problem?
The answer to this question is almost definitively no. The current reality is that U.S. carbons emissions are already on a downward trend, but developing countries are consistently increasing their emission levels. Even the Obama administration’s EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has acknowledged, “U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels.” So while the proposals to restrict emissions through regulations and taxation could lead to harm to the economy, redistribution of wealth to other nations, and a solid profit for some key investors, there is no evidence that they would actually provide a fix for climate change.
Some of the advocates of carbon caps who acknowledge this reality argue that it will spur other countries to act; but this is naive. Countries like India and China, which now represent the largest growth in carbon emissions, have shown no desire to curb emissions, as they want to continue developing into world economic powers.
Any realistic reduction in U.S. emissions will be made up for by growth from those countries over just a few years.
The Obama administration and other advocates of these proposals are asking Americans to pay real costs with almost no benefit. Even if the data ends up supporting the idea that global warming is occurring and humans are the primary cause, a real fix will come from innovation and technological advancements, not forced caps on economic growth and energy use. Ignoring the clear scientifically supported ineffectiveness of the proposed solutions is like punching the air to get it to stop raining. It might make people feel better, but it is not wise or worthy of consideration.
That is the point in the climate change debate that conservatives should focus on, and it is the one that the left currently has no answer for.
