Environmentalism -- Part II

The Philosophical Quicksand Beneath The Global-Warming Hysteria

Perhaps the surest method for exposing the flaws in a proposition is to assume its truth. So let us assume that what environmentalism preaches is true, namely that human activity contributes too much carbon dioxide to the amounts already flooding into the atmosphere "naturally"¹; that our carbon dioxide indeed causes global warming; and that government is therefore justified in dictating the types and amounts of energy we use in our daily lives. How much atmospheric carbon dioxide, then, constitutes an acceptable amount? No credible source proposes outlawing our entire contribution; the U.N. Kyoto Protocol (discussed below) aims to take us back to the approximate emissions levels of 1990. But there’s the rub: the 1990 emissions themselves were once portrayed by the U.N. as excessive,² meaning that full Kyoto compliance would see us continuing to pump supposedly toxic amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and imperiling the environment – only this time, at the price of our liberty as well.

Let us concede even more ground by assuming that Kyoto is only a “first step,” meaning that government – in all its disinterested and selfless wisdom – knows exactly how much carbon dioxide the Earth can tolerate from us and will implement policies that target the proper output. What then, pray tell, is the correct temperature that we should nurse the Earth back to? We know that the Earth was both far cooler and far warmer in the past, long before mankind graduated into the industrial age: the most recent Ice Age ended 10,000 years ago, and global temperatures some 6,000 years ago (the “Holocene Maximum”) were higher than they are today. Temperatures were also higher during the Medieval Warming Period from roughly A.D. 1000 to 1300, again long before the Industrial Revolution. Last but not least, temperatures tended to oscillate up and down much more rapidly before civilization even developed, and we have occupied an unusually stable interlude in the Earth’s temperature. So just where do we set the global thermostat? How do we know when our “harmful” influence is fully remedied, given that a “healthy” Earth will continue to experience drastic climate changes all its own? It appears that there is no end in sight, somewhat similar to the United States’ unending crusade of affirmative action – racial disparities and climate anomalies are twin facts of life that will never disappear, thus perpetually justifying governmental interference to “fix the problem.” For example, environmentalist prophet Al Gore seized on the deadly Myanmar cyclone as proof of his religion, while like-minded others have gone so far as to blame everything from kidney stones to shark attacks on mankind’s environmental sins as well. Just as primitive peoples might conduct human sacrifice upon the occurrence of a solar eclipse, the high priests of modernity will re-enact that sorry spectacle on a massive scale during every environmental novelty that befuddles the public mind.

Let us disregard all these qualms and assume that: 1) mankind introduces too much carbon dioxide into the environment; 2) mankind’s carbon dioxide is to blame for excessive global warming; 3) government can calculate how much carbon dioxide the Earth can tolerate; 4) government can calculate the “natural” global temperature; and 5) any “natural” changes in climate will honestly and successfully be distinguished from changes that mankind has caused. Even yielding each one of these very dubious points fails to produce the environmentalist conclusion that governmental interference will rescue us from the brink of destruction. Only wealthy countries are capable of adopting “green” policies, since the wealthy can best afford to humor environmentalist agitation; people in poor countries are more preoccupied with daily survival than with the atmosphere, often making their treatment of the environment far worse. The Kyoto Protocol itself acknowledges this by imposing its most onerous obligations on the nations that can best afford them. Rather than safeguard and spread the free-market principles underlying this wealth, environmentalists propose quite the opposite: to cripple the engine of wealth where it exists. Private property, freedom of contract, and profit motive all make environmentalism possible, yet environmentalism has declared war on its parents and seeks to curtail or abolish them. Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, proudly admitted this fact when agitating at a U.N. conference concerning biofuels:³ “If we want to save our planet Earth, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system.” An honest effort to remedy the supposed menace of man-made global warming would reject this noxious ideology of central planning as a proven failure at generating the wealth and technology needed to accomplish environmentalism’s own ambitious program. Since environmentalism’s methods are self-defeating, they hardly merit serious consideration.

One final concession drives the point home: even if mankind’s technological progress is somehow shortening the Earth’s hospitable lifespan, mankind represents the only hope of transporting life away from this mortal planet that will eventually be scorched and/or swallowed as the Sun balloons into a red giant. Even long before that inevitable demise takes place, we face the high probability of an asteroid impact that will terminate human life and much of the sacred biodiversity. To the extent that environmentalists succeed in hobbling mankind’s progress with their schoolboy socialism, they will have condemned to death what they claim to hold dear, and Earth’s life will remain trapped to perish as if it never were. One can honestly say that mankind represents the Earth’s seeds, and that mankind is very much part of nature’s effort to spread life as far and wide as possible. From this macro-perspective, environmentalists represent nature's deadliest foes.
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1. I place this word in quotes because of ongoing philosophical confusion over what constitutes “natural” versus “unnatural.” On the one hand, environmentalists tend to claim that mankind is merely a part of nature and has no unique status or rights over anything else on planet Earth. On the other hand, environmentalists tend to claim that mankind is somehow outside nature and has a unique responsibility to avoid influencing the environment in any noticeable way, even if it falls far short of the cataclysms and extinctions that preceded mankind’s appearance.

2. In 1990 the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (“IPCC”) issued its first major report, which concluded that man-made carbon dioxide had caused the previous century’s warming trend, and which recommended drastic cuts in existing carbon-dioxide emissions.

3. The biofuels saga presents its own tragicomedy of modern man’s undoing: governments take our money in order to finance a food-based fuel source (e.g., ethanol) that we have not chosen to finance on our own, driving up the price of food to the point that poor people find it harder than ever to subsist. Man freely and peacefully transitioned from whale blubber to kerosene to petroleum as fuel sources, and there is no reason that the free market cannot also encourage the next transition whenever the scarcity of petroleum drives up its price and makes alternative fuels profitable.