Paradigms and Demographics: Robert L. Bradley Jr.

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Monday, April 5, 2021

Inside the Church of Climate

Robert L. Bradley Jr. – April 2, 2021 @ American Institute for Economic Research

At an environmental forum, Julian Simon once asked: “How many people here believe that the earth is increasingly polluted and that our natural resources are being exhausted?”

After a roomful of hands shot up, Simon then asked: “Is there any evidence that could dissuade you?” Encountering silence, he followed up: “Is there any evidence I could give you—anything at all—that would lead you to reconsider these assumptions?”

After more silence, Simon answered: “Well, excuse me. I’m not dressed for church.”

Today’s Church of Climate holds three resolute beliefs:

The human influence on climate is pronounced and controlling
That influence cannot be positive or benign, only catastrophic
Global governance can and must solve this problem

Square this with the impressive, even stunning, statistics of human betterment since the Industrial Revolution, especially in the last 75 years. One would think that these parishioners should be relieved, even happy. But theirs is an anti-humanist philosophy, not to be debated but worshipped. It is a creed that sees nature as optimal, not to be violated by humankind. Deeply pessimistic, it is the deep ecology worldview.

Optimal Nature

Optimal nature lurks behind the current climate debate. As Yale climate economist Robert Mendelsohn noted in The Greening of Global Warming (1999: p. 12):

There is an unstated myth in ecology that natural conditions must be optimal. That is, we must be at the top of the hill now.

Back in the 1970s, a new Ice Age was feared from sulfur dioxide emissions from coal plants, the Global Cooling scare. Even offsetting forces were rejected by Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and John Holdren (Ecoscience: 1977, p. 686):

There can be scant consolation in the idea that a man-made warming trend might cancel out a natural cooling trend. Since the different factors producing the two trends do so by influencing different parts of Earth’s complicated climatic machinery, it is most unlikely that the associated effects on circulation patterns would cancel each other.

To members of the Climate Church, the planet “has been delivered in perfect working condition and cannot be exchanged for a new one.” An issue of World Watch magazine, “Playing God with Climate,” scolded man for interfering with the Earth’s default condition.

Deep Ecology

A radical wing of the modern environmental movement rejects an anthropocentric (human-centered) view of the world in favor of an ecocentric view.

In contrast to shallow ecology, concerned with pollution and resource depletion in the developed world, deep ecology defends “the equal right” of lower animals and plants “to live and blossom.” Deep ecology rejects what it sees as a master-slave relationship between human and nonhuman life. States Arne Næss (in Peter List, Radical Environmentalism: Philosophy and Tactics, 1993: p. 19):

Deep ecology stresses the interrelatedness of all life systems on Earth, demoting human-centeredness. Man must respect nature as an end in itself, not treat it as a tool of man. The human ego and concern for family and other loved ones must be joined by a similar emotional attachment to animals, trees, plants, and the rest of the ecosphere.

To hurt the planet, then, is the same as inflicting bodily harm on oneself. “In the broadest sense,” state Bill Devall and George Sessions (Deep Ecology, 1985, p. ix), “we need to accept the invitation to the dance—the dance of unity of humans, plants, animals, the Earth.” To get to this point, we need to “trick ourselves into reenchantment” (p. 10) with nature.

The platform of the Foundation for Deep Ecology (“a voice for wild nature”), formulated by Arne Næss and George Sessions, condemns the current interaction of man and nature and calls for population decreases and lower living standards. In its words:

The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves … independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for human purposes.
Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are also values in themselves.
Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
Policies must therefore be changed. The changes in policies affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures … will be deeply different from the present.

The platform goes on to state that radical change is necessary, “appreciating life quality … rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living.”

From Al Gore …

Al Gore’s angst about “dysfunctional civilization” crosses over into deep-ecology metaphysics. “Our civilization is, in effect, addicted to the consumption of the earth itself,” Gore stated in Earth in the Balance (1992):

This addictive relationship distracts us from the pain of what we have lost: a direct experience of our connection to the vividness, vibrancy, and aliveness of the rest of the natural world. The froth and frenzy of industrial civilization mask our deep loneliness for that communion with the world that can lift our spirits and fill our senses with the richness and immediacy of life itself.

Eschewing incrementalism, Gore called for “bold and unequivocal” global action where “the rescue of the environment” is “the central organizing principle for civilization.”

That “central organizing principle” is what Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek could not have envisioned: a global central planning where each and every economy of 196 sovereignties must be coordinated via taxes, tariffs (“border adjustments), and efficiency mandates to reduce, and even reverse, the emissions of the green greenhouse gas in particular, carbon dioxide (CO₂).

… to Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature (1989: p. 216) fingered the “terminal sin” of man’s altering nature and complained that “the greenhouse effect is the first environmental problem we can’t escape by moving to the woods.” He lamented how “the cheap labor provided by oil” makes the “deep ecology model” difficult to fathom, much less implement” (p. 200).

McKibben in a recent New Yorker column put more of his climate cards on the table: “If one wanted a basic rule of thumb for dealing with the climate crisis, it would be: stop burning things.” The combustion era must reach “a swift end,” whether it concerns oil for transportation, natural gas or coal for electricity, wood fires in the home, or grilling outdoors. Don’t light a match either.

Humanistic Alternative

Getting humans back in the picture, philosopher Alex Epstein reminds all that untamed nature is not only of benefit but also perilous. “If good and evil are measured by the standard of human well-being and human progress,” he states, “we must conclude that the fossil fuel industry is not a necessary evil to be restricted but a superior good to be liberated.” In this regard, “We don’t need green energy–we need humanitarian energy.”

Epstein then reverses the climate narrative:

Nature doesn’t give us a stable, safe climate that we make dangerous. It gives us an ever-changing, dangerous climate that we need to make safe. And the driver behind sturdy buildings, affordable heating and air-conditioning, drought relief, and everything else that keeps us safe from climate is cheap, plentiful, reliable energy, overwhelmingly from fossil fuels.

In The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel warns against the stasis mentality—the belief that “a good future must be static; either the product of detailed, technocratic blueprints or the return to an idealized, stable past” (1998: xii)—versus dynamism, which embraces “a world of constant creation, discovery, and competition” (xiv).

Philosophy, not only economics and political economy, matters in the global warming/climate change debate. Start by checking your premises—and those of your intellectual opponents.

Robert L. Bradley Jr., AIER Senior Fellow, is the founder and CEO of the Institute for Energy Research. He is author of eight books on energy history and public policy and blogs at MasterResource.

Bradley received a B.A. in economics from Rollins College, an M.A. in economics from the University of Houston, and a Ph.D. in political economy from International College.

He has been a Schultz Fellow for Economic Research and Liberty Fund Fellow for Economic Research, and in 2002 he received the Julian L. Simon Memorial Award for his work on energy and sustainable development.

Saturday, March 20, 2021

Climate Alarmism Reconsidered

Robert L. Bradley Jr. – March 16, 2021 @ American Institute for Economic Research

“Global Warming Has Begun” announced the New York Times in mid-1988, predicting a temperature and sea level rise by 2050 of as much as 9 degrees and 4 feet, respectively.

The majority of East Coast beaches could be gone by 2020, warned the Times in 1995. And just last week at the publication formerly known as the newspaper of record: “Shifts in Atlantic Hint at Danger.”

Don’t let this tsunami of climate-change alarm distract and fool you. Today’s push for government solutions to a global market failure is right out of the Malthusian playbook. Remember the “population bomb” of the 1960s? Resource exhaustion of the 1970s? Soil erosion, water famines, global cooling?

Back then, the consensus tried to demean, isolate, and cancel contrarian Julian Simon. The science was settled that more people equals more problems (the I=PAT equation), and “depletable” resources could not be replenished.

Simon won on the facts and outfoxed the consensus with his famous wager on the future of mineral-resource prices, “The Bet.” Playing offense against climate exaggeration and gloom can win too.

There is a case for climate optimism, not pessimism, whether or not global warming is the result of nature, humankind, or both. Physical change can be good or bad, depending on a variety of factors. Self-interest and entrepreneurship capitalize on the good and ameliorate the bad. The obvious climate policy for government at all levels is do no harm in the anticipation/adaptation process.

In 2004, I published Climate Alarmism Reconsidered with the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London. Written 16 years after James Hansen’s climate-scare testimony, and 16 years before Joe Biden’s recent “climate day,” the booklet began with this ten-point summary (an IEA tradition):

The energy sustainability issues of resource depletion, reliability (security), and pollution have been effectively addressed by market entrepreneurship, technology, and, in the absence of private property rights, measured regulation. Continuing improvement is expected.
The remaining carbon energy-related sustainability issue concerns anthropogenic (man-made) climate change. Current levels of atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations are approximately 52 per cent above pre-industrial levels with an associated increase in global warming potential of 66 percent. Emissions released in the mining, transportation and combustion of oil, natural gas, and coal account for most of this accumulation.
The balance of evidence points towards a benign temperature “greenhouse signal.” A greenhouse signal has not been identified with weather extremes or “surprises.”
Enhanced atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations create tangible benefits to offset any costs associated with anthropogenic climate change.
Liberal energy markets foster wealth creation, adaptation and social resilience – a positive strategy to deal with inevitable climate change, natural and anthropogenic. In addition, free-market reforms in the energy sector harness self-interest in energy efficiency, which has historically tended to reduce GHG emissions per unit of energy.
Mandatory GHG emission reductions beyond “no regrets” actions produce costs in excess of benefits under realistic assumptions, including discounting future benefits (if discernible) to compare with near-term costs.
Serious efforts to equilibrate the carbon cycle will have to employ novel sequestration strategies given increasing energy usage, supply constraints with renewable energies, and political and economic limitations with nuclear power.
Activist proposals for GHG reductions such as cap-and-trade programs should be cognizant of the unintended consequences of open-ended regulatory regimes driven by temporary political majorities.
The precautionary principle should be applied to government intervention limiting GHG emissions (e.g., the Kyoto Protocol), not just to acts of man on the natural environment. The economic risks of intervention, in other words, must be evaluated along with environmental ones.
The major threat to energy sustainability is statism, not depletion, pollution, reliability, or anthropogenic climate change. Major government interventions in energy markets, such as price controls, access restrictions, or carbon suppression, create the energy problems that non-politicised, free-market processes work to prevent.

Today, the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ has risen; the Paris Climate Accord has replaced the Kyoto Protocol internationally; carbon taxes and tariffs (“border adjustments”) are on the table, not cap-and-trade; and a doomsday narrative has crowded out the case for global lukewarming and CO₂ enrichment.

Meanwhile, climate science remains unsettled about the what, when, where, and why of climate change. Climate models are too artificial and imprecise for global and particularly regional prediction. Recorded data on extreme events (the center of today’s hyperbole) fail to confirm negative trends in hurricane intensity and landfall, drought and floods, U.S. wildfires, and ocean acidification. And the most important climate statistic of all? As documented by Bjorn Lomborg: “Global death risk from extreme weather has declined 99% over 100 years and global costs have declined 26% over the last 28 years.”

Back in the Malthusian heyday, ecological economist Kenneth Boulding confessed: “Is there any more single-minded, simple pleasure than viewing with alarm? At times it is even better than sex.” Whatever the attraction, today’s climate alarm, now in its 33rd year, shows little sign of abatement within the green establishment or in government.

The real threat is climate policy, not physical climate change itself. Affordable, reliable energy, free international trade, and lifestyle norms hang in the balance.