"Doing nothing will set our country on a course toward narrower choices for businesses and individuals, along with an expanded role for government."
---
Sent From Bloomberg Mobile MSG
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Why Fighting Global Warming Should Be a Conservative Cause
2010-11-07 06:54:21.176 GMT
By Bracken Hendricks
Nov. 7 (Washington Post) -- Few causes unite the
conservatives of the newly elected 112th Congress as unanimously
as their opposition to government action on climate change.
In September, the Center for American Progress Action Fund
surveyed Republican candidates in congressional and gubernatorial
races and found that nearly all disputed the scientific consensus
on global warming, and none supported measures to mitigate it.
For example, Robert Hurt, who won Tom Perriello's House seat in
Virginia, says clean-energy legislation would fail to "do
anything except harm people." The tea party's "Contract From
America" calls proposed climate policies "costly new regulations
that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and
weaken the nation's global competitiveness with virtually no
impact on global temperatures." Even conservatives who once
argued for action on climate change, such as as Sen. John McCain
(Ariz.) and Rep. Mark Kirk (Ill.), have run for cover.
But it's conservatives who should fear climate change the
most. To put it simply, if you hate big government, try global
warming on for size.
Many conservatives say they oppose clean-energy policies
because they want to keep government off our backs. But they have
it exactly backward. Doing nothing will set our country on a
course toward narrower choices for businesses and individuals,
along with an expanded role for government. When catastrophe
strikes - and yes, the science is quite solid that it will - it
will be the feds who are left conducting triage.
My economic views are progressive, and I think government
has an important role in tackling big problems. But I admire many
cherished conservative values, from personal responsibility to
thrift to accountability, and I worry that conservatives'
lock-step posture on climate change is seriously out of step with
their professed priorities. A strong defense of our national
interests, rigorous cost-benefit analysis, fiscal discipline and
the ability to avoid unnecessary intrusions into personal liberty
will all be seriously compromised in a world marked by climate
change.
In fact, far from being conservative, the Republican stance
on global warming shows a stunning appetite for risk. When faced
with uncertainty and the possibility of costly outcomes, smart
businessmen buy insurance, reduce their downside exposure and
protect their assets. When confronted with a disease outbreak of
unknown proportions, front-line public health workers get busy
producing vaccines, pre-positioning supplies and tracking
pathogens. And when military planners assess an enemy, they get
ready for a worst-case encounter.
When it comes to climate change, conservatives are doing
none of this. Instead, they are recklessly betting the farm on a
single, best-case scenario: That the scientific consensus about
global warming will turn out to be wrong. This is bad risk
management and an irresponsible way to run anything, whether a
business, an economy or a planet.
The great irony is that, should their high-stakes bet prove
wrong, adapting to a destabilized climate would mean a far
bigger, more intrusive government than would most of the "big
government" solutions to our energy problems that have been
discussed so far.
Let's start with costs. The investment needed to slow carbon
pollution might total from 1 to 2 percent of global GDP each year
for several decades, according to a 2006 study by the British
government. This spending would pay for advanced technology,
better land use and modern infrastructure. The same study put the
cost of inaction - including economic harm from property damage
and lost crops - at 5 to 20 percent of global GDP, lasting in
perpetuity, with the risk of vastly higher catastrophic damage.
You tell me which option is more fiscally responsible.
But it's not this cost-benefit arithmetic that should most
concern conservatives. Their real worry should be what it will
take to manage the effects of climate change as they are felt
across the economy over the course of our lifetimes.
The best science available suggests that without taking
action to fundamentally change how we produce and use energy, we
could see temperatures rise 9 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit over much
of the United States by 2090. These estimates have sometimes been
called high-end predictions, but the corresponding low-end
forecasts assume we will rally as a country to shift course. That
hasn't happened, so the worst case must become our best guess.
With temperature increases in this range, studies predict a
permanent drought throughout the Southwest, much like the Dust
Bowl of the 1930s, but this time stretching from Kansas to
California. If you hate bailouts or want to end farm subsidies,
this is a problem. Rising ocean acidity, meanwhile, will bring
collapsing fisheries, catch restrictions - and unemployment
checks. And rising sea levels will mean big bills as
cash-strapped cities set about rebuilding infrastructure and
repairing storm damage. With Americans in pain, the government
will have to respond. And who will shoulder these new burdens?
Future taxpayers.
This is just the beginning. If conservatives' rosy hopes
prove wrong, who but the federal government will undertake the
massive infrastructure projects necessary to protect high-priced
real estate in Miami and Lower Manhattan from rising oceans? And
what about smaller coastal cities, such as Galveston and Corpus
Christi in Texas? Will it fall to FEMA or some other part of the
federal government to decide who will move and when and under
what circumstances? Elsewhere, with declining river flows, how
will the Bureau of Reclamation go about repowering the dams of
the Pacific Northwest?
And while we're busy at home, who will help Pakistan or
Bangladesh in its next flood? What will the government do to
secure food supplies when Russia freezes wheat exports? Without
glaciers, what will become of Lima, Peru, a city dependent on
melting ice for drinking water? Will we let waves of "climate
refugees" cross our borders?
As the physicist and White House science director John
Holdren has said: "We basically have three choices: mitigation
[cutting emissions], adaptation and suffering. We're going to do
some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be."
Today's conservatives would do well to start thinking more
like military planners, reexamining the risks inherent in their
strategy. If, instead, newly elected Republicans do nothing, they
will doom us all to bigger government interventions and a large
dose of suffering - a reckless choice that's anything but
conservative.
Bracken Hendricks is a senior fellow at the Center for
American Progress and a co-author, with Rep. Jay Inslee
(D-Wash.), of "Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy
Economy."
-0- Nov/07/2010 06:54 GMT
