How Should Conservatives Talk About Global Warming?
NRO’s Jim Geraghty makes a good point today when he argues that, yes, conservatives really do need to take global warming fears in the electorate seriously. Here’s the gist:
I don’t buy into the global warming hype. But that doesn’t mean I want Republican candidates fighting an uphill battle, trying to convince the public that it’s all a hoax. I like a lot of what Jim Manzi says – get past the argument of whether it’s happening, and get into the debate over what to do with it.
…In an era where Wal-Mart puts enormous efforts into making the case that it is green, that British Petroleum runs ads about how they’re developing alternative fuels, General Electric touts its eco-magination… All of these companies know where public opinion is, and where its customers are. They’re all moving as fast as they can, and applying tremendous resources to prove, “we’re not part of the problem, we’re part of the solution.”
He follows this up with a note to those who’ve responded – most suggesting that he’s bought into the liberal line:
The response in the e-mailbag is pretty much what I expected: “you big squishy sellout.”
The Republicans can win on “our solutions are better than theirs.” I’m unclear if the Republicans can win on, “global warming is a media-hyped hoax.”
To paraphrase Rumsfeld, you go into an election with the electorate you have, not the electorate you would like to have.
It’s certainly frustrating that so many conservatives have simply decided that any acknowledgment that global warming is happening and might be caused in part by human action is a traitorous act. Like Geraghty, I’m a fan of much of what Jim Manzi writes, which is basically that conservatives need to get over the debate about the science of climate change and instead look at the economics of various policy solutions designed to address it (here’s his detailed answer to why he opposes a carbon tax). Recognition of global warming shouldn’t be conservative apostasy, and conservatives should avoid conflating science (learning facts about the natural world) with policy (making public decisions about how to address those facts). Science is descriptive, not prescriptive, so accepting that something exists doesn’t mean accepting every nutball proposal to "do something" about it.
That said, I do worry a bit about Geraghty’s suggests that conservatives should take an "our solutions are better than theirs" approach. This might be a winning formula, in some respects, but it buys into the idea that solutions—meaning public policy, mandates, spending, etc—are really necessary. The uncertainties surrounding global warming make it almost impossible to discern what effects it will actually have, and there’s strong reason to believe that its effects may be minimal, and almost certainly not catastrophic. Either way, most of the policies that have been proposed to respond to it simply don’t look like they’ll actually pay off – the costs appear to outweigh the potential gains.
So the best thing to do is probably to hedge our bets: rather than weighing the economy down with mandates and taxes, allow wealth and innovation to proceed at the fastest rate possible so that if global warming does turn out to pose some problem, we are in the best position to deal with it, having the most resources and the most powerful technologies possible.
