Steaming Mad

I know of several self-described conservatives who really get hot under the collar about the issue of climate change. They take the notion that man has negatively impacted the climate system quite personally - something about it inflames them to their core. However, I have yet to encounter a self-described liberal who gets quite so worked up in the same way. If they do get worked up over anything, it's about people's inaction to do anything about humankind's supposed ongoing destabilization of the climate system.

So, why the difference in reactions between the two groups? Well, let's assume that the Earth's average temperature is indeed increasing in a fashion that is likely to be detrimental to our lives, and let's further assume that we are causing it. There is more unambiguous evidence for the first proposition than for the second, but for now we'll run with both of them. What would this mean for conservatives? What would it mean for liberals?

The traditional conservative philosophy is centered around the individual. Each person is free to determine his or her own course in life, and in an ideal world, hard work, perseverance, and ingenuity is rewarded while laziness and mooching is punished. Government intervention in personal and business affairs is evil, except for purposes of national defense. The will of the individual is superior to any perceived needs of "the people" or "the masses." There is no such thing as "the greater good." Hard work will lead to nothing but prosperity.

Now, pit this imagined conservative against climate change. Here is an issue which seems to contradict everything he believes. Energy usage, which is directly coupled to prosperity, is blamed for increasing global temperatures. Private enterprise and the hard work of talented people has created both a high standard of living and a calamity of global proportions. "How can this be?" he yells. "Adam Smith told us that human activity can guide itself, that people need not be controlled by some 'higher authority!' He told us that rational self-interest and free-market principles will keep us safe and prosperous, with no evil government intervention! Global warming can't be true!" We can certainly sympathize with his frustration.

Now add in some very loud liberals, who trumpet climate change as a moral issue with global impact, in which the needs of the individual must be balanced out with those of the rest of humanity, many generations down the line. In their fervor, they perhaps gloss over some of the more intricate details of climate change as a scientific hypothesis, leaving them vulnerable to attack by critics on the right. The mere presence of these loud liberals, and their willingness to suggest that Adam Smith was maybe completely wrong, further infuriates our imagined conservative friend.

It has been described that modern liberal thought emerged in the early twentieth century, with the emergence of a class of people who felt that "life had lost the ability to organize itself." In other words, they started to doubt Adam Smith. These folks aren't too shocked to find out that unrestrained human activity is having negative effects - it jives with their personal philosophy that human life is too chaotic to self-organize. Unfortunately, there are some liberals on the extreme side of things who seem to have a seething hatred for human life and activity - they want us to live in caves or even completely die off. This is really ugly and unfortunate - why should an entity hate itself? I love human activity and prosperity, and I want to see more of it for the entire planet. But that may not be what we'll get it we keep burning fossil fuels and dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The prosperity we may obtain by our continued fossil fuel usage may be dampened by rising sea levels, more extreme weather events, drought, changes in climate patterns, and a host of other environmental impacts.

So where is the science in this tug-of-war? Well, real science does not operate in a political vacuum, and climate change is certainly no exception. But from what I've seen, climate change is a valid scientific hypothesis. There is plenty of evidence that the planet is heating up, and so far we have not been able to successfully explain this observed temperature increase without including the anthropogenic component. So either (i.) we don't understand the natural climate system, or (ii.) we really are screwing up the planet in proportion to our standard of living. Which of those seems more likely to you? The answer, I submit, will be heavily influenced by your political preferences.

There is still plenty to learn about the natural climate system, and we have to be honest about the parts that we don't fully understand. The scientists I know are honest about this - after all, one can make a career out of exploring such uncertainties - each hole in what we know is a possible place to explore. Still, I'd say we understand enough to be reasonably confident in hypothesis (ii.) The models we have can reproduce past climates, and they represent spatial and temporal variations in important climatic indicators quite well. So, they're well calibrated. No, we don't understand everything yet, and we likely never will. That's why it is so important that the uncertainties not get lost in the argument - they must come along for the ride and be part of the discussion.

So if (ii.) is true, does that mean Adam Smith was wrong? Can human life not organize itself? Well, we know that free-market principles are great for promoting economic prosperity and peace in the relative short-term, but what happens when you add something long-term, like the harmful temperature increase that (probably) comes about from carbon dioxide emissions? Will this long-term cost really be calculated in anybody's spreadsheet? Will the self-made businessman really concern himself with future generations? What difference does it make to him that the temperature might increase by a couple of degrees in a century? This seems a matter of individual conscience, which will not take the form of one of Adam Smith's stabilizing economic feedback loops. There is nothing I can see in the code of rational-self interest that suggests that an independent businessman should concern himself with the world a hundred years from now, long after he is dead and gone. By the time high temperatures do become a concern for the businessperson, it will be much too late to do anything about it.

So then, doesn't it make sense to do something about climate change now, while we still can? Well, there are those who suggest that it is already too late, and that our money would be better spent combating disease and famine. I'm not sure, and I don't really want to get into the policy side of things right now. I just wanted to try and understand why conservatives get so steaming mad about climate change. To be overly simplistic about it, they're mad because someone suggested that they're wrong. Liberals broadly believe that conservatives might be mistaken about the world and how it works, and this makes them furious. Why else would they get so defensive?

I used to be quite conservative myself. I believed in the power of the individual, his or her freedom to exercise her will in rational self-interest, in limited government interference, and hard work. I'm still shaped by a lot of those ideas, but these days I find myself willing to ponder if government can do some positive things. More on that later, perhaps.

Of course, all this logic rests on the traditional "conservative" and "liberal" stereotypes, which are meaningless political labels which obscure our individuality and lend little to fruitful debate. Still, I think this post got us somewhere. Maybe.