The environmental movement maintains that science and technology cannot be relied upon to build a safe atomic power plant, to produce a pesticide that is safe, or even to bake a loaf of bread that is safe, if that loaf of bread contains chemical preservatives. When it comes to global warming, however, it turns out that there is one area in which the environmental movement displays the most breathtaking confidence in the reliability of science and technology, an area in which, until recently, no one—not even the staunchest supporters of science and technology—had ever thought to assert very much confidence at all. The one thing, the environmental movement holds, that science and technology can do so well that we are entitled to have unlimited confidence in them is forecast the weather—for the next one hundred years!
It is, after all, supposedly on the basis of a weather forecast that we are being asked to abandon the Industrial Revolution or, as it is euphemistically put, “to radically and profoundly change the way in which we live”—to our enormous material detriment. We are being asked to freeze and then progressively reduce global carbon dioxide emissions and, of course, to correspondingly reduce our consumption of the oil, coal, and natural gas that causes these emissions. Indeed, according to The Earth Policy Institute, “Scientists believe that an immediate 70–80 percent reduction in current carbon emissions is necessary to mitigate further climate change.” And we had all better be ready to throw away our refrigerators, wear plenty of sweaters in the winter, fan ourselves in the summer, and ride bicycles or walk to wherever we need to go.
Of course, any global limitation on carbon dioxide emissions whatever, let alone a 70-80 percent reduction, implies that the economic development and hence increased energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions of the vast presently backward regions of the world would have to be accomplished at the expense of the equivalently reduced energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions of the more advanced countries. Thus, as much as the two and a half billion or so people of China and India consumed more energy, the billion or so people of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan would have to consume equivalently less energy.
Very closely connected with the demand for reduced carbon-dioxide emissions and energy consumption is something else that might appear amazing. This concerns prudence and caution. No matter what the assurances of scientists and engineers, based in every detail on the best established laws of physics—about backup systems, fail-safe systems, containment buildings as strong as U-boat pens, defenses in depth, and so on—when it comes to atomic power, the environmental movement is unwilling to gamble on the unborn children of fifty generations hence being exposed to harmful radiation. But on the strength of a weather forecast, it is willing to wreck the economic system of the modern world—to literally throw away industrial civilization!
The meaning of this insanity is that industrial civilization is to be wrecked because this is what must be done to avoid bad weather. All right, very bad weather. The very bad weather of hurricanes like Katrina.
In a manner reminiscent of an old Hollywood movie in which some great white hunter might attempt to frighten a tribe of jungle savages in darkest Africa, the environmentalists tell a badly dumbed-down American public that Katrina and worse hurricanes to come are the result of global warming resulting from fossil fuel consumption. They tell us in effect, that if we destroy the energy base needed to produce and operate the construction equipment required to build strong, well-made, comfortable houses for hundreds of millions of people, we shall be safer from such hurricanes than if we retain and enlarge that energy base. They tell us that if we destroy our capacity to produce and operate refrigerators and air conditioners, we shall be better protected from hot weather than if we retain and enlarge that capacity. They tell us that if we destroy our capacity to produce and operate tractors and harvesters, to can and freeze food, to build and operate hospitals and produce medicines, we shall secure our food supply and our health better than if we retain and enlarge that capacity.
There is actually a remarkable new principle implied here, concerning how man can cope with his environment. Instead of our taking action upon nature, as we have always believed we must do, we shall henceforth control the forces of nature more to our advantage by means of our inaction. Indeed, if we do not act, no significant threatening forces of nature will arise! The threatening forces of nature are not the product of nature, but of us! Thus speaks the environmental movement.
More on this madness will follow.
This article is copyright © 2006, by George Reisman. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute it electronically and in print, other than as part of a book and provided that mention of the author’s web site www.capitalism.net is included. (Email notification is requested.) All other rights reserved. This article was adapted from p. 88 of the author’s Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996).
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“The meaning of this insanity is that industrial civilization is to be wrecked because this is what must be done to avoid bad weather. All right, very bad weather. The very bad weather of hurricanes like Katrina.” The South’s civilization had to be wrecked in order to abolish slavery. It was still the right thing to do.
Global warming is a form of pollution. Who is affected? Everyone whose property is destroyed by global warming. Under the principles formulated by Rothbard the owners of, for example, an island nation threatened to disappear should have the right to stop anyone who emits greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. This does not mean all use of greenhouse gases must stop, just that those who are adversely affected have the right to be compensated for the loss of their property.
Of course the owners of the disappearing island would have to prove in court that greenhouse gases do cause global warming, and that’s not exactly going to be straightforward.
The opening paragraph of this post is an absolute gem. It is probably my favourite excerpt from Capitalism. Excellent stuff!
Its all academic. Carbon is not the issue. The number of humans is the issue. Unless the environmentalists are willing to discuss population control, then they aren’t serious. Of course cutting carbon use by 80% would certainly have an impact on population, but somehow I doubt they’ve seriously considered that consequence.
I have followed the global warming debate with more amusement than alarm. Perhaps I am being naive, but I think that when the environmentalists and their political supporters finally reveal the costs of doing their bidding, the populations of the developed countries will simply ignore them.
Economist – good observation on the Rothbardian treatment of pollution.
The problems; The corpus of law since the industrial revolution has abrogated property rights re; pollution, and governments will never restore them. The research into anthropogenic global warming is largely government-funded and thus irredeemably compromised. And finally, even if developed countries agree to reductions, the effect will be quickly eclipsed by the developing world which will consider any regulation a threat.
RE: Nuclear Power – The biggest obstacle to a safe, viable nuclear power industry in the US is the Price-Anderson law, which socializes most of the risk of a nuclear accident. This, the useless Department of Energy, and the retarded regulations of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission conspire to keep nuclear power technology mired in a kind of mid-60′s amber.Some small moves have been made to ease the introduction of newer, safer designs, but the system is still too encrusted with regulation to be viable.
The answer is to remove all regulation save one – make the nuke plant owner 100% financially responsible for his plant. Once the industry has absorbed the impact of this, private underwriters can determine appropriate levels of indemnification which will then be priced into the cost of the power. Until this happens, the state public utilities commissions and reactionary federal regs will continue to keep nuclear power from solving our energy and pollution problems.
We have had more then 20 White Death Holocausts (glaciations) in the last three and a half million years.
It must be the best dumb luck for the species imaginable that industrial output may well help save us from the next one.
Nothing could be more benign then CO2 based warming. C02 is what plants breathe for Pete’s sake. And when they get more of it they grow faster.
I never thought I’d live to see a fraud so large and ridiculous as the campaign against warmer winters for the Siberians.
“The South’s civilization had to be wrecked in order to abolish slavery. It was still the right thing to do.”
This is the “logic” of the global warming alarmists?
The answer is to remove all regulation save one – make the nuke plant owner 100% financially responsible for his plant. Once the industry has absorbed the impact of this, private underwriters can determine appropriate levels of indemnification which will then be priced into the cost of the power. Until this happens, the state public utilities commissions and reactionary federal regs will continue to keep nuclear power from solving our energy and pollution problems.
That’s not enough — they have to have some remote idea of how much they will have to pay in order to acquire insurance. In todays unstable legal environment with easily fooled, emotional juries, underwriter estimates, given the change you just proposed, would over-state the risk and make nuclear plants artificially expensive. I’m not disputing that nuke power is a good idea, just that there are other causes preventing it.
On a side note, hypothetically, what if it really were true that global warming was happening in significant amounts, and it was directly attributable to specific human activities. What do any of you think the appropriate libetarian response is?
To abolish the state. Heh.
Person,
I thought your argument on the Hoppe insurance thread was that insurance is chronically underpriced, LOL.
They could start with current estimates (combination of public and private underwriting), which are certainly too low for current designs, but far too high for inherently safe technologies like ‘pebble-bed’ reactors. But insurance companies would also be able to look at military and foreign commercial safety to estimate risks, making good numbers for risk fairly easy to come by.
Vince: I’m not sure you understood my point. The risk *of a meltdown* is actuarially quantifiable. I never said anything about this or disputed it. What I was trying to say was that the dollar value of the resulting damage is not. It will be driven by a highly unpredictable jury pool that will want to punish the company who runs the plant, any anyone else they can pin the blame on, for everything their worth. This skews the ability to quantify the dollar-risk that needs to be insured (risk being a function of the odds *and* the severity). This is what I was claiming poses a problem.
“To abolish the state. Heh.”
Ha Ha! Good one; funny and correct.
I agree with the spirit of Reisman’s piece, especially the suspicions of the environmentalists ability to make long range predictions not to mention questionable motives/agendas.
However, it is off that an Austrian should neglect to mention a great deal of ‘pollution’ is created by state or state regulated entities who do not respect the property rights of those affected by the pollution. Therefore one could argue better property rights might see a more ‘optimal’ level of pollution and real market incentives for its reduction.
Person;
“I’m not sure you understood my point. The risk *of a meltdown* is actuarially quantifiable. I never said anything about this or disputed it. What I was trying to say was that the dollar value of the resulting damage is not. It will be driven by a highly unpredictable jury pool that will want to punish the company who runs the plant, any anyone else they can pin the blame on, for everything their worth.”
The problem I am outlining is that the current system prevents the introduction of inherently safe designs, for which the probability of a meltdown, while not the same as current designs, is low, while the probability of property damage, compared with current designs approaches zero.
What we are left with, as a direct consequence of government indemnity and regulation is a situation where existing reactors present risks (meltdown AND property damage) many times higher than proposed new reactors, but those risks are socialized. There are reasons for this.
A free market in nuclear power would be strictly self-correcting for exactly the same reasons you refer to – the price of failure is absurdly high, therefore the designs that would be implemented would be safe.
Of course, for there to be a free market in nuclear power it would mean that first there would have to be a free market in electricity in general, and we know that won’t happen any time soon.
Not sure it’s too late to post on this topic, but I just feel like something quite critical is getting neglected, or rather, being sidebarred in this argument.
It seems to me that there are two ways of looking at this issue. One is to dismiss the science that points to this being quite a serious issue. This is what most libertarian literature seems to do. Another is to embrace the science, because, after all, the very premise of libertarian thinking is based on reason; and to try to work out an intellectually sound approach to the problem at hand.
No matter how much you try to ignore science as being “overly alarmist” or motivated by ignoble aims … (tighter government control?), the facts remain. The experimental facts are clear and ignoring them because you can’t see them is like ignoring radiation from a nuclear bomb for the same reason.
This aside, I think the concept of a universal danger, which is contributed to by all upon a true shared resource is a phenomenon worth discussing. Even in the most Rothbardian of worlds, where private ownership is pervasive, air remains a resource which can not be bought or sold. Therefore, a Libertarian would call for those who endanger or harm (on a small scale) his neighbors, to pay up damages in full. This takes care of your basic externality, thus taking away the prospect of regulation of a polluting industry.
However, this argument does not hold when the danger is adequately disbursed and when the victims might be a generation away. It would seem that this would call for collaboration between all those involved to prevent the danger. Unfortunately in today’s world, the only actors who are capable of making this collaboration possible are our much-hated governments …
What do you think?
“I bet if a Democrat gets elected President in 2008 the earth will magically start cooling again; just as it was before 2001.”
Poster on Let’s Run.com
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