A Retrospective on Environmentalism
1/9/2023
Trying something a little different this time. I have often done analysis on environmental issues and the politics behind them. In the spirit of environmentalism, today I’m going to re-run a piece originally published in mid 2009 for The Thomas Paine Project where I wrote a weekly column - “Common Sense Dictates”. The setting is in the first year of the Obama administration. I am leaving it as originally published. My recommendations have aged remarkably well. This is a time capsule of where we were almost 15 years ago. You can compare it with what’s going on now:
Original publish date - 9/4/2009
"Once there was a silly old ant,
tried to move a rubber tree plant,
Everyone knows an ant can't
Move a rubber tree plant-
But he's got High Hopes..."
TPP is located in the heart of fire central in southern California. The flames are not yet visible from our office, but there is a thick and rancid haze from the smoke of the fire that is blacking out the sky - making it uncomfortable to breathe. In many ways, it is reminiscent of the horrible smog alerts that used to plague the Los Angeles area. The Air Quality Management District (yup, that's Californian for regulating the air...) has reported that the air quality is "hazardous" for the past couple of days. It got us to thinking about those wild days of the past when people polluted and littered shamelessly, and recycling was what they did to prime time shows during the summer months.
It has been more than 35 years since the ecological movement caught hold and the first "Earth Day" was marked as a day of national awareness. In the span of time from then until now we have made tremendous strides in turning most of the American "habitat" from the toilet that it was into a fairly pristine place in most communities, and even in most metro areas except for some of the hot, breezeless days of summer that still trap the fumes of engines and factories between the high-rise buildings and cause us to remember the bad old days. Yet still, some of us remain in a frenzied panic that we are destroying the earth.
Now just to be clear, TPP does not believe that it is a good idea to go around wasting resources and polluting. Just as the Boy Scouts advocate that you should leave a campsite cleaner than you found it, we should care for our planet as we do for our home, and more so in the case of some neighbors.
We are puzzled though at the alarmists who contend that in an era where the air and water is cleaner than it has ever been in modern human existence, and that the societies capable of waste are aware of the necessity of wise use of resources; that we still find ourselves careening towards a destruction of our own making.
There is a prayer that in part says that we should have the courage to change what we can, the strength to bear what we cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference. We know that there is a segment of the population that is firmly humanist in their beliefs, but the logic of that philosophical statement really cannot be denied.
To bring the two strings of thought together - the California wildfires and man-made pollution, and its effect on the planet, we need to understand how our efforts measure up in the face of what occurs naturally. In 2006, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, with much fanfare (and a Time magazine cover) announced a new initiative in California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. The program calls for increased fuel standards, introduction of alternative vehicle fuels, increased use of wind and solar energy and the list goes on.
The fanfare trumpeted that the energy savings and pollution benefit would be the equivalent of removing 500,000 cars from the roads. A laudable goal, and, as we have stated, we believe in cleaning up what we can. On a measure of scale though, the wildfires currently burning in California over the past few days have already negated the first 15 to 50 years of the Schwarzenegger effort, depending on whose numbers that you use. Nature, it seems, is on a suicide mission.
Of course, that is hyperbole, but for illustrative purposes. The idea of environmentalism is a popular one, who could be against a cleaner earth? Yet the environmental movement would have us become that ant pushing against the rubber tree plant.
Nature and the climate are fluid systems, constantly balancing and correcting for variations. Human presence and influence on the earth has been occurring since the dawn of civilization, which by all accounts goes back 5,000 years, on a planet that has existed, according to science for some 6 or 9 or 10 billion years (that's 10,000,000,000, which would put our time here at 0.00005% of the time that earth has existed.). During that period the climate has warmed to the point where everything between the Appalachian Mountains and the Rockies was a shallow salt sea. The earth has also cooled to the point that glaciers covered most of Europe, Asia and North America.
There was no mankind to bring about these changes. They were and are a natural occurrence. If current scientific thought is correct, the dinosaurs - a successful lifeform for over 200,000,000 years (200 times our span on earth as humans) - were exterminated by a cataclysmic asteroid strike that blackened the skies for long enough to kill all vegetation (or at least all that the dinosaurs used for food). USGS surveys of arctic ice cores have been found to have climate fluctuations of as much as 4 degrees Celsius in cycles of eerie regularity over the past 500 years. All of these vast changes have occurred without human intervention.
The human psyche is one that says what affects "me" affects everyone. That is a good and biological basis for our social society - the interdependence that we feel with each other. It makes living in large groups possible and functional and is good for the protection of humankind as a species. It is hardwired into us. It is also the thing that makes the events of today more urgent than the events of 20 years ago or 20 years in the future.
30 years ago, over the unusually cold winters of the late 1970s and early 1980s science had predicted the coming of a new ice age that would destroy civilization as we knew it. As a theory it was put forward by scientific names such as Carl Sagan, and by celebrities such as Ted Danson (who in a recent interview admitted he was wrong back then). Needless to say, the ice age did not materialize, and the opposite is being argued today - that a global warming trend will destroy civilization as we know it. This theory is also being put forward by a swath of the scientific community and by celebrities such as Ted Danson (seriously...). What will the crisis be in 20 years?
It is obvious, that whether or not we can destroy the planet, we do have the ability to destroy ourselves as a species. It is in our best interest, from a purely selfish motive to use our resources wisely, and to be as clean as we can with regard to the environment. But how do we balance out the needs of a modern society with the need to maintain a habitable environment? It is no more practical to move back to caves than it is to create our own little biospheres to live in and not make contact with a poisoned environment. Practicality was, and is, the key.
So, we get to the Climate Change / Cap and Trade / Renewable Resource / Green Energy bill promoted by President Obama which is squeaking through the House of Representatives. It is currently stalled in the Senate. We at TPP have looked at the bill and conclude that it puts wishful thinking in the place of practical solutions.
The bill, through increase taxes and fees punishes those who insist on using existing technology (autos, the local electric company, air conditioning) instead of technologies that have not yet been invented and brought to market. As Joe Biden is fond of saying – “Let me say that again” – technologies that have not yet been invented or brought to market.
The purpose of this, says the Administration, is to discourage behaviors than may cause the climate harm – such as running appliances during peak hours, through surcharges and additional taxes paid by the end user. This in theory seems fair – tax the wasters, but theory seldom works in practice. In addition to taxing the guy down the street for the excessive electricity eaten by his 72” plasma TV, and the AC set to 62 degrees, the electric company itself will be fined for using coal to produce it’s electricity (80% of the power plants in the coountry use coal for fuel). That cost (as all business costs) is passed onto you – the consumer – the one who has the modest TV and live with the thermostat set at 80 degrees.
Some companies will be exempted by being allowed to purchase ‘energy credits” which will allow them to keep up their “wasteful ways”. The “energy credits” come from companies not using up their allocation of energy credits.
The formulas for allocating these credits were put together by Congress (which has a habit of late of trying to pass bills that it does not understand) with significant input from energy companies and affected industries. One can safely assume that they are not giving their shareholders money away in a fit of environmental consciousness. As a matter of fact, didn’t Dick Cheney get into a lot of trouble pre-9/11 for some similar shenanigans? In the end though – it will be you, with your CFLs and electronic thermostats and Energy Star appliances that will still be paying the bill, and the government holds the money.
If that in itself weren’t disturbing enough, it’s not like there’s anyplace else to go. Solar and wind farms are insufficient to meet current needs. As T. Boone Pickens has found out, you can build the biggest wind farm ever, but it means nothing if you can’t get the electricity to the power station for distribution. He has since divested from his wind farm company. There must be a market ready alternative. Taxing people for use of the existing technology is only punishment, not progress.
Then there is the world of unintended consequences. The much anticipated “Chevy Volt” – the plug-in electric care touted by both Candidates Obama and McCain was still on the drawing board last year.
The original design, which called for a range of about 50 miles per charge was deemed unworkable by Chevrolet first because the range was too short. Secondly, engineers calculated that the $200.00 per month save in gasoline costs for the average buyer would be offset by a roughly $350.00 increase in their electric bill.
Electricity costs money. And this electricity comes from that coal-powered electric plant, subject to surcharge under Cap and Trade. The redesign abandons the idea of primarily plugging the Volt in and instead uses a gasoline powered generator to power the Volt when the battery dies. (Gasoline, really?... yup.). This is a fine example of a market driven solution, but as all market-driven solutions, they take time to develop. The government serves no one by inflicting more financial pain on struggling families without having a market-ready alternative available for immediate use.
Common Sense Dictates
In its rush to action, the Obama Administration seems to have abandoned the one characteristic that comforted most unsure voters during the campaign. The confidence that he would sit down and think something through before he acted on it.
This “Climate Bill” serves the extreme left wing of his base, and no one else. In fact, it does not serve his base unless they can work themselves into the “exempted” categories or they can afford to by “energy credits” as Super-environmentalist Al Gore does to offset his excessive electricity use and carbon-footprint in Tennessee.
This climate bill is reactionary and counter-productive in far more ways than listed in this small space. The lack of thought going into the consequences of its enactment seems to reveal it as a mere money-grab by the Federal government for the funding of its pet projects.
For those who think that statement reactionary, TPP only needs to point out that from the nearly 2 TRILLION dollars in stimulus funds allocated, in a package promoted as a jobs bill to improve infrastructure, turned out to only have 30 BILLION dollars for the improvement of infrastructure. It was instead a money-grab for special interest projects.
We see a pattern emerging. Common sense dictates that we should care for the environment and make wise use of our resources, but we should not punish hard-working families for doing their best to help the cause. The time to “Cap and Trade” if ever, is when alternative means are available for consumers to use. Writing a tax bill and issuing a proclamation doesn’t make it so Mr. President, as nice as that might be… Common sense dictates a rethinking of this whole issue – using science, some engineering and maybe a timetable or two based in reality. And, oh yeah, common sense.