Seeker Blog

2 Responses to “Why is Climate Change a Partisan Issue in the United States?”

1. 1 Will Howard
   Mar 30th, 2007 at 1:20 pm

   I left a comment on Pielke’s site, which I’ll repeat here (I’ve some of these point already anyway):

   Proponents and opponents of fossil-fuel emissions limitations should beware of a philosophical pitfall: the assumption that settling the scientific issues will make any particular policy step inevitable.

   Some in the pro-Kyoto camp labor under the implicit premise that if only policymakers and society at large could be convinced that global warming is real and due to human action, the Kyoto Protocol would be universally ratified and put into action. I’m critical of Gore, for example, for pushing this premise.

   What I think Gore omits from his rhetoric (though as a politician he can hardly be unaware) is that climate science is not the only - and indeed may not be the most important - factor driving energy and carbon-emissions policy, and Kyoto is not the only possible carbon limitation scheme. Many “solutions” to global warming, such as nuclear power, carry environmental risks of their own.

   Dr. Pielke is quite right to point out that collectively and individually we make many choices in the face of science, not because of it. If science dictated action, no one in the world would smoke.

   Similarly, many opponents of limitations on fossil fuel emissions seem intent on discrediting the science of global warming as a way of forestalling action. But there are other, more immediate reasons to cut back our dependence on fossil fuels, and these rationales have much more certain science behind them. Examples include local and regional pollution which pose a public health risk. Aside from environmental risks, let’s not forget the geopolitical and economic risk posed by dependence on fossil fuels.

   For those who oppose steps to reduce fossil-fuel emissions, global warming may be the perfect issue. The uncertainties of impacts, and long time frames, make global warming an easy target for economic arguments for doing nothing. After all, the costs of many mitigation steps are easier to estimate than the costs of adaptation to still-uncertain impacts.

   By making global warming the only issue in the fossil-fuels debate, environmentalists and “Green” ideologues may be unnecessarily and counterproductively limiting the scope of the argument and narrowing policy choices.

   So I think we have to separate the scientific assessment of global warming from the policy response. If the science answers the detection-and-attribution question in the affirmative, what, if anything, should we do about it? Well one perfectly valid policy response is to do nothing. Keep going the way we’re going and deal with the consequences later. Personally I think doing absolutely nothing would be a mistake, and I agree with Dr. Pielke that we have many “no-regrets” mitigation strategies available.

2. 2 Steve D.
   Mar 30th, 2007 at 2:31 pm

   Will,

   Your comments are an elegant summary of the hazards of making policy dependent on “getting the science right”. Another fine piece on this is “How to Use Science to Argue Politics, Manipulate the Media, and Silence your Political Opponents”.

   I wrote a related post which includes some of my dialog with Prof. Andrew Dressler in Roger’s comments section:

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