Recently, a surprising voice was added to the growing chorus in favor of capping carbon emissions and developing alternative sources of energy, that of World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz. Yes, that Paul Wolfowitz - former Deputy Secretary of Defense under Don Rumsfeld, leading “neocon,” partial architect of both the Bush Doctrine and the Iraq War, and general left-wing pariah. Not exactly the first person who would spring to mind when thinking about supporters of a carbon cap. And yet Wolfowitz is simply joining an increasing group of leading conservatives who support such a measure.
And, not surprisingly, Wolfowitz supports a market-based cap - saying that it will help not only the economy in the United States, but economies in the developing world, as well. In his words: “Whatever framework emerges for reducing carbon emissions, it should generate significant investment resources, to help developing countries grow while improving conservation, using energy more efficiently, and reducing the environmental impact.”¯
Wolfowitz notes that a cap-and-trade system could reap significant financial benefits, allowing first-world nations to contribute as much as 100 billion dollars a year to developing nations. And this kind of investment is necessary in order to make a significant, long-term reduction in global carbon emissions. Moreover, cleaner technologies and alternative fuels will be beneficial to the environment here at home, and can be exported to developing nations to improve the situation there as well. It’s a win-win. Paul Wolfowitz obviously thinks so; it’s time for more conservatives to get on board.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Cap and Trade, Climate Change, Politics/Government . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 27th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
You call this conservatism? Wolfowitz is not a conservative, he is a country club republican globalist. Remember that Bush campaigned on the idea that we cant be the world’s 911 and that we should only fight wars where the national interest is served and the goal is victory. The mess in Iraq is the exact opposite of his campaign promises. Just look what he is trying to accomplish. This is not much different than the one world socialism that the liberal environmentalists desire except that Wolfowitz’s version is controlled by big bisuness and banking interests.
This is 2 articles now which tell conservatives to get onboard with carbon regulation. The problem I have, and many conservatives have is that we dont believe that we are causing the global warming!!! Demonstrate that we are and then you will see us get onboard. Until such time, I believe our first and formost goal should be energy independence. Screw the *&^% carbon, stop transfering our wealth to the 3rd world and devote our time and capital to figure out a way that we can stop buying oil from a bunch of jihadists who want to kill us.
February 27th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Regarding Mr. Davis’ comment: There is plenty of room for reasoned debate about how best to deal with dependence on foreign oil specifically, energy policy generally, and the threat of global warming. Carbon cap and trade may or may not be the best solution. But that is a policy question. In contrast, it is just flat-out nuts to keep beating the dead horse that “we don’t believe we are causing the global warming!!! Demonstrate that we are and then you will see us get onboard.”
My questions is this. Given that something like 2500 climate scientists went over mountains of data in contributing to the recent IPCC report, that it had to be vetted by everybody and his brother in an inherently highly conservative (no pun intended) process, and that it nevertheless concluded with substantial confidence that humans are behind the warming trend, one wonders: what sort of evidence, exactly, would convince you to “get onboard”?
I’m honestly curious.
February 28th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Natural Patriot, one problem with citing the the IPCC’s recent Summary is that it is just a summary. There is no background information. Because they didn’t release the actual report and they didn’t footnote their assertions with footnotes, you can’t evaluate their claims. This is a major problem with the summary.
I’m curious how much of the warming from the last 1800 to today you think is caused by humans? Don’t we need to know how much of the warming is caused by humans?
As for Wolfowitz, he is exactly the type of person who would be in favor of a carbon cap. As a partial architect of the war in Iraq, he is obviously failed to have a true conservative’s humility for the objectives that government can achieve. This was the fatal flaw in Iraq and it is one of the fatal flaws of a carbon cap. Governments can’t fix all of the flaws in the world, but they sure can create a lot of them. A carbon cap will punish us all–and what are the benefits? A more stable climate? Not likely. Climate is a chaotic system. It was chaotic before humans cames along. Stable temperatures? Not likely. Temperatures have always changed and they always will, even before humans came along. So what are the benefits that justify the incredible economic losses a carbon cap would impose?
February 28th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Natural Patriot, you ask a fair question. My answer will require some more time and thought. For now I will say this. Today I am scraping mu knuckles on my wife’s CAFE mandated car. I chose today because the weather forcast was sunny and temps near 50. Instead it is raining and sleeting and about 30. If they cant predict the weather 24hrs in advance how can they predict the weather decades in advance? The problem with the global warming debate is that it is a political not a scientific debate. Too many people on both sides of the argument have agendas. The IPCC and the UN most certainly have agendas. The research is being conducted by people paid to support an already reached conclusion. I am old enough to remember the nuclear winter hysteria of the 70’s which was being caused by humans. I belive we should be experiencing famines by now. We must be wary of the adage that if something is said often enough, it becomes the truth.
February 28th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Well, guys, I don’t know how far we’ll get with this discussion but I’ll take a one more shot at it:
1) It’s a fair point that only the IPCC summary has been published so far. But what will be the excuse when the whole thing does become available, with all the footnotes? This sounds a lot like a stalling tactic to me.
2) It is true that weather and climate are chaotic on a daily or even annual basis. But evidence for global warming describes a trend over decades to centuries. And that trend is awfully clear. A snowstorm in Rochester one week in 2007 does not disprove a decades-long climate trend any more than election of a Democratic county commissioner somewhere proves that the era of Republican government in America is over.
3) “The problem with the global warming debate is that it is a political not a scientific debate.” Jim, you are right on the money there. It is a political debate. And it is only a political debate, because the science is basically settled now (even if we don’t have all the footnotes yet). Unfortunately, political interests have obscured — deliberately — the clear scientific consensus. And that is distracting attention from the very real problem of what America’s best course should be in dealing with it. This country has advanced by recognizing big problems and dealing with them, not by pretending they don’t exist.
4) Finally, it may well be that IPCC and the UN have agendas. But the contention that “The research is being conducted by people paid to support an already reached conclusion” is just nonsense, regardless of how many times Jim Inhofe repeats it. The scientific community is a loose, decentralized, anarchic group of individualistic people. They make their names and fame by proving other people wrong. Without a very strong, coherent, multifaceted body of rigorous data all pointing in the same direction, there is no way you could get that many scientists to agree on anything.
We can argue about carbon caps, government intervention, whether their will be colossal economic losses (lots of disgreement on that one too, even among conservatives), and plenty of other other policy issues. But there is really no point in arguing about the scientific evidence for global warming. That one is over.
March 1st, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Natural Patriot, a trend over decades proves nothing. A decade is barely discernable when discussing the history of the Earth. A warming trend over the last 2 decades does not make global warming a fact no more than the colling of the previous 3 decades made global cooling a fact. Climate is chaotic over centuries and millenia too.
Particularly disturbing is this claim that the science has been settled. I do not recall any scientific debate or discussion of this issue before the environmentalists decreed this to be fact. Compare, for instance, global warming to the demise of the dinosaurs. I remember a time when theories of their demise revolved around either global cooling or that the Earth could no longer sustain their existence. Then somebody came up with the meteor theory. Not everybody believed in this theory but research continued and eventually a layer of iridium was discovered in soil borings which indicates that there was a meteor impact about the time the dinosaurs disappeared. The point is that the the meteor theory evolved and eventually a preponderence of verifiable evidence convinced most people that this is indeed what happened. Now look at global warming. “An Inconvenient Truth” is a perfect example of whats wrong here. It starts with a man with a political belief system that requires environmental hysteria in order to be sustained. In the movie, we have about 10 min of science and 1 1/2 hours of emotional appeal. The science, such as it is, is a graph of 2 sets of data from this beloved college professor which happen to correlate. If you watch carefully before the camera pans away, you will see that the temperature graph has plateaued at the end. He also talks about computer models which support his theory. This is all they have, and they launch a crusade. There are no answers to other theories, no inclusion of other data such as moisture levels, cosmic ray activity, sun intensity, other green house gas levels, etc. The relatity is not matching the computer models, which is not surprising since computers are not yet capable of crunching all the data that would be a factor and we dont even know what all the variables are. The science is not settled, the detractors of the theory are being shouted down like when Sen Inhofe is derided but Al Gore gets an Oscar. Just what is this “clear scientific consensus”? Is 2500 really a lot of scientists or jsut a drop in the bucket. What percentage of scientists in this field actually believe that man is causing global warming? I have seen no data one way or the other. Global warming proponents are no different than Sarah Brady, the Jersey Girls, or Jesse Jackson. They make themselves the squeaky wheel making emotional pleas with little or anecdotal evidence to support their cause and shout down anybody who challenges them as being insensitive, greedy, stupid or racist.
If you want to see where this is headed, check out Freon regulation, another gift from Al Gore. The purpose was to protect the ozone layer. Believers of this theory all agreed that the culprit was R-12. R-22 and many other referigerants did little or nothing to the ozone. So why not just regulate R-12 and its ilk? No. The law is that the release of any refrigerant into the air while repairing a cooling system is punishable by a $25,000 fine. Why are other refrigerants included? Because they are greenhouse gasses. So if you release propane refrigerant from you airconditioner you can be fined. But releasing propane from a spray can is ok. Releasing propane while filling a container is required by law. Is this stupid or what? This was not about protecting the ozone, it was about command and control of the refrigeration industry.
Lastly, I did not mean to suggest that scientist are publishing papers to support theories they dont believe in for money. It works thus. Lets say you believe “A” and are trying to sell your belief. To give legitimacy to your claim you have a scientific study done by some research group. Who do you pick? Scientists who support you or the ones that dont? Of course the research money goes to the scientists who support your belief.
March 3rd, 2007 at 4:51 pm
OK Natural Patriot I will finally answer your question. I would like to see a resoned debate on this issue by experts in the field who are respected by people on both sides of the issue. Whether this debate takes place in the print media or in a series of TV shows I dont care. There are other theories as to the cause of gobal warming and all theories have their detractors. Give everybody a chance to make their case and to refute the others. Perhaps at some point, allow questioning by a group of ordinary citizens. Among the questions I would like answered are:
What about other theories such as solar activity, agrigultural practices, oceanic oil slicks, changes in earth orbit and tilt, etc.
The capabilities of the computer modeling need to be discussed. What inputs are being used and what is being omitted. Why doesnt reality agree with the models? Why can they predict climate 20 years from now and not weather 48 hrs from now?
Is the “mountains of data” IPCC is pouring over really significant? Do we have representative data from all parts of the Earth or just lots of data from certain parts?
What is the accuracy of the data? Why are we arguing tenths of a degree when instruments used are not even accurate to a degree in some cases.
Why attack CO2 emissions and not H2O emissions? After all water vapor is a very effective green house gas, and further when that vapor consenses into rain tremendous amounts of heat is released to the tune of 1000 BTU/LB water.
What is the historical record of other gasses in the atmosphere such as methane, SO2, and Freon?
How valid is historical climate data? Is it really only valid over the last 20 years, 100 years, 600 years, etc?
Just what would the climate be like now if the industrial revloution never happened and is this desirable?
Isnt Antarctica cooling and the ice caps growing thicker in the interior of Greenland?
Did the Little Ice Age really exist? IPCC all but denies it. Its too convenient that without it man made global warming look all the more plausible.
I am sure I can thinks of more questions I would like answered. But if the explanations to these questions is such that the preponderence of evidence is that we are causing globals warming by CO2 emissions then I will get onboard. Showing pictures of polar bears stranded on shrinking ice bergs and New Orleans after Katrina is not scientific debate nor scientific evidence of anything. I would suspect that after such a debate, what we will really learn is that thee is a lot we dont know.
March 8th, 2007 at 12:53 am
Jim, I think having a reasoned debate in a public forum is a reasonable suggestion. I am not a climate expert (though I am a scientist) but my strong sense from what I’ve read and from talking with climate scientists I know is that most of the questions you’ve asked have indeed been answered to satisfaction of the vast majority of experts. Such dry scientific stuff takes a while making it out to the public sphere in a form that’s understandable to the rest of us. So communicating that in a clear and concise way would be a public service. Perhaps when the full report of the IPCC comes out.