Carpe Datum

Misdirect

I'm a big fan of Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column. He always has some interesting things to say about various games, and he often will riff about whatever is on his mind in his column.

This week, though, he pissed me off. He started talking about the whole global warming thing and talking about what a hypocrite Al Gore is for having such a big house and all that nonsense. What's funny is that in the same column, he pointed out that he's all for doing things to promote alternative energy, improve gas mileage, etc. For example:

Raising mileage standards for vehicles and enacting a carbon trading system for electric power generation are two highly desirable actions Congress can take right now, without doing economic harm, to cut greenhouse emissions, improve national security by reducing U.S. reliance on Persian Gulf oil and push Detroit automakers to become more competitive so they stay in business. But instead of taking badly needed action, the House of Representatives last week spent $89,000 of taxpayers' money to purchase 30,000 tons' worth of "carbon offsets" for its antiquated coal-burning powerhouse. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declared the U.S. Capitol will be green by 2008, but this sounds to me like political yammer.

First, according to estimates by resource economists, carbon offsets need to cost $20 to $25 per ton in order to generate a significant profit incentive for innovators, and thus inspire technical breakthroughs that will stave off artificial global warming. If the Capitol paid only $3 per ton, it wasn't buying much. More important, if you really believe artificial global warming is a huge menace to society, you don't just buy offsets and continue using your antiquated coal-fired powerhouse -- because, after all, the offsets only prevent emissions from rising, doing nothing to reduce emissions. If you really believe artificial global warming is a menace, you buy offsets and cut your own carbon output, thus reducing emissions. This is the big fault with Al Gore's patting himself on the back for buying offsets: He has not reduced his carbon footprint. If he believed his own speeches, he'd both buy the offsets and cut back his carbon-intensive jet-set lifestyle.

Pelosi's talk of a "green" U.S. Capitol is especially phony when she refuses to allow the House of Representatives to vote on proposals to increase fuel-economy standards for vehicles. Higher mpg standards -- the average fuel economy of new cars, trucks and SUVs has not risen since 1988 -- are a million times more important to preventing artificial global warming than symbolic actions such as those being taken at the Capitol. Stricter mileage rules would not only reduce U.S. payments to Persian Gulf dictatorships but also make a significant dent in greenhouse gases because greenhouse emissions are proportional to fossil fuel burned. Yet while Pelosi announces lofty promises about a renewable Capitol, she won't schedule a vote on the strict new mileage standards backed by figures as diverse as President Bush and Barack Obama.

Actually, Gore has done just about all he can do within the law to reduce his carbon footprint, but IT DOESN'T MATTER. Gore is in a "no win" situation. If he lived in a tiny shack and built his own solar array out of scrap metal and went all over the country on a bicycle or something, he'd be derided as a loony enviro-nut. ANYTHING he does to substantially inconvenience himself (like vowing to only fly commercial airlines, which I'm sure the Secret Service would just LOVE) in order to reduce his carbon footprint would open him up for ridicule.

And that's not the only reason the argument isn't worth having. Easterbrook said it himself: concrete action like raising the MPG standard is a lot more important than symbols. So why does Easterbrook spend half his space on this topic talking about frickin' Al Gore? Why do people get SO DAMNED MAD about him winning the Nobel Prize? It doesn't matter! It won't make the possibility of catastrophic warming vanish. It won't change energy policies for any country anywhere. So why, if the issue is so important to people like Easterbrook, do they continue to change the subject?

It's one thing to be a contrarian. You know, say you're a big environmentalist but then bash Al Gore or Hollywood liberals or whatever so you have "cred" with both sides. But try not to contradict your own logic within the space of a couple of paragraphs, ok? If symbols aren't important, then stop misdirecting the conversation.

And it's not just Easterbrook. You can't HAVE a conversation with a wingnut about global warming without them spending half of their breath yapping about Al Gore like a bunch of trained seals. Just like you can't talk about health care without the evil specter of Hillary trying to control our lives through her insidious health care plan being talked about endlessly (by the "liberal" traditional media, no less).

Nevermind that she made everything public or is doing so as quickly as is practically possible, unlike, say, Cheney and his little energy buddies dividing up Iraqi oil. Or all the civil liberties we've lost thanks to Bush. Nope. Hillarycare might mean the GUMMINT IS TELLING OUR DOCTORS WHAT TO DO. And we can't have that! Not when for-profit insurance companies are doing such a bang-up job and we have poorer health care than most of Europe for twice the price.

Posted by Observer at November 15, 2007 11:04 PM