“Early morning, and the city comes alive. And what is immediately clear is the parameters of a global war between nature and the car. By a little after sunrise, it is clear that it is the car that is winning.”

So says the BBC’s Malachi O’Doherty in a report for Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence. It was the accompanying report to William Crawley’s radio interview with Sir David King, the British government’s chief authorised scientific advisor (quite an Orwellian position). Whether O’Doherty realised that anyone would dispute his opening premise or not, it is indicative of the extent to which average British minds have bought into the environmental credo established by the political Left. In this case, O’Doherty’s worldview is apparent from the above introduction before the discussion has even started: that the human lifestyle is fundamentally, essentially, a polar enemy of ‘nature’, that the ‘car’ is diametrically at odds with the Earth (posing a bigger threat than even international terrorism, as we hear later in the piece).

And yet, the entire worldview owes its existence to a political movement that needs to feel guilty, it seems. Guilty about being rich when some people are poor, guilty about having ancestors who were abusive toward those of another race, guilty about human progress, guilty about human ambition. The hyperbole is sufficiently bigger than the science it is based on that many people appear to accept the leftist form of ‘environmentalism’ almost verbatim, with no further thought required. The environment is just another thing to feel guilty about. Thus the real science is nearly indiscernable in the rhetoric of politically-charged think-tanks and government advisors and guilt-ridden lobbyists; the media report their latest facts and figures, their latest poll findings and the latest wacko book-publishings and before long an entire nation, without ever having studied the facts, find themselves believing that ‘Cars are bad’ and ‘Hummers are worse’ and ‘Humans suck’.

O’Doherty interviews a Credulous Woman who apparently feels very strongly about the issue of climate change and lives in a house overlooking the Antrim Coast in Northern Ireland. This exchange with her was revealing:

O’Doherty: “When you stand here at the front of your big house here, you’re looking straight down at the sea. People say the sea level is rising. I take it you haven’t noticed it yet?”

Credulous Woman: “Well we haven’t noticed it here, because we’re on a hill. But the climate change and the level of the sea that is rising all around us is having a very profound effect on life throughout the planet. …. We need to know that, because if you don’t take it on board, life will become extinct.”

This lady has bought into the environmental action lines so much that she appears to believe that if only she weren’t living on a hill, she’d be able to notice the sea level rising, like the Good Scientists have said would happen. I feel bad for her. And I feel bad for confusing her further by presenting the other side of the debate. Telling kids that there is no Santa Claus after all isn’t a particularly fun job, but someone has to do it.

So here we go. To believe that we have a problem that needs fixed by government coercion, you need to believe one or more of the following:

1) You need to believe that humans will not have innovated newer, better energy sources until it’s too late. But most authorities on the subject say that we will be driving vehicles using renewable energy within 30 years. Will that constitute ‘too late’? Will Credulous Woman have noticed the sea level rising by then? Will the Earth have been destructed by 2036?

2) You need to believe that the nasty, horrible consequences of climate change will have taken effect before we run out of cheap fossil fuels. Residents of the United States are complaining loudly about the price of gasoline as it is. I’m one of them. Demand is increasing for alternative fuel vehicles that meet the needs of SUV drivers, for example, unlike hybrids which simply fail miserably at many of the tasks required of a modern American vehicle. In the private sector (shudder), you make money by meeting such a need quickly or more adequately with products that solve the problem: in this case, alternative fuel vehicles. At its current rate of development, will such vehicles really come ‘too late’? Will Credulous Woman have noticed the sea level rising by the time we have such vehicles on the market?

3) You need to believe that government is the best way to get things done. Ha. Ahem. MuhahaHAHA!

4) You need to believe that climate change is actually something new, different, unusual, influenced primarily by human industrial activity, or permanent! We simply don’t have the kind of data required to know whether our one-degree rise in temps is even abnormal. In fact, we’re pretty sure it isn’t. One degree Fahrenheit in the past 140 years isn’t exactly a dazzling disclosure when you consider that the same period produced most of today’s cities - massive heat sinks where most of our data is recorded. We know our planet has been warming up and cooling down for millennia. It could be that predictions of a runaway greenhouse effect are good scientific theories which remain to be significantly validated. Let’s not forget: there were ice ages before there were automobiles, and yet we’re all alive today and not living in a glacier. And a simple scan of historical science can provide an intriguing context for our current environmentalist scaremongering - many of the baby-boomers today advocating leftist environmental policy were taught a theory of global COOLING just 35 years ago.

If our worst fears happen to be reality and humans are causing significant, long-term climate change (moreso than the 90 billion tons of CO2 emitting from the oceans or the 90 billion tons emitting from the forests, for example) - then points (1) through (3) are useful considerations.

The worldview we hear on BBC radio is based on the absurd mind-fart that the Earth is teetering on the brink of destruction. In the BBC bubble, there appear to be few people with any tenacious opinions to the contrary. Yet all the evidence suggests that there is plenty of time for the natural product of human innovation to continue to provide adequate solutions. Hell’s Bells, folks - a single volcanic eruption spews more greenhouse gases than human beings have in the whole 20th century, during which time we spent running MUCH dirtier engines than we do today.

And yet global warming is going to kill us all if we don’t elect left-liberal politicians that have been enlightened by Science?

Okay.

John Wright

johnwright@libertarianreason.com