Before Charles Lane Accuses Others of Hypocrisy, Perhaps He Should Look Up the Definition

I've commented in the past about accusations of hypocrisy, and how they are often misplaced. It's not hypocritical for Warren Buffett to pay only the taxes required by current law, while simultaneously arguing that taxes on the wealthy should be raised. Even assuming that the material facts are identical, it's not necessarily hypocritical for somebody to take a different position than the one they took years or decades earlier, as sometimes people change their minds. It's not hypocritical to stop protesting an action or issue that once drew you out to the streets, every time that issue comes up -- you can continue to feel strongly about the issue while succumbing to issue fatigue, recognizing that your protests are not having any effect, or moving onto other issues or priorities that get in the way of organizing protests and rallies.

Still, accusations of hypocrisy abound. Certainly there are times that they are warranted, but often they're the hallmark of a lazy columnist. Falling into that latter category, Charles Lane is waving his finger at "liberals".

Building the Keystone XL pipeline, to speed the flow of crude from Canada’s oil sands to refineries in Texas, would be “game over for the climate,” says NASA-scientist-turned-climate-activist James E. Hansen. Heeding Hansen’s words, environmentalists have sworn to stop the project, which requires U.S. government approval.

Perhaps we should note, up front, that not all environmentalists are liberals, and not all liberals are environmentalists.

Yet large, bipartisan majorities of the House and Senate support Keystone XL, as does 60 percent of the American public, according to the latest USA Today poll.

And... that has absolutely nothing to do with whether the project is environmentally wise.

Today, it is still on hold, because Tuesday night 41 Senate Democrats voted against ending debate on a bill to green-light Keystone XL, thus thwarting what might have been a disastrous exercise of democracy.

Perhaps it escaped Lane's notice, but that is not the first-ever use of a filibuster in the Senate. As Lane himself noted in a prior screed,

Republican opposition to Obamacare may be hypocritical, irrational and opportunistic — especially GOP opposition to the exchanges, which the party previously favored in various forms. And, yes, the modern filibuster takes counter-majoritarianism to an extreme even the Framers probably didn’t contemplate.

But the Constitution lets the Senate write its own rules.

The fact that Senators who are part of an institution that has created and upheld the filibuster actually employ a filibuster is in no way hypocritical. Even if we assume (in defiance of the facts) that each and every one of those Senators would vote for straight majority rule in the Senate, it would not be hypocritical of them to employ the actual rules of the Senate when voting on legislation.

In short, the filibuster may have just saved the planet, at least for now.

Or so it must be believed by Keystone XL’s opponents — even though they include some of the same people who decried the filibuster, not unreasonably, as an obstructionist, anti-majoritarian evil when Republicans employed it against President Obama’s health-care reform, cap-and-trade and other progressive legislation.

Here, through his link, Lane suggests that Markos Moulitsas is a hypocrite for opposing the filibuster and... he doesn't offer a link, but perhaps Moulitsas praised the Senate vote somewhere? As with Warren Buffett and his taxes, even if Moulitsas is overjoyed that the pipeline bill was filibustered, it's not hypocritical for him to advocate changing the Senate's rules while nonetheless encouraging Senators to use those rules to advance policy positions he favors. The concept isn't even slightly difficult to grasp -- it is possible to believe that something is bad on the whole such that it should be eliminated, even when recognizing that it has potential value under certain circumstances.

When I saw the film, Shattered Glass, I had some sympathy for the Charles Lane played by Peter Sarsgaard, a well-meaning guy who got duped by one of his employees. But the Charles Lane who writes for the Washington Post seems to have a different problem -- he seems to be lazy and indifferent to the facts, the sort of approach to journalism that can allow somebody like Stephen Glass to get away with feeding him the most absurd fabrications as long as they don't conflict with his preconceptions. When you click through the link to the actual statement by Markos Moulitsas, Lane's exemplar of a hypocrite, you hear this:

There's a huge movement, and I think it's going to happen, to change the filibuster rules from requiring sixty votes to requiring forty "no" votes. Right now if you want to filibuster you don't even have to show up, you know, the onus is on the "pro" side to round up the sixty votes. So when you turn it to forty votes you gotta have those forty people there, and if one of them has to go to the bathroom, boom, you call cloture, and that's that.

Moulitsas was not calling for the elimination of the filibuster -- he was calling for the perpetuation of the filibuster, but with a change in how you vote for cloture. Given that Lane knows that forty-one Democrats voted to filibuster, and he should know that Moulitsas favors a filibuster rule that would sustain a filibuster based on those forty-one votes, his insinuation of hypocrisy has no basis in reality. It's instead an example of Lane getting his facts wrong. And with that example having been dredged up from September 10, 2010, either Lane couldn't find an actual example of a statement from a liberal that would support his thesis, or he got lazy.

Majority rule is not the only progressive principle some progressives seem ready to sacrifice on the anti-Keystone altar.

First, are we talking about "liberals", are we talking about "progressives", or does Lane view the term as interchangeable? Either way, I am not aware of any consensus among either group that we should eliminate representative democracy in favor of direct democracy.

If we're simply talking about Senate rules, to put it mildly, there is no consensus among liberals or progressives that the filibuster should be abandoned. Some believe that it should be eliminated, but others (as with Lane's exemplar progressive, Markos Moulitsas) favor continuing the filibuster but changing the rules to make it less of a tool for obstruction, and still others would leave well enough alone. Meanwhile, it was not so many years ago that Republicans on the floor of the Senate made frequent calls for a "straight up or down vote" when confronted with the filibuster. Some of that opposition may have been opportunistic, but the fact is that the recognition that the filibuster is anti-democratic and could benefit from reform is not something that is unique to the political left.

Remember the corrupting influence of money on politics? Billionaire Tom Steyer has spent millions on TV ads backing environmentalist Democrats and trashing the pipeline itself, thus purchasing outsize influence in the White House and the Democratic Party.

Although this should go without saying, campaign finance reform has traditionally been a bipartisan issue, once championed by none other than John McCain. As should also go without saying, proponents of campaign finance reform have not proposed that no money be spent on political advertising. But beyond that, we're back to Warren Buffett and his taxes. You can believe that wealthy individuals and corporations gain an outsized voice in politics and government through their direct and indirect contributions, while nonetheless believing that you should take full advantage of the existing laws to advance your causes. There is no hypocrisy in advocating for a change in the law while operating under the existing laws, and it would be extraordinarily foolish to refuse adequate funding for your political goals out of principle when the likely consequence would be that your opponent would win. Heck, Steyer even spoon-fed that reality to those who are a bit slow on the uptake, and Lane quotes the explanation:

“On issues as critical as climate change, we will take action and work within the system that we’ve got until we can change it,” Steyer pragmatically told Forbes magazine.

How can Lane read that statement yet fail to understand that it's not an example of hypocrisy?

Next up, infrastructure,

Most of the time, liberals tout the job-creating potential of critical infrastructure projects, based on the indirect “multiplier effect” that even short-term construction can have on economic growth.

Perhaps lane doesn't realize that with his opening qualifier, he hobbled his argument before it left the starting gate. There is a vast difference between supporting infrastructure projects most of the time, and supporting them all of the time. We should note, also, that many conservative voters recognize the need for and benefit of infrastructure projects -- but that doesn't mean that either side has to embrace every infrastructure project, that they cannot prioritize certain types of project over others, or that they cannot object to an infrastructure project that they deem wasteful or harmful.

For Keystone XL, though, different rules apply.

Apparently, to lane, "different rules" means roughly the same thing as "the same rules".

We are instructed, by Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress, among others, that the $8 billion project will create “only” 3,900 “direct” one-year construction jobs and a mere 50 permanent ones. Forget the 42,000 jobs that a State Department analysis said would be “supported” by the project.

Here, rather than pointing to the actual State Department report, Lane links to a post from the Washington Post's Wonkblog. That blog post indicates that "About 3,900 of [the] jobs would be temporary construction jobs", and that once built, "the pipeline would support 50 jobs". In other words, Lane is complaining not that the one person he mentions got the facts wrong, but that he should have provided additional facts.

When you go to the written statement of Daniel Weiss, you find that his reference to the number of jobs that would be created by the Keystone XL pipeline was specifically addressing the number of permanent jobs that would be created. While Lane can certainly argue that a greater discussion of temporary jobs would make the statement more complete, surely he can understand that temporary jobs are not of great significance to an assertion about permanent jobs. After all, if he cannot make that distinction, he is guilty of the same offense he attributes to Weiss -- Lane does not mention that either that the 42,000 indirect jobs would be temporary, continuing only during the construction of the pipeline.

Lane is also engaged in a sleight of hand. The people -- liberal and conservative -- who favor infrastructure projects have done so in no small basis upon the position that although a typical infrastructure project is relatively short-term, we need to invest in our nation's decaying infrastructure and that the short-term boost in employment can help stimulate the economy. As previously stated, this was never an endorsement of any infrastructure project. In fact, the proposed focus has typically been on public infrastructure.

But as Lane knows, those commenting on the very small number of permanent jobs that will result from pipeline construction are addressing a different issue. They were attempting to rebut exaggerated claims by pipeline proponents about the number of jobs the pipeline would generate, and to point out the indisputable fact that the pipeline will create an inconsequential number of long-term jobs. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the people making these observations about Keystone XL would not say exactly the same thing about other major infrastructure projects.

Construction unions understand that employment in their field is inherently temporary in the sense that it ends when the building is built. They strongly favor Keystone XL. Yet this reliably Democratic middle-class constituency is also being thrown under the anti-Keystone bus.

Wow... crocodile tears for union worker.

It's even slightly surprising that unions whose members would benefit from construction jobs favor construction projects. I would not be surprised if there was significant union support to build "the bridge to nowhere". The question of whether a particular faction supports a project does not answer the question of whether the project is wise or appropriate. Further, given that only a few short paragraphs ago Lane was grousing that progressives have forgotten their principle of "majority rule", Lane wants to have it both ways. If it's hypocritical and an affront to progressive principles to not abide by the judgment of the minority, how can it be simultaneously an affront to progressive principles to not allow a vocal minority to impose its will on the majority? Does Lane not find it obvious that it's one or the other?

The least attractive violation of progressive values by Keystone XL opponents’ was their attempt to recast this joint project of Canada and the United States in xenophobic terms.

Oh, this should be good....

One Steyer-financed ad warned that China is “counting on the U.S. to approve TransCanada’s pipeline to ship oil through America’s heartland and out to foreign countries like theirs.”

So... based on one ad that virtually nobody in the nation has seen, Lane has concluded that progressives have embraced xenophobia.... (Has Lane ever noticed the Republican Party's treatment of issues like immigration?)

The only basis for this claim was that state-owned Chinese companies have a modest investment in Canada’s oil sands. The Post’s Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, awarded the ad four Pinocchios, noting that “it relies on speculation, not facts, to make insinuations and assertions not justified by the reality.”

That's it, then? One ad, financed by one individual, seen by virtually no one? It's difficult to imagine how Lane could build a stronger case.

Speaking of the planet, perhaps the only person on it who still hasn’t made up his mind about Keystone XL is President Obama, though his dithering has recently given way to expressions depressingly reminiscent of those in the Steyer ad.

In reality, President Obama has expressed that he is waiting for private lawsuits over the pipeline's proposed path to be resolved, and for the State Department to complete its analysis of how the pipeline will affect the environment, before taking a position on the pipeline. It's easy to understand why some might want the President to take a firm position, pro- or con-, before all of the facts are in. It's also easy to see why the President would instead choose to remain neutral pending either the outcome of litigation and studies that might prevent the pipeline's construction, or the presentment by Congress of legislation for his signature. Lane chooses the pejorative, "dither", but there is no reason to believe that the President is being even slightly indecisive on the question, as opposed to playing a careful political game on a hot button issue.

And yes, obviously, his suggestion that the President is xenophobic is absurd.

“Understand what this project is,” he said at a news conference in Burma last week. “It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land down to the Gulf [Coast], where it will be sold everywhere else.” Their oil. Our land.

Does Lane disagree that the oil belongs to Canada? Does he disagree that a pipeline that will run across the United States is accurately described by the President as crossing "our land"? If Lane actually believes that the President's statement reflects xenophobia or anti-Canadian agitation, he should seek psychiatric help.

Yet his own State Department’s exhaustive review of the project found that re-exports of the oil, either as crude or in refined form, were unlikely.

This time around, Lane links to the actual State Department report. However, he is not being honest about the report's conclusion:

It is likely that increasing amounts of WCSB crudes will reach Gulf Coast refiners whether or not the proposed Project goes forward (products from this processing will be used in both domestic markets and for export). As a result, future refined product export trends are also unlikely to be significantly impacted by the proposed Project.

The report does not suggest that export won't occur. It suggests instead that enough Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) crude will reach the Gulf, with or without the pipeline, that net exports are unlikely to be affected.

Lane's second link is to a Reuter's analysis of the President's statement, which it declares to "ring[] only half true".

"Some of it will stay in Gulf, some of it will leave," said Sarah Emerson, president of Energy Security Analysis, Inc. in Boston. "I don't think anyone would have built if they thought the oil was just going to stay in the Gulf Coast, that is like bringing coal to Newcastle."

It would be fair to accuse the President of overstatement. However, once again Lane is guilty of the very offense he attributes to others -- he is misrepresenting the State Department's report and is implying, in defiance of the facts and his own sources, that export is unlikely to occur.

Hypocrisy and rhetorical flimflam are standard in politics, and liberals are not the only guilty parties in the Keystone XL battle.

At this point, Lane has identified zero examples of hypocrisy. Not a one. It's not even clear that he understands the meaning of the word. As for "rhetorical flimflam", it's a colorful way of describing something that is inherent to politics. To observe, even with colorful language, that politicians are guilty of practicing politics seems somehow banal.

Keystone XL proponents have undoubtedly tapped corporate coffers to fund their share of exaggerations about the project’s benefits.

Lane speaks of this as if it's an assumption, not a fact. It's a fact.

And of course climate change is real and must be addressed.

Which doesn't mean that Lane isn't going to insist that the President state a firm opinion, or insult him for declining to do so, while we await the environmental impact report.

But in this case progressives are not only being intellectually dishonest and traducing their values, they’re doing so pointlessly: This end doesn’t justify these means.

Really, other than waving his hands a lot, all Lane has documented is that one wealthy person produced one TV ad, approved by nobody but himself and seen by virtually no one, that has an element of xenophobia; and that the President has implied that more of the WCSB crude will be exported than is likely to be the case. And in producing that tepid indictment of "liberals", he has misstated the facts, misrepresented the positions of people he has held up as hypocrites, and misunderstood the basic issues under debate.

Far from being “game over” for the planet, Keystone XL would not boost greenhouse gas emissions significantly, according to State Department experts. With or without Keystone XL, Canada’s oil sands will still be turned into crude oil and shipped, often by rail, to markets in the United States and elsewhere. The environmental movement’s energies — not to mention Steyer’s millions — would be far better spent elsewhere.

Lane's implication is that the crude is going to be extracted, shipped and used, so environmentalists may as well shut down and go home. Sometimes, even a fight for a losing cause can bring about results that benefit the losing side -- a better educated, more aware public, the exercise of greater caution when proposing and planning future projects with significant potential environmental impact, and the like. Also, while Lane writes off the possibility, perhaps those environmentalists don't intend to call it quits if the pipeline is not constructed. But, frankly, it's not his place to tell environmentalists how to expend their energies or to tell Steyer how to spend his own money.

In their tendentious effort to deny these realities, progressives risk violating yet another cherished principle that, in their view, distinguishes them from the right: that of letting facts and science, not ideology, determine policy.

And here Lane is back to his earlier trick of conflating the terms "environmentalist" and "progressive" -- as if there are no conservative environmentalists nor any progressives who don't oppose the pipeline. And in relation to letting the facts and science dictate policy, what was it that Lane said only a few sentences ago?

And of course climate change is real and must be addressed.

So which is it -- is this a situation in which climate change is real and must be addressed, or a situation in which that science is already known and weighs in favor of the pipeline? If Lane's theory is that the oil will be extracted and used, rendering the existence of the pipeline irrelevant to the debate, he's missing the actual goal of the environmentalists opposed to this project -- they don't want that oil to be extracted or used at all. That's not because they are ignorant of science and climate change, or because they are refusing to consider the science when forming their positions on WCSB crude -- quite the opposite. Given that Lane is now endorsing making decisions based on science, it also seems odd that he wants the President to get ahead of the environmental impact analysis for the Keystone XL pipeline. It's almost as if Lane is privileging ideology over science.

Campaigning for a symbolic victory over the fossil-fuel industry, they may end up with a pyrrhic one — if any.

It goes without saying that the environmentalists could lose their fight against the pipeline. But it also goes without saying, even with due respect to Lane's accusations of imagined hypocrisy, if the environmentalists who oppose the pipeline prevail they will not view their victory as pyrrhic. More likely, they will be energized for their next battle.

Do you know what would have made Lane's column better? If, rather than launching a poorly reasoned screed about "liberals", "progressives" and "environmentalists", that did little more than reveal his sloppy, lazy fact-checking, he had tried to lay out the case for why the pipeline is a good idea. He might have tried to explain how the pipeline compares to other possible infrastructure projects in terms of need, job creation and long-term benefit. He could have attempted to address environmental concerns, rather than brushing them off. Too much to ask?

We Cannot Expect Republican Support for Carbon Taxes

On several recent occasions I've heard conservative talking heads make comments along the line of, "Global warming is real, the science supports it, but it's too late to do anything about it." Meanwhile, the global reality is that if it's a fraction of a penny cheaper to extract fossil fuels from the ground and burn them as compared to deriving energy from any other source, it's pretty clear that somebody is going to dig up or extract the fossil fuel and burn it.

Jamelle Bouie argues that conservatives should support (or is it "get back to supporting") some sort of tax on carbon emissions.

With a carbon tax off the table, new regulatory action becomes inevitable, with greater government intervention in the economy. This isn’t a hypothetical; when new taxes or direct spending is blocked as a means of implementing policy, the result is almost always a confusing, expensive and inefficient patchwork of regulations, mandates, and tax expenditures (see: the Affordable Care Act).

If conservatives believe that they can prevent any action on climate change indefinitely, then they should continue their opposition to a carbon tax or any other market-based mechanism for dealing with emissions. But if they have the slightest doubts, they would do well to open themselves to the possibility. All things being equal, it’s much better to conservative interests for the government to implement a tax and walk away, rather than develop a new scheme for regulation.

To which the "reasonable" people to whom I've previously alluded will argue that there's no point in a unilateral approach to climate change - if you can't bring China, India and the rest of the world along, the impact of unilateral action is modest. And as was suggested by the Republican approach to these issues during the primaries and presidential campaign, any regulatory approach is going to be derided as harming domestic oil production and driving up the cost of gas and heating oil to the detriment of U.S. consumers.

One of my frustrations with the debates is that both candidates were at times willing to adopt a narrative they knew to be misleading, not only because they stood to gain politically but also because the narrative is consistent with the beliefs of the voters they were hoping to reach. There are some issues for which pushing back against your opponent's false or misleading statement can hurt you politically.

The example that Bouie's argument brings to mind is the price of gas. Romney, who has to know better, was arguing that the President has some sort of magical control of gas prices. As if there's a valve hidden under his desk in the Oval Office that controls the nation's supply of gasoline. As if gas prices aren't affected by refinery capacity. As if increased domestic oil production will result in a sudden drop in the price of gasoline, even if the production has no meaningful impact on world supply or the price of oil in the global market. As if the difference between the price of gasoline on the date the financial crisis bottomed out and the price today is reflective of the White House energy policy instead of the laws of supply and demand.

Why not lecture Romney that he knows how commodity pricing works, and he knows that his argument is insipid? I suspect it's because polling and focus group testing suggests that it's not what people want to hear. Just like people don't want to hear that the President doesn't have granular control over the unemployment rate - as if a president in a recession who is looking at 8%+ unemployment would decide, coming into an election, "I think I'll keep unemployment high." People just don't want to know. And alas, politicians benefit by keeping the mythology alive.

The Limits of Yelling "Hypocrite!"

One of the easiest accusations to throw at a political figure is that of hypocrisy, because... they so often are hypocritical. But our acceptance of hypocrisy in the context of politics also makes it easy to make unfair accusations of hypocrisy, for example, "Back in the 80's the liberals in Congress did this, now they say they oppose the same thing." Never mind that the term "liberal" is subjective, we're talking about two completely different groups of people, and even if the issue truly is the same it's possible for somebody over the space of thirty years to find cause to change his mind. Sometimes the accusations are absurd, such as "Ayn Rand collected Social Security even though she opposed it," or "President Obama wants to raise taxes on the rich even though he isn't voluntarily paying taxes beyond the present tax rate." Its not hypocrisy to advance change while following the present laws, or accepting the quid pro quo benefit of paying your Social Security taxes even if you believe its implementation was a mistake.

One of the forms of hypocrisy that a politician's political opponents tend to see as a particular point of vulnerability, or find particularly annoying, is when a candidate lives his life in a manner that seems partially, largely, or completely at odds with the political positions he holds (or, in some cases, pretends to hold). So when Newt Gingrich argues that gay marriage will harm the traditional institution of marriage, it's pointed out that he has a long personal history of infidelity and is presently in his third marriage. And when Al Gore argues that strong action is needed to limit the effects of climate change, it's pointed out that he lives an incredibly wasteful lifestyle.

These accusations are not entirely unfair. Gingrich has no explanation for how gay marriage will supposedly undermine traditional marriage, and it's reasonable to point out that he has no personal problem with weakening the institution of marriage or ignoring his vows to his spouse, and yet the institution of marriage survives. The wasteful, self-indulgent lifestyles of people like Thomas Friedman and Al Gore arguably represent the tragedy of the commons - it's true that individual action, even at the scale of an individual whose carbon footprint approaches that of a typical neighborhood or small town, is not going to have any measurable impact on climate change. But that doesn't make it any more pleasant to hear such a person lecture you, Friedman-style, that if only gas were more expensive and ordinary people (like you) could not afford to drive as much, we would all be better off. It may be true, but why is it that the proposed changes seem to affect only the lifestyles of others? It's also reasonable to point out that you can build yourself a lavish mansion and live in the highest of styles while taking steps to minimize your carbon footprint, perhaps you should do so before lecturing others about waste.

Walter Russell Mead has attempted to explain the differences between acceptable hypocrisy and unacceptable hypocrisy. First he distinguishes character flaws from hypocrisy:

Not all character flaws are inconsistent with positions of great dignity. General Grant’s fondness for whiskey did not make him unfit for command. Other statesmen have combined great public achievement with failure in their personal lives. Franklin Roosevelt was neither a good father nor a good husband; Edward VII was a better monarch than man.

Given that everybody has character flaws, it should go without saying that it's possible to be a great leader in one field while being deeply flawed in another. Shifting back to the topic of actual hypocrisy, Mead tells us,

A television preacher ... cannot indulge in drug fueled trysts with male prostitutes while preaching conservative Christian doctrine. The head of Mothers Against Drunk Driving cannot be convicted of driving while under the influence. The head of the IRS cannot be a tax cheat. The most visible leader of the world’s green movement cannot live a life of conspicuous consumption, spewing far more carbon into the atmosphere than almost all of those he castigates for their wasteful ways. Mr. Top Green can’t also be a carbon pig.

I should first point out, "Yes, they can." The television minister will do just fine until his actions become public. The head of MADD could come back with some appropriate mea culpas and perhaps even improve the message of her organization. (I know Mead has a specific case in mind, but he's arguing a general rule - one anecdote does not prove a rule.) And yes, though it's annoying, it is very possible for somebody to be the biggest "carbon pig" in the world and still argue forcefully and accurately about the need for collective action on climate change.

Mead carries on about how you can have any range of character flaws as an environmental activist (which, again, have nothing to do with hypocrisy), but that you can't have big houses, a personal jet, or even invest in firms that could turn a profit if their green energy technologies are adopted on a wide scale. Perhaps Mead is correct to a point, because obviously you will annoy somme listeners - even sympathetic listeners - by living a lifestyle that's so at odds with your message. And obviously people like Mead will come out of the woodwork with a tu quoque argument. And Mead's demands on Gore are plainly absurd:

Surely, skeptics reason, if the peril were as great as he says and he cares about it as much as he claims, Gore’s sense of civic duty would call him to set an example of conspicuous non-consumption. This general sleeps in a mansion, and lectures the soldiers because they want tents.

Bad example. Exactly when in history was it that generals didn't sleep in mansions while lecturing their troops to make do with far less? I don't recall G.W. pitching a pup tent in the Rose Garden, or even so much as ordering that the White House air conditioning be set to a higher temperature, when he ordered the invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan. A more apt expression might be that it's not possible to be rich and advocate for the poor - but that serves only to highlight how ridiculous Mead's argument is. If you're wealthy, have access to the media and have political influence, you can advocate very effectively for change. You won't have a bigger impact on the public debate by giving away your wealth and living in a homeless shelter.

Although the tu quoque argument is inherently about hypocrisy, Mead states that he doesn't believe Gore is a hypocrite:

I am not one of those who thinks him a hypocrite; I think rather that he shares an illusion common amongst the narcissistic glitterati of our time: that politically fashionable virtue cancels private vice. The drug addled Hollywood celeb whose personal life is a long record of broken promises and failed relationships and whose serial bouts with drug and alcohol abuse and revolving door rehab adventures are notorious can redeem all by “standing up” for some exotic, stylish cause. These moral poseurs and dilettantes of virtue are modern versions of those guilt-plagued medieval nobles who built churches and monasteries to ‘atone’ for their careers of bloodshed, oppression and scandal.

Mr. Gore is sincere, as the fur-fighting actresses are sincere, as so many ’causey’ plutocrats and moguls are sincere. It is perhaps also true that the fundraisers who absolve them of their guilt in exchange for the donations and the publicity are at least as sincere as the indulgence sellers in Martin Luther’s Germany.

I don’t judge, dear reader, and neither should you.

He doesn't judge, "dear reader" but my goodness does he patronize.

The average citizen is all too likely to conclude that if Mr. Gore can keep his lifestyle, the average American family can keep its SUV and incandescent bulbs. If Gore can take a charter flight, I don’t have to take the bus. If Gore can have many mansions, I can use the old fashioned kind of shower heads that actually clean and toilets that actually flush. Al Gore looks to the average American the way American greens look to poor people in the third world: hypocritically demanding that others accept permanently lower standards of living than those the activists propose for themselves.

In Mead's eyes the average citizen (that's you), it appears, is quite stupid. I suspect that many average people would find it annoying to be lectured by Gore that they should made lifestyle changes, when Gore himself has done so little to minimize his own sizable carbon footprint. But contrary to what Mead implies I also suspect that, if asked, the average voter would recognize the difference between an individual and a collective effect, and that it is physically impossible for the world to support close to seven billion people if the average person lived like Gore.

Is Mead attempting to argue to the contrary? That we can all live like Gore? That, on the whole, people in the developing world do not have to accept lower standards of living than are enjoyed in the developed world? (Is that even Gore's message - or is it more that if corrective action is not taken the situation in much of the developing world will grow worse?) If Mead accepts that the world's resources are limited and that it's impossible to lift the average lifestyle of every inhabitant of this planet to that of the American middle class, and if he truly believes that people in the developing world need somebody to tell them that fact, who is it that he believes would be an appropriate spokesperson? Bill Gates?

Does Mead imagine that it would be easier to hear the message from a wealthy, privileged westerner who makes no argument that he, or anybody he knows, should live a less profligate and wasteful lifestyle? Also, why does it matter how the average person in the developing world perceives Al Gore? Most don't even have the capacity to "unfriend" him on Facebook, let alone influence the policy of their governments. That may not be fair, but it's reality. (If it makes you feel better, even with our entrenched democracy and comparative wealth, the average American voter has only slightly more influence on government and policy.)

The short version of Mead's argument is that Al Gore shouldn't be taken seriously on environmental issues because he lives a lifestyle that is wasteful, and is too narcissistic to even see the conflict between what he says and what he does. What's missing? Any substantive argument. Any indication that Al Gore is wrong. That says to me that the problem is with Mead - as I stated up front, it's easy to accuse politicians of hypocrisy. But what matters is whether they're right or wrong. If Mead believes that Gore is wrong, he should make his case. If not, he should stop rambling about why Gore should not be taken seriously and start explaining why any inconsistency between Gore's lifestyle and his environmental advocacy is irrelevant - a distraction from the truth.

No, We Won't

Tom Friedman, having noted that the world's population is consuming resources at a faster rate than the world can replenish them, closes his column by quoting Paul Gilding,

“We are heading for a crisis-driven choice,” he says. “We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter. We may be slow, but we’re not stupid.”

Is there anything in human history that would suggest that, when faced wit economic or environmental catastrophe, a major nation will reverse course and avoid that catastrophe? Is there anything in present economic or environmental policy that would suggest a present willingness to reverse course - to consume less, pollute less, limit population growth in cities and countries with inadequate supplies of food and water.... Seriously, I understand wanting to close on an optimistic note, but what I tend to see is complacency (it won't be so bad), denial (the problem doesn't exist), selfishness (it may be bad for others, but it won't be bad for me - and I may even turn a profit), wishful thinking (we'll produce a magic new technology that will fix everything), laziness (it's too hard).... Where does Gilding find a basis for optimism that this time will be different - not another Mayan Empire, Easter Island, Haiti....

History teaches us that to the extent that the world eventually does "choose" a new, sustainable economic model it will be a choice forced by imminent collapse, or it will be a forced choice that follows the collapse. I would love to be proved wrong, and we're certainly capable of better, but I'm not seeing much evidence that supports optimism that "this time will be different". (But perhaps things look different to Friedman, as he pulls his Lexus SUV into the driveway of his lavish mansion, a lifestyle he appears to view as completely sustainable and consistent with what he preaches in his columns. Let me guess... his pool is now solar heated?)

For Many Environmental Groups, Cash Is The New Green

Jonathan Adler, commenting on BP's slipshod approach to safety and environmental issues, states,

BP’s lax operations and corporate culture contributed to the series of events that caused the spill. (See, e.g., this WSJ article.) What’s ironic about this is it was not so long ago that environmentalists were lauding the oil giant for its “progressive” approach to environmental issues (and substantial financial contributions to environmental causes). One CEO even sought to rebrand BP as “Beyond Petroleum” to reflect its commitment to alternative energy sources. Yet it’s becoming increasingly clear that BP’s commitment to the environment was just window dressing.

One of the barely kept secrets of the modern environmental movement is the introduction of corporate money. What better way, after all, to get an environmental organization on your side than to lavish it with funds that could be taken away the moment it dares to criticize you.

[Jay Hair – the president of the National Wildlife Federation from 1981 to 1995] found that the big oil and gas companies were happy to give money to conservation groups. Yes, they were destroying many of the world's pristine places. Yes, by the late 1980s, it had become clear that they were dramatically destabilising the climate – the very basis of life itself. But for Hair, that didn't make them the enemy; he said they sincerely wanted to right their wrongs and pay to preserve the environment. He began to suck millions from them, and his organisation and others gave them awards for "environmental stewardship". Companies such as Shell and BP were delighted. They saw it as valuable "reputation insurance": every time they are criticised for their massive emissions of warming gases, or for events such as the massive oil spill that has just turned the Gulf of Mexico into the "Gulf of Texaco", they wheel out their shiny green awards to ward off the prospect of government regulation and to reassure the public that they Really Care.

At first, this behaviour scandalised the environmental community. Hair was vehemently condemned as a sell-out and a charlatan. But slowly, the other groups saw themselves shrink while the corporate-fattened groups swelled – so they, too, started to take the cheques. Christine MacDonald, an idealistic young environmentalist, discovered how deeply this cash had transformed these institutions when she started to work for CI in 2006. She told me: "About a week or two after I started, I went to the big planning meeting of all the organisation's media teams, and they started talking about this supposedly great new project they were running with BP. But I had read in the newspaper the day before that the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] had condemned BP for running the most polluting plant in the whole country... But nobody in that meeting, or anywhere else in the organisation, wanted to talk about it. It was a taboo. You weren't supposed to ask if BP was really green. They were 'helping' us, and that was it."

What is the consequence of the dependence on corporate case? I expect you already know.

On its website, the Sierra Club says: "If the level stays higher than 350ppm for a prolonged period of time, it will spell disaster for humanity as we know it."

But behind closed doors, they tried to stop this becoming law. In 2009, the EPA moved to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, which requires the agency to ensure that the levels of pollutants in the air are "compatible with human safety" – a change the Sierra Club supported. But the Center for Biological Diversity – an independent group that doesn't take polluter cash – petitioned the EPA to take this commitment seriously and do what the climate science says really is "compatible with human safety": restore us to 350ppm. Kieran Suckling, the executive director of the centre, explains: "I was amazed to discover the Sierra Club opposed us bitterly. They said it should not be done. In fact, they said that if we filed a lawsuit to make EPA do it, they would probably intervene on EPA's side. They threw climate science out the window."

It isn't that environmental groups can't do good work while taking corporate money - it's just that they will bend to the will of their corporate masters, muting criticism of companies like BP and shifting their focus to environmental issues that their corporate sponsors don't care about - those that don't affect corporate profits - while in the worst case scenario lobbying against needed environmental reforms that might imperil the flow of corporate cash.

Trash Removal Joins the World's Most Dangerous Professions

At least in Nepal.

Funding Priorities

Shorter Glenn Easterbrook:

The government's wrong to spend money researching their pie-in-the-sky clean energy schemes that may never bear fruit. They should be directing the money into mine.

It's Not Only About Polar Bears....

Michael Gerson doesn't want to give up his claim to being the dumbest columnist in America, and not just for the reasons others have noted.

Even worse, a disturbing minority of the environmental movement seems to view an excess of human beings, not an excess of carbon emissions, as the world's main problem.

That's right, folks - we should be grateful that Gerson has let us know that there are people out there who actually don't understand that you can have an unlimited population consuming unlimited resources in a closed ecosystem. Can you imagine?

Approaches To Global Warming

Bjorn Lomborg, who seems to be trotted out these days as an alternative to the largely discredited "global warming deniers", has an editorial in the Times opposing "cap and trade" carbon policies. (I'm not arguing that Lomborg doesn't make valid (sometimes amusing) points on global warming, or that "cap and trade" is an ideal solution. But whatever his intention, Lomborg has won himself a lot of favor with the "do nothing" crowd.)

Politicians favor the cap-and-trade system because it is an indirect tax that disguises the true costs of reducing carbon emissions. It also gives lawmakers an opportunity to control the number and distribution of emissions allowances, and the flow of billions of dollars of subsidies and sweeteners.

Many people believe that everyone has a moral obligation to ask how we can best combat climate change. Attempts to curb carbon emissions along the lines of the bill now pending are a poor answer compared with other options.

Okay, that's fair. So what are the other, superior options?

The answer is to dramatically increase research and development so that solar panels become cheaper than fossil fuels sooner rather than later. Imagine if solar panels became cheaper than fossil fuels by 2050: We would have solved the problem of global warming, because switching to the environmentally friendly option wouldn't be the preserve of rich Westerners.

Imagine? You mean, the superior alternative to doing something now is... imaginary?

Research for the project was done by a lead author of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the group that shared last year's Nobel Peace Prize with former vice president Al Gore - who noted that spending $800 billion over 100 years solely on mitigating emissions would reduce inevitable temperature increases by just 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century. Even accounting for the key environmental damage from warming, we would lose money, with avoided damage of just $685 billion for our $800 billion investment.

And the human genome project will be complete in... oh wait. Those projections of what might happen in the future aren't always accurate, are they? The imaginary solar energy solution may come to fruition in a decade... or never. I would also note that global spending $800 billion over a century, $8 billion per year, is a pittance, even if we assume it results in a net loss of $1.15 billion per year. By way of comparison, we spend considerably more than $8 billion on the Iraq war each month, and the total projected annual loss is less than four days of Iraq war spending. (Is he using a European notion of "billion" - what we would call "trillion"? Because otherwise....)

Even if every nation spent 0.05 percent of its gross domestic product on research and development of low-carbon energy, this would be only about one-tenth as costly as the Kyoto Protocol and would save dramatically more than any of Kyoto's likely successors.

Yet there's no reason we can't do both - implement the best available existing solutions that we know will reduce carbon emissions while also researching energy alternatives that may eventually supplace or augment existing carbon policies.

Meanwhile, Lomborg proposes spending $30 billion per year or so on research, to try to get better solar energy and biofuel solutions by 2050. But what if it takes until 2100? What if nations dismiss the idea that they should have to spend money on research, and thus the plan goes nowhere? Also, why does this need to be government money - if the cost of Kyoto, which will presumably fall largely on industry, will be ten times that amount, why won't affected corporations pour money into alternative energy R&D?

The Neverending ANWR Oil Song And Dance

George Will, in a rather typical display of poor thinking, argues against the dastardly environmental concerns that keep our nation from fully exploiting and depleting all of our oil and natural gas reserves.

Rising in the Senate on May 13, Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat, explained: "I rise to discuss rising energy prices." The president was heading to Saudi Arabia to seek an increase in its oil production, and Schumer's gorge was rising.

Saudi Arabia, he said, "holds the key to reducing gasoline prices at home in the short term." Therefore arms sales to that kingdom should be blocked unless it "increases its oil production by one million barrels per day," which would cause the price of gasoline to fall "50 cents a gallon almost immediately."

Can a senator, with so many things on his mind, know so precisely how the price of gasoline would respond to that increase in the oil supply?

Will instructs us,

One million barrels is what might today be flowing from ANWR if in 1995 President Bill Clinton had not vetoed legislation to permit drilling there.

Er, yeah, "might". Now I'll give Will as much credit as he's due for not tossing out a certain figure, particularly on the heels of his attack on Schumer for asserting a projection as fact. But that isn't much, given that the rest of Will's column treats his own projection as a certainty.

Will proceed to attack Schumer, and everybody else who has opposed ANWR oil drilling, as being "complicit in taking $10 away from every American who buys 20 gallons of gasoline". This, of course, is raw fiction. Will pretends that world oil production - on the whole, and by individual nations, can only rise. Will pretends that a nation like Saudi Arabia won't limit its own output, well below capacity, in order to protect its own reserves and maximize its profits - yet if Saudi Arabia weren't doing exactly that, Will's contentions would be even more absurd.

Let's take a moment to consider reality:

President Bush used a private visit to King Abdullah’s ranch here on Friday to make another appeal for an increase in oil production that might give American consumers some relief at the gasoline pump. The Saudis responded by announcing they had decided a week ago on a modest increase of 300,000 barrels a day.

That's Saudi Arabia snapping its fingers and adding to the marketplace 30% of the daily oil production Will optimistically proposes might be drawn from ANWR.

The White House said the increase would not be enough to lower gasoline prices, which are nearing $4 a gallon, and industry analysts called it mostly symbolic.

Meanwhile, what else is happening?

The International Energy Agency, which advises industrial countries, recently reduced its estimates for oil demand growth this year, with consumption expected to fall in the United States, Europe and Japan. But demand should still rise by one million barrels a day thanks to growth in China and the Middle East.

Let's refer back to Will:

One million barrels is what might today be flowing from ANWR if in 1995 President Bill Clinton had not vetoed legislation to permit drilling there.

Bill Clinton? Oh yeah - the guy who was in the White House before ol' whats-his-name, who apparently bears no responsibility in Will's mind for failing to open ANWR to drilling despite having Republican majority in both houses for six years. Will seems intent on flushing the entire G.W. Bush Administration and its record down the memory hole.

The projections for increased world demand for oil highlight another fallacy of Will's argument. He forgets that oil is priced according to a global marketplace. Demand for oil has not stood still since 1995 - it has increased substantially. Saudi oil production has not stood still since 1995 - it has increased by over a million gallons per day. But in some years it decreased - Will deludes himself if he believes that Saudi output would be unaffected by new production in ANWR. (And if he doesn't believe that, but is arguing it anyway....) It's these realiities that lead to projections such as,

If Congress were to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, crude oil prices would probably drop by an average of only 75 cents a barrel, according to Department of Energy projections issued Thursday.

The report, which was requested in December by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, found that oil production in the refuge "is not projected to have a large impact on world oil prices."

Will complains,

America says to foreign producers: We prefer not to pump our oil, so please pump more of yours, thereby lowering its value, for our benefit.

You would think that a self-professed conservative like Will would embrace that approach for as long as it works. But Will appears to prefer a model whereby we pump every drop of our own oil, thereby lowering its value, while allowing Saudi Arabia to hold larger reserves.

At this point, we can abandon all pretense that Will was trying to construct an honest argument. The one source he cites gives him away:

In his book "Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of 'Energy Independence,' " Robert Bryce says Brazil's energy success has little to do with its much-discussed ethanol production and much to do with its increased oil production, the vast majority of which comes from off Brazil's shore. Investor's Business Daily reports that Brazil, "which recently made a major oil discovery almost in sight of Rio's beaches," has leased most of the world's deep-sea drilling rigs.

Bryce has been singing the same song for years. To some degree he has a point: We cannot sustain our present way of life without importing energy, other energy sources are decades away from being viable alternatives, and we shouldn't disadvantage ourselves by focusing on domestic energy production rather than seeking the cheapest energy sources in a global commodities market.

Bryce is not as myopic as the title to his book makes him sound, and advocates energy research (particularly new battery technologies for storing large quantities of electricity), solar and nuclear energy. But that part doesn't interest Will - who knows if he really even read past the title - who appears to embrace it as an endorsement of unbridled energy consumption. But Will's perception is once again lacking - the thesis of his column is premised upon the very concept his sole source decries as a myth.

Environmental Lies And The Lying Liars....

George Will writes,

Regarding McCain's "central facts," the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, which helped establish the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - co-winner, with Al Gore, of the Nobel Peace Prize - says global temperatures have not risen in a decade.

Their report, full version here, summary here (PDF), shows the following (click the image for a larger view):
The blue lines represent projections of climate change based on natural forces. The red lines represent models based upon natural and anthropogenic forces (forces resulting from human activities). The black lines represent actual measurements.

So what part of the IPCC's actual findings are consistent with Will's claim that there has been no global temperature increase in a decade?

Charles Krauthammer: Scientific Ignoramus

Sometimes when you read Krauthammer's dishonest arguments, you can't help but think that he's talking down to an audience that he knows will not engage in critical thinking when lapping up his screeds. And there's probably some of that in today's entry, but for the most part it appears that Krauthammer believes what he says. Which is remarkable, as he presumably completed at least undergraduate level science classes as part of the preparation for his medical school training. Speaking of global warming, Krauthammer says,

Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems - from ocean currents to cloud formation - that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing.

But Charles, they're changing because they're constantly being improved. And only a scientific ignoramus would contend that we cannot rely upon a scientific model, complex or otherwise, until it is established with absolute certainty.

The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.

Now you're changing the subject. We were talking about scientific models, not doomsday scenarios.

Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation.

What a dishonest claim that is, Charles. You lump environmentalists, scientists and politicians into some sort of nebulous category of... what? Enemies of the state? And you declare that any effort to address carbon emissions and global warming constitutes "advocating radical economic and social regulation"? Let me guess - your preference is to do nothing while we wait for the 100% scientific certainty that only a scientific ignoramus would believe is possible?

"The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity," warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, "is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."

Vaclav Klaus said it? Well, there. You've changed my mind. When a politician from a small foreign country says something, particularly if it can be reduced to a sound bite, obviously we should cast away science and our own political system and simply defer to the foreign leader's judgments. We shouldn't even ask their basis - we should simply defer. Boy, Charles, you sure know how to make good policy.

You know what? I could declare, "The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity is Charles Krauthammer." Just saying it doesn't make it true, does it? (Would it be true if Vaclav Klaus said it?)

If you doubt the arrogance, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over.

Newsweek? Have you never heard of peer reviewed scientific journals? I mean, you may as well cite a Krauthammer column to tell us that the war on al-Qaeda and the Taliban was over in 100 days and all the critics have been proved wrong. It's mainstream media - and when it comes to selling extra copies, people take license - in your case, lots of it. But you know what? If you look in those peer reviewed journals, instead of relying exclusively on sound bites from politicians (as translated from the original Czech), you may find that Newsweek is a lot closer to reality than you are.

Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming - infinitely more untested, complex and speculative - is a closed issue.

Overthrown? You mean, Newtonian physics is no longer taught in high schools and colleges as a "close enough" approximation of how things work? When apples fall from trees, they now fall up? Your statement is as ignorant as arguing, "Now that we can measure things in microns, rulers and measuring tapes are useless." They're not. They get us pretty close to where we want to be, and often all the way to where we want to be. And when we need to be more precise, we can turn to more sophisticated tools (or, if you prefer, relativity).

Further, beyond you and Newsweek, nobody seems to be calling this a "closed issue". As you previously noted, the scientists you love to malign - people who, unlike you, know what they're talking about - are constantly striving to improve their models and increase the accuracy of their predictions. You may not like the fact that the science points in a particular direction, but if you have an honest bone in your body you should be able to admit that it's you who is approaching these issues in religious terms - even describing your own mindset ("agnostic") in religious terms - even though it's a scientific question.

But declaring it closed has its rewards. It not only dismisses skeptics as the running dogs of reaction, i.e., of Exxon, Cheney and now Klaus. By fiat, it also hugely re-empowers the intellectual left.

What discredited the naysayers on the issue of global warming? Oh yes... lying, and paying for pseudoscience in order to attack competent science. Sorry, Charles - your heroes have nobody to blame but themselves. And to the extent that the "left" is empowered by relying on sound science, and by the fact that your heroes of the "right" have been proved to be liars? C'mon. Those are crocodile tears you're shedding.

For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class - social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies - arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).

Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.

Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but - even better - in the name of Earth itself.

And now we delve into ad hominem? That didn't take long. Ah yes... the studious young people who pursue advanced degrees in science, and enter the lucrative fields of physics and climatology... They're all about amassing power and wealth for themselves. You caught 'em just in time - next week they were going to take over the country and make us all wear lab coats.

Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. (See Newsweek above.)

Ad hominem; straw man. Can't you do better?

And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment - carbon chastity - they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by, and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat.

Ad hominem; straw man. Nope, I guess you can't.

Only Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.

There's no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.

So a parliamentary committee in a foreign nation proposed something that's nutty and unworkable in practice? But wait - this was a foreign government? Now I'm confused, because I thought you believed that if a foreign leader did or said something nutty and non-scientific we were supposed to immediately adopt it into our nation's norms of conduct to comport with that statement. Perhaps we only do that if the foreign leader doesn't speak English? And the danger posed by this carbon card is what? Let's look at what's happening in England:

The Government has, quite understandably, backed away with some horror from a new proposal by a committee of MPs to introduce a system of 'personal carbon credits' for every individual in Britain.

Charles, you're building a house of cards.

So what does the global warming agnostic propose as an alternative? First, more research - untainted and reliable - to determine (a) whether the carbon footprint of man is or is not lost among the massive natural forces (from sunspot activity to ocean currents) that affect climate, and (b) if the human effect is indeed significant, whether the planetary climate system has the homeostatic mechanisms (like the feedback loops in the human body, for example) with which to compensate.

By "untainted and reliable" you mean what? Particularly given that you are completely ignorant of the existing research? As a scientific ignoramus you presumably mean, "I won't believe any science that doesn't comport to my existing world view" - and for you, that's consistent with your take on pretty much everything. You are preternaturally incapable of thinking beyond the narrow confines of your tiny, closed mind. You know nothing, but you pretend yourself capable of dictating to actual scientists the criteria they should use to evaluate the documented fact of global warming? And you dare to insult others as following an "ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology" or "talking through their hats"?

Second, reduce our carbon footprint in the interim by doing the doable, rather than the economically ruinous and socially destructive. The most obvious step is a major move to nuclear power, which to the atmosphere is the cleanest of the clean.

So wait - your entire argument is a straw man, concluding with your concession that we need to "reduce our carbon footprint"? You just want to provide a fig leaf to hide your pro-industry, anti-environmental stance - an excuse to harm the environment while hiding behind ignorant, dishonest demands for scientific certainty?

As for nuclear energy, have you never heard of solar energy? Geothermal energy? Hydroelectric energy? Wind energy? I'm a proponent of nuclear energy but that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend that no other carbon-friendly sources of energy exist. Is it that you weren't aware of these other sources of energy, or are you being dishonest?

But your would-be masters have foreseen this contingency. The Church of the Environment promulgates secondary dogmas as well. One of these is a strict nuclear taboo.

Oh, come on. You're going to pretend that the only reason that G.W. Bush couldn't pass a nuclear energy program in six years of ramming pro-energy industry legislation down our throats is that he and his fellow Republicans worship at "The Church of the Environment"?

Rather convenient, is it not? Take this major coal-substituting fix off the table, and we will be rationing all the more. Guess who does the rationing.

If you have it your way, either you or an incompetent Republican administration for which you cheerlead. Either way, the rest of us lose.

Robert Samuelson On Truth Serum

Oh boy.... Robert Samuelson imagines a world where we put politicians on "truth serum" and suddenly everything the have to say coincides 100% with (you probably guessed it) Samuelson's personal political agenda. Let's supplement some of these remarks, such that they're actually truthful.

"What we can do is preserve an economic climate that favors long-term growth. That means holding down the tax burden to maintain incentives for work and investments. We're already running a $400 billion or so deficit; some broad-based tax increases may be needed. This will disappoint conservatives, who think no one should pay taxes, and liberals, who think only the rich should pay them. But we must also cut spending, because, unless we do, the future tax increases will be crushing.

"Taxes may need to be raised, but only broad-based taxes. Should we need to raise taxes, we need not concern ourselves with progressive taxation or the impact of higher taxes on working families. We should caricature both conservatives (in a somewhat flattering way) and liberals (in a somewhat nonsensical way).

"To cut to the chase - while taxes may need to be raised that's something to be avoided. What we must do is cut spending. And by cutting spending, of course, I mean programs that help the poor and (primarily) the middle class. I have no interest in examining other major expenses, such as the cost of the Iraq War, so don't even go there.

"Of necessity, spending cuts should focus on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. These programs are projected to grow from about 45 percent of the present budget to 70 percent over a couple of decades. Paying for that exclusively with taxes would be devastating for the economy and our children. Paying exclusively by cutting other programs would gut vital government services. I admit that raising eligibility ages for baby boomers and cutting some benefits are unfair. People should have received more warning. But our politicians have so dawdled that there's no warning time left.

"Yes, I'm one of those politicians who happily advances the right-wing canard that because we "spent" the money we borrowed from Social Security, even though Social Security owns treasury notes that if repaid would carry it for decades, those taxes you paid to support your retirement are gone and now we need to cut your benefits. We won't pause to reflect on what this means for the oft-heard line, 'the poor and lower middle class don't pay income taxes,' as if we divert your Social Security taxes into the general fund what are they other than just another income tax.

"And no, don't ask me the financial specifics of the Social Security crisis, because the facts hurt my argument. I want you scared that if you don't give up some benefits now, even though we can afford them, the entire system will soon collapse. The truth about Social Security? Not so scary. We have some work to do, sure, but it's dishonest of me to suggest that the sky is falling.

"Now Medicare and Medicaid are a different story, and we do need to find a way to reign in costs. I'm going to start by ignoring how implementation of universal health care could affect this financial picture, because I'm busy pretending that nobody is addressing these issues. While universality of health insurance doesn't directly address the problems of Medicare and Medicaid, it could keep people off the Medicaid rolls who currently intentionally reduce their earnings and assets in order to qualify for benefits.

"My opponent sees a future where the working poor can hold jobs despite having chronic, costly illnesses and still have good health coverage. My vision involves keeping them poor and dependent - then cutting their Medicaid benefits. Let's face it - that's better for wealthy taxpayers like me. We can pay for our own health care - although our ability really isn't the issue, as most of us also have really good insurance and we don't need to worry about the consequences of Medicare and Medicaid cuts.

"Take for example candidate John McCain. His wife could open him his own private medical clinic, staffed with personal physicians and nurses to cater to his every need. She could afford this without even having to sell her private jet or mortgage one of her vacation homes - they have so much money, it wouldn't affect their lifestyle at all. But he and I still want to cut your medical benefits and your medical safety net, because let's face it. We're more important than you.

"And because we're more important to you, when I talk about cutting Social Security and the medical care safety net, I'm not talking about cutting retirement benefits for members of the Senate, or eliminating the generous health insurance packages available to Senators at taxpayer expense. You may notice that while I'm talking about surprising you with less income and more medical expenses in your retirement, I have no interest in sharing your pain. I would prefer it if you didn't notice that, but no matter how hard I wish it weren't the case, not all of you are stupid.

"We've also dawdled on energy. No one likes $125-a-barrel oil. Last year, we paid an average price of $64 a barrel for imports. Some blame the oil companies, but the truth is that we're all to blame. Americans like cheap gasoline and big vehicles. Nothing was done to dampen consumption. Meanwhile, Congress restricted new oil and gas exploration on environmental grounds. So, demand rose and supply fell. In 1985, we imported 4 million barrels of oil a day; now that's 12 million

"Now when I say 'nothing was done', I don't really mean that. I mean that once Ronald Reagan was elected President and energy self-sufficiency and conservation no longer seemed like pressing concerns, those quaint notions were quickly relegated to the status of exhibits at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. I'm also going to pretend that the only issue causing a rise in oil prices is our domestic inability to get more oil out of the ground right now. That it has nothing to do with increased demand for oil around the world, and perhaps especially in China and India.

"I'm also going to pretend that other oil-producing nations would not step down their production in response to any domestic increase, so as to maximize their own profits. I will happily ignore the fact that if we drained ANWR dry, odds are we will get at most a four year domestic supply of oil - then it's gone and we're back where we started. And I'll ignore the very concept of the word "reserves" - because I think it's better that we completely tap out domestic sources of oil sooner rather than later, so we can become even more dependent on foreign oil.

"As I said, I don't want you blaming the oil companies for any of this. It's not like they have intentionally limited refinery capacity so as to maximize gasoline prices in the summer. Well, actually it is like that, but I don't want you to remember that fact. Don't blame the auto industry either, because they made a lot of money off of selling SUV's, even as they ceded the technological advantage in fuel efficient technologies to the Japanese auto manufacturers. And I don't want you to bring up the environmental records of 'big oil' either, because, well, I don't think the environment is very important. And just so you know, if you disagree with me you're stupid.

" 'Energy independence' is a fraud. We simply use too much foreign oil. All we can do is limit our dependence by shifting to more-efficient vehicles and increasing domestic production. But these measures will take years and have only modest effects. The same is true of global warming. Without major technological breakthroughs, making big cuts in greenhouse gases will be impossible.

"And when I say 'Energy independence is a fraud', I mean I don't want to pay the political price of achieving it. I don't want to have to sell you on nuclear power, mass transportation, more energy-efficient living, and massive infrastructure investment - I don't even want to mention those things. I'm happy to pretend that if we get the average vehicle up to 30 or so MPG, everything will come up roses - and that we have no other ways to conserve energy. I'm going to pretend that only gasoline is made from a barrel of crude, and am not going to mention other gases or heating oil. I certainly don't want to ask businesses to ante up, and as you know I'm not going to raise taxes on the rich to pay for any of this.

"Similarly, when I say 'The same is true of global warming,' I'm again passing the buck. Obviously there are things we can do to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. I'm not willing to increase taxes to pay for those things, and again I'm not interested in asking industry to bear the expense, so forget it. It's just not a priority to me. As far as I'm concerned, the whole "global warming" thing is overblown.

"By the way, did you notice that I didn't mention nuclear energy? It would take a courageous politician to bring up nuclear energy as a possible solution to some of our energy needs. Did you see the way I avoided mentioning coal, the environmental impact of coal mining and coal-burning power plants, and the greenhouse gases and environmental damage resulting from coal-burning plants? Because it would take a courageous politician to tackle those issues, and if you noticed that you're probably also noticing that I'm anything but courageous. You did notice? Drat.

"Finally, let's discuss poverty. Everyone's against it, but hardly anyone admits that most of the increase in the past 15 years reflects immigration -- new immigrants or children of recent immigrants. Unless we stop poor people from coming across our Southern border, legally and illegally, we won't reduce poverty. Period. That doesn't mean we should try to expel the 12 million illegal immigrants already here -- an impossible and morally dubious task. Many families have been here for years; many have American children. We need a pragmatic accommodation: assimilate most people now here; shift future immigration to the highly skilled.

"And here you'll note that I'm painting a picture of immigration and poverty that is so misleading that anybody who is conversant with the issues will think I'm lying. But I'm telling the truth, in a relative sort of way, by describing the world in a way that reflects my politics and personal prejudices.

"Now you're of course asking me, 'How are you going to keep those 'south of the border types' out'? I'm not. Oh, I might promise stepped up border patrols, fencing the entire U.S.-Mexican border, or other expensive forms of window-dressing, but at the end of the day I'm simply not the type of politician who is going to ask the agriculture industry to pay the type of wages that will draw citizens to pick our nation's fruits and vegetables, the hospitality or retail industry to pay that type of wage for maids and janitors, or the construction industry to pay that type of wage for workers.

"Heck - since I'm being honest, I'm not willing to pay that type of wage for the guy who mows my lawn and cleans my pool, or the woman who clean my house. So at most I'm talking about trying to shift them into a 'guest worker'-type system that maintains them as a steady supply of cheap labor. If I were to be honest about my hope, it would be that they come here to work they leave their children at home, and by 'home' I mean 'south of the border'.

"By pretending the poverty problem is driven by immigration, I also get to avoid addressing the more difficult aspects of poverty. If I admitted that immigrant populations assimilate, their children mostly speak English and hold jobs, and that their poverty is relatively transitory, you might turn around and ask me, 'What about those populations where poverty isn't a transitional stage? Where people or families are in poverty for years, or even generations? What can we do for them?' You might even argue, 'Can't we learn something from the successful assimilation of immigrants, even those with little or no education, that might help us learn how to move other populations out of poverty?' Truth be told, I don't care about people in poverty. My only solution for them is to cut their entitlements.

"Vote for me. I'll tell the truth."

"That is, the truth as I see it. Which may not be the truth. But that technicality aside, it's the truth."

Samuelson adds,

Of course, our hapless candidate would be dismissed as misinformed, offensive, possibly racist and, of course, unelectable.

No. A fair assessment would be that the hapless candidate is ill-informed, intentionally or unintentionally oversimplifies serious issues, responds to serious problems at best with clichéd non-solutions, and mostly offers no solution whatsoever to anything else he defines as a "critical" issue for the nation.

That isn't a good way to differentiate himself from the rest of the field.

Environmental Good Intentions

There appears to be new interest in the demise of frogs and toads around the world, centering upon the theory that climate change has contributed to the spread of a deadly fungal skin infection. Several articles I have read mention one of the most famous extinctions, that of the golden toads which once appeared in large numbers in the Monteverde cloud forest in Costa Rica.

When I was in Costa Rica a couple of years ago, I stayed at a bed and breakfast owned by a family whose ranch had been purchased and incorporated into the nature preserve at Monteverde. Their son described how one year the toads had appeared in their usual number, and the next year they were gone. He stated that this coincided with some work performed within the toad's breeding area. He left the firm impression that the most likely cause of that toad's extinction was not global warming or a spreading fungus, but instead was the result of changes made to their breeding area. It is safe to assume that any such changes would have been made with the best of intentions, but perhaps with the worst of consequences.

It's not that disease isn't an issue, or that global warming cannot be part of the equation. But we're not speaking here of a gradual disappearance - it was a sudden extinction, associated with a cessation of breeding:

In 1987, the golden toad was closely studied by an American ecologist and herpetologist who, by chance, happened upon its breeding spectacle. She described it as brief and breathtaking; the males looked like "little jewels on the forest floor." She was so fascinated that she applied for a grant to return and study the toads.

In 1988, no toads appeared when the seasonal rains started. During several months of searching the Monteverde forest, scientists found only ten golden toads, and none were breeding. In 1989, only one lonely toad was found where once there were hundreds. Despite much searching, not a single golden toad has been seen since then.

Although that article discounts habitat destruction as a cause of the extinction,

Habitat destruction does not explain the disappearance of the Monteverde golden toad, however. The high-elevation rain forest where it lived is a relatively pristine area, protected as a national reserve since the 1970s.

You don't have to do all that much traveling in the developing world to find examples of architecture, natural resources, or other attractions being damaged or destroyed in the course of well-meaning preservation efforts. (And you probably wouldn't have to look very hard to find similar mistakes in the developed world.)

I do not mean to diminish the significance of climate change to animal populations, particularly in an environment such as a cloud forest, and I certainly don't mean to diminish the importance of conservation efforts. It's more that I think that in many contexts we need to recall that the road to hell can be paved with good intentions.

Pet Peeve

Global warming and the thinning of the ozone layer are separate environmental issues.

(I know everybody reading this already knows that, but sheesh... the illiterati have taken over your television set.)

Pollution and Overpopulation

An editorial in today's London Guardian, The planet's polluters should be put in the dock, laments pressure on the world's environment from callous corporations and an exploding population in the developing world. ("The UN projects global population to rise to 9.3 billion by 2050, by which time almost 90% of the world's people would live in developing countries.") While the article's suggestsions go beyond merely proposing a new international court to prosecute environmental offenders, I think the author's press for criminalization comes from the expectation that nations will not implement the legal and regulatory reforms he sees as necessary to reign in some of the worst corporate practices.

Left unmentioned is the fact that, no matter how many new regulations or criminal penalties are imposed on corporations, no corporate reform is likely to affect population growth. With much of the population growth likely to occur in nations which already have grave difficulty providing sufficient food and potable water to their present populations, this population growth could leave us facing environmental, political, and probably military pressures that we have only just started to acknowledge.

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