Local opinion: George Will and Green bossiness

George Will is tired of Green bossiness, especially scientists advocating that we leave fossil fuels in the ground. According to a Will quote, “In 1970, global cooling was supposedly going to disrupt agriculture and other things, the ozone was going to disappear, and acid rain was going to deforest New England.” The insinuation is that science and government cannot be trusted.

Will has repeated this nonsense many times. Where to start?

First Item: In the early 1970s, chemists realized that chlorofluorocarbons posed a danger to the ozone layer.

The Antarctic ozone hole was discovered in the mid-1980s and this catalyzed calls to ban CFCs.

There was industry pushback, some rational and some unethical, and it is amusing to recall that the Reagan Administration initially recommended hats and sunglasses as an alternative to curbing CFCs.

However, reason prevailed, and in the words of Ronald Reagan, “The Montreal Protocol [of 1987] is a model of cooperation. It is a product of the recognition and international consensus that ozone depletion is a global problem, both in terms of its causes and its effects. The protocol is the result of an extraordinary process of scientific study, negotiations among representatives of the business and environmental communities, and international diplomacy. It is a monumental achievement.”

Second item: In 1990, Nixon’s Clean Air Act of 1970 was amended to include a cap-and-trade approach to cutting sulfur emissions, the primary source of acid rain. The result of this market-based approach is that sulfur emissions went down faster than predicted and at one-fourth of the projected cost.

The point: Intervention of science and government spurred the innovation that Will attributes to CEOs.

Third item: Over the past 40 years, climate models have proven to be remarkably accurate (google “how well have climate models projected global warming”). Contrary to Will’s great cooling myth, climate scientists have a proven track record.

When global mean temperature exceeds the preindustrial mean by 1-2 degrees Celsius, as is now the case, we risk passing several climate tipping points. These are irreversible transitions, not obvious and involving enormous uncertainty, which will have catastrophic consequences. One of many examples: Heat from the tropics is conveyed north by the Atlantic Gulf Stream. The melting of the Greenland ice sheet is a threat to turn off this heat transfer, which would in turn superheat the tropics, creating off-the-scale hurricanes and plunge Europe into an ice age. This is not a Hollywood script; it is contemporary science (The timing of this is uncertain; google `the Gulf Stream could collapse as early as 2025’).

Our climate is completely out of equilibrium; we are entering a phase dominated by uncertainty, and consequently, we are playing Russian roulette with the natural world and human civilization. This is not global alarmism. It is an accurate evaluation of our state.

There are conservatives who understand how to act on this. A decade ago, our Senator Flake championed an early version of the market-based revenue-neutral carbon fee/dividend proposal of the Citizen’s Climate Lobby. As I wrote on April 2nd (to paraphrase), this proposal would impose a gradually increasing fee on carbon at the wellhead or mine, the revenue would be distributed to households, it would set yearly goals for carbon reduction, and it would create a border carbon adjustment mechanism to propagate the policy globally and to level the playing field for US businesses. It is simple (you and I can read it), it is fair (the more you pollute, the more you pay), and it is progressive (most low- and middle-income households come out ahead).

Fossil fuels are relatively plentiful. Companies will continue to make big investments in fossil fuels so long as we subsidize their use and do not properly account for their costs. We need a price on carbon. If this is Will’s idea of Green bossiness, so be it.