Radical Right Reality Check

Even as new evidence pours in, the far right stubbornly resists carbon controls

With so much of the far right's economic and social agendas devoted to the defense of a mostly mythological vision of the "good old days" - in everything from the regulation of corporate robber barons to civil rights to the definition of "marriage" to cigarette smoking - it's probably no wonder that they cling so desperately to their denial of the role of humans in climate change. What did we expect: Ideologues who've never met an environmental regulation that they liked to suddenly embrace the idea that we must work collectively and urgently to save our planet's health from the direct effects of our own greed and wastefulness?

Still, having said this, it's always a little shocking to confront it in the flesh or in black and white. That supposedly serious people can still make their living as paid spokespersons for the proposition that controlling humanity's carbon output is a bad idea is enough to make one fear for our species - both its present and future.

Recently, the Raleigh-based Locke Foundation, having witnessed so much of its market fundamentalist economic theory consumed by the debris flow of the economic meltdown, seems to have turned to global warming as another place to plant its flag in its ongoing crusade to resist progress and modernity.

This week, the group treated us to a kind of "twofer": a special "Spotlight" report that attacks a proposal from the state Environmental Management Commission to require certain polluters to report on their carbon dioxide emissions and a "Carolina Journal Exclusives" interview with one of the nation's loudest deniers of a human role in global warming.

Carbon dioxide "regulations"

The "Spotlight" report (CO2 Regulation: Will the Environmental Management Commission Ignore the Legislature?) attempts to make the following tortured argument:

The North Carolina Environmental Management Commission (EMC) has issued a proposed rule that requires certain facilities to report (just report) on their emission of 41 air pollutants - everything from ozone to methane to something called HFC-365mfc (1.1.1.3.3 pentaflourobutane). One of the 41 pollutants listed is carbon dioxide or CO2. The authorization to do this comes from statutes that give EMC the duty to regulate air pollution and air contaminants.

"Aha!" says the Locke Foundation: to require reporting on CO2 means that one must consider it to be "air pollution" or an "air contaminant." And because, the group claims, there is no proof that CO2 meets either of their hyper-cramped readings of these two definitions, "voila!" the EMC is exceeding its authority!

In a remarkable exercise in legalistic double-speak, the report actually claims not to take a position on whether the state should actually regulate CO2 - only as to whether it has authority to do so.

Got that? In the proud tradition of obstructionist arguments of years gone by, the group professes not to be arguing the real issue - just whether duly empowered public servants can do so. You know this old chestnut: "It's just the sanctity of law we care about."

The professional denier

Part two of this week's double dose of denial featured an "exclusive" interview with a former staffer for a series of conservative congressmen named Robert Ferguson, who has now ensconced himself as the "president" of what appears to be one person shop that he calls the "Science & Public Policy Institute." (The group's website includes nine people on its "personnel" list, but only Ferguson appears actually to be on staff.)

According to the watchdog group SourceWatch, "Prior to founding SPPI in approximately mid-2007, Ferguson was the Executive Director of the Center for Science and Public Policy (CSPP), a project of the corporate-funded group, the Frontiers of Freedom Institute."

Here are some "highlights" from the interview:

On whether stories in the media about the connection between human behavior and global warming "describe what's actually happening":

"No, they actually don't. In fact, science - particularly in the last 10 years as we've spent billions of dollars, literally, investigating the science of the atmosphere and interactions of greenhouse gases and the Earth - we've found out an awful lot, which makes the case for the alarmism even less and less as it goes by. I think one true measure of those who are the most extremist and activist on this issue is that the weaker the case gets for them, the more shrill and alarmist they get. And the numbers of sea level rise or extinctions or whatever keeps going up, up, and up. And it's become extraordinarily shrill, which in itself, on its face, should give people pause that something strange is going on here."

On the Locke questioner's assertion that North Carolina cannot have a "noticeable" impact on global warming and therefore should not regulate CO2:

"Absolutely. What people have to realize is that you have natural flux that goes between the oceans and the soil and the atmosphere, which are, in terms of gigatons, enormous, just immense. [They] dwarf anything man ever puts out. But if we look at just human emissions worldwide, the average increase in emissions is about 3.5 percent per year for human emissions. And China, by far, is now the leader, even surpassing United States, in raw emissions of CO2 in the atmosphere.

So if you look at a state like North Carolina, a lot of these mitigation programs for the state are put together with an idea that we're going to do something good. This is mainly feel-good because it has no real impact at all."

In other words, "Trust me. Even though our species could be in dire jeopardy if I'm wrong and the overwhelming majority of scientists are right that we have no time to waste, don't worry. Chalk up the planet's warming to ‘natural fluctuations.' And since North Carolina can't solve the problem alone, there's no reason to act at all."

Reality check

One could, of course, go on at great length about the shallowness and dangerousness of these arguments - most notably the amazing contention that North Carolina should do nothing at all about the subject because of: a) the denial that CO2 is even a pollutant, and b) the fact that we can't solve the problem ourselves.      

Happily, however, like so many other parts of the far right's backward looking agenda, time, facts and human progress are rapidly leaving the global warming deniers behind.

This week in Copenhagen, Denmark, scientists gathered in preparation for a major international conference that will take place in December of this year. The conclusion: things are getting serious - very serious.

According to a conference communiqué: "Given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are becoming a reality. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts."  

The only potential silver lining to the distressing findings appears to have come from some attending economists. These experts expressed great hope for the boost to the international economy that will be provided by the explosion of green investments that will be necessary if we are to have some hope of controlling climate shift.

"If all G-20 countries adopted a 'green New Deal' similar to the one proposed by President Obama, the world economy would be greatly strengthened, especially the sectors producing low-carbon technologies," said one British economist.

In other words…

The deniers may be right about one thing: The situation may be beyond our control. Even the overwhelming majority of mainstream scientists who are convinced of the link between global warming and human activity do not know for sure that we can halt the terrible chain reaction that we have set in motion. But they do know this: there is very little hope at all if we don't get off our rear ends and try. And, happily, just doing so will be good for our near term economic and physical health.

For those of us here in North Carolina, the first step in this process should be to quickly relegate the denials of the far right obstructionists to the same ash can of history in which so many of their other lost causes reside.

 Email This Post  Print This Post

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 14th, 2009 at 9:02 am and is filed under Radical Right Reality Check. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.