Why Republicans Deny Climate Change
Their ideology is unique in the free world With Democrats and President Barack Obama unable to pass any significant climate change legislation despite scientific consensus on the severity and immediacy of the threat, a number of political commentators are turning their attention to the widely held Republican position that climate change isn't real. Why, they ask, are U.S. conservative politicians nearly alone among the world's political players in their continued insistence that climate change is neither man-made nor a serious problem? Here's their conversation and what they say it means for the U.S., the world, and the effort to curb climate change. Part of the conservative creed has always been that markets, left to themselves, accomplish most tasks more efficiently than government regulation. Thats true, of course, just as its true that markets dont do everything you want. (Thats why we have cheap deregulated airlines and yet retain the Federal Aviation Administration.) But conservatives have grown more insistent on the deification of markets in recent years; Rand Paul is ever less an outlier. If markets do damage, thats okayits creative destruction a la Schumpeter. But even if you accept that process absolutely within the economic sphere (and very few of us do, which is why Rand Paul just might lose), it doesnt follow that it works outside of it. Destruction of the planets fundamental physical systems isnt creativeits just destruction. If Microsoft disappears, innovators will take its place. If Arctic ice disappears, no young John Galt is going to remake it in his garage. The essential question is: Is the environment a subset of the economy, or is it the other way around? Or, more combatively, you really think you can out-argue physics? Hayeks good, but atmospheric chemistry is a tough opponent.