The Wrong Debate

Dear Reader,

Is the debate about climate change the wrong debate?

I think it is.

It didn’t start out that way. It started out as scientific hypotheses drawn from a lot of scientific data. And like all scientific hypotheses they were, and still are, open to revision or even abandonment based on new evidence.

This is the basic scientific approach. It is what distinguishes rational scientific inquiry from ideological dogma.

But then - and I don’t really know at what point - the whole debate about global warming, as the phenomenon is still often incorrectly called, got hijacked by political interests.

Environmentalists used the issue as a vehicle to advance their cause, while, at the other end of the spectrum, conservatives, as they so often do, denied the scientific evidence altogether.

In between those two extremes, politicians worldwide have organized conferences and signed agreements to reduce or limit or whatever emissions of so-called greenhouse gases, and even the scientifically illiterate American politicians pay at least lip service to climate change and the need to do something.

And this is the problem: that we need to do “something”. It is the old political fallacy: Something needs to be done, this is something, therefore we must do it (I’m borrowing from the British 1980s political TV-comdey Yes, Prime Minister).
It doesn’t really matter what that something is, let alone whether it really needs to be done.

For all kinds of special interest groups (and the political community) climate change has turned out to be too good to be true. It is a huge issue that few people really understand, but everybody has an opinion about. We are almost at the point where virtually anything can be blamed on climate change and any half-baked political or business decision can be justified in the name of preventing climate change. But climate change also acts as a powerful brake.

Climate change has become so big that it obscures the real issues.

Whether it is a natural phenomenon or due to human activity, or something in between, the scientific consensus is that it is happening. The consensus also seems to be that it is happening pretty much regardless of what we do or don’t do.

More and more scientists point out that we should start dealing with the possible consequences of climate change and stop arguing about half percentage point reductions in the rate of increase of carbon dioxide emissions over the next 20 years.

Yes, a lot needs to be done to reduce pollution, eliminate poverty, improve health, preserve biodiversity, prevent species extinctions.

There are many reasons to pursue these causes, economic reasons and ethical reasons for instance, but the fight against climate change is not one of them.

It just gives politicians and special interests an excuse to do nothing effective.