On the Economist’s webpage there was recently a debate between Van Jones, an urban environmentalist hero who recently resigned from the Obama administration, and Andrew Morris, a British conservative, over the value of the government promoting the creation of so-called green jobs. As a lifelong, small government Republican, I find Morriss’ argument in favor of "let the free market decide" entirely unsatisfying when it comes to the green jobs issues. If you want to have hope that we can rise up to the challenge presented to us by the twin perils of Climate Change/Peak Oil please check out the article and/or follow me below the fold.
http://economist.com/...
I would like to show the utter backwardness and the deeply flawed arguments of Morriss and other conservatives by making the analogous argument on whether the government has a roll in establishing strong building codes in earthquake zones. Morriss argues that in 1870, we had very little knowledge about our future energy usage and similarly back in the 1870’s we knew nothing about plate tectonics. We did not know that the earth’s crust was floating on different plates and that earthquakes were largely located along fault lines that were in turn located at plate boundaries. But in the intervening years, scientists (ironically most often employed by the government or employed by universities that receive government funding) have studied the issue fairly extensively. Scientists can now tell us why earthquakes happen, where the earthquakes have happened, what the frequency and magnitudes of past earthquakes were, and where, how strong, and, roughly speaking, when future earthquakes are likely to strike. Based on their work we can draw some relatively good policy positions and create government regulations about what types of building codes we should enact in order to handle the expected quakes predicted by the experts working in that field.
And what is a conservative, free market oriented thinker to make of the science related to plate tectonics and earthquakes? Well, if I am to follow Morriss’ example, apparently, I as a free market conservative am to muddy the waters, cite examples of past failures of government regulations/programs, claim ignorance and, finally, come to the pre-ordained, inevitable conclusion of "let the market decide".
I’ll muddy the water by proferring the question of "what precisely do you mean by "earthquake proofing""? Until we define that "nebulous" term we can’t possibly have the government set rules, regulations and codes involving new construction or "retro-fitting" our older buildings. I’ll point out government failures and wastefulness by perhaps arguing that California spent hundreds of billions of dollars on government mandated earthquake building codes and no earthquake in the last 50 years has cracked the 5 largest earthquakes in recorded California hisotry. If you look at the current state of the California economy can you not see that it would have been better to have Californians spend money on free market, business generating ideas instead of some ill advised government program of "earthquake proofing" our buildings and infrastructure? I’ll then make an incredibly ignorant claim (or a bald faced lie, take your pick) regarding our ignorance and say we know as little about earthquakes and earthquake prediction as we did in the 1870’s. And I’ll do all of this to simply come to the conclusion that I was determined to come to all along. Government involvement is not warranted---"let the market decide" what types of houses and buildings they wish to construct in these so called "earthquake zones".
Well, thank you but no. In the real world, such lazy intellectualism has significant consequences. As we have recently witnessed, in Haiti, where building codes are few and far between and where there are some they are largely ignored and/or unenforced, the free market decided that they would construct and the citizens would buy poorly constructed buildings. Meanwhile, the Chilean government instituted science based building codes. Thus, when an earthquake struck Chile that was approximately 800 times more powerful than the earthquake that struck Haiti we saw "relatively" little death and destruction in Chile compared to the utter devastation and massive loss of life in Haiti.
Bringing the argument back to green jobs and the science behind Climate Change and Peak Oil, similar to our knowledge of plate tectonics and earthquakes, we now know a hell of a lot about energy use, energy sources and energy technology than we did back in the 1870’s. Our scientists tell us that pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is likely to cause catastrophic warming and they tell us that whether it is one oil field, all the oil fields in a country or all the oil fields in the world, that the oil fields follow a relatively predictable production curve whereby it is cheap and easy to get the oil out at the beginning and increasingly difficult and expensive to get the oil out at the end of the life of an oil field. In a society largely based on and developed during the access to cheap, plentiful fossil fuels it is incumbent on us that we take precautionary measures to deal with the inevitable dramatic increases in the price of fossil fuels and every other commodity that relies on cheap fossil fuels for its existence. See a summary of the Hirsch Report for more details.
http://www.acus.org/...
To be sure, our understanding of both earthquakes and energy/Climate Change/Peak Oil is far from complete. One need only witness how the scientific models regarding a tsunami generated by the Chilean quake would affect Hawaii and how the scientific models regarding how much the earth’s atmosphere should have warmed in the last decade were both wrong.
But the advances in understanding in the fields of seismology and energy are very real and very substantial. Me and other free market oriented conservatives, should not merely reflexively talk about the virtues of the free market system. Instead, we should recognize science for what it is, an amazing process that leads to a better understanding of nature but is filled with all the flaws of any human created system or process. If we do so, we will open our eyes to the reality that science strongly suggests that we should take action now and do so on a massive scale.
In order to follow this course of action, I as a conservative, understand that our government, and governments around the world for that matter, will need to send extremely strong signals about what direction we should head in (creating a sustainable future with far less use of increasingly finite and increasingly expensive fossil fuels- ie a green future with a green economy with green jobs). And, I, as a conservative, further understand that once the direction, system and playing field is largely established by the government (we the people), that the best way to achieve the objectives is through a free market system where winners/losers are not foreordained.
Sadly, as a lifelong Republican, it is not my party that is taking this science based approach to having the government enable the free market to solve the problems associated with Climate Change/Peak Oil. Instead, our position seems to be the functional equivalent of the "free market" approach to constructing buildings in Haiti. The devastation to our economy and to our biosphere is obviously not the aim of my "conservative" policies but science is indicating that that is the expected result. If this is what "free market" conservatism means today, I want no part of it.
Doing otherwise would be to support the functional equivalent of having a "Haiti" occur on a global scale.