In response to Heritage analyst James Carafano’s paper, “National Security Not a Good Argument for Global Warming Legislation”, the American Security Project responded to four “myths” in Carafano’s piece. But their retaliatory facts ignore Carafano’s central premise that the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill will do much more economic harm than environmental good and would undermine “the nation’s capacity to deal with natural disasters here and abroad.”
Part I is here.
ASP’s other two critiques are:
1.) Refuting Carafano’s notion that “U.S. action alone would not impact world CO2 levels.” Their response: “If we don’t take the lead in reducing CO2 levels, other countries will, and we will lose out on the resulting jobs and economic growth. Once, the United States led the world in the production of solar panels. Now China leads and the U.S. is only fourth and we are buying clean energy technology we used to export.”
Notice they don’t actually say U.S. action alone will impact world CO2 levels. That’s because it won’t. As mentioned in part one, Climatologists project the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill would only change global temperatures by two 10ths of a degree Celsius by century’s end.
The common battle cry among advocates of cap and trade is that once the United States paves the way for a carbon-reduction plan, other countries will follow suit. Yet, in a case of international cooperation, India, China and the rest of the developing world would likely have to revert to emission output levels that are pure fantasy. On a per-capita basis, China would backtrack to about one 10th of what the United States emitted in 2000. India and most of the developing world would have to drop to even lower levels. This is a de-developing strategy which no country will adopt.
Worse, carbon capping actually punishes the developing world for using cleaner technology. The developing world is doing just that: developing. For that reason, the technologies they use and the infrastructure they build are newer, cleaner and more efficient.
On an unrelated note, it shouldn’t matter whether the United States is first, fourth, or four-hundredth in the world in producing solar panels. The law of comparative advantage is one of the first lessons in economics: a business or company will produce a good if its opportunity cost is lower. George Mason University economist Russ Roberts says it bluntly, “We export so we can have money to buy the stuff that’s hard for us to make–or at least hard for us to make as cheaply. Self-sufficiency is the road to poverty.” And if solar and wind and any other source of energy can compete in the free market to provide consumers cheap electricity, all the better.
2.) Carafano’s last “myth” is that “The environment does not cause wars—it is how humans respond to their environment that causes conflict.” ASP says: “Countries have been going to war over land and resources for centuries, and there is every empirically proven reason to believe that as climate change effects food, water and other resources, it will force migration, destabilize governments, and cause nations to increasingly go to war. Again, we can already see this happening in parts of Africa. The challenge then is to act now to prevent the circumstances from developing that will make conflict more likely in the future thereby minimizing future impacts and direct costs to the United States.”
Carafano responds to this: “There was significant climate change in the 17th century and by some accounts that contributed to the 30 Years War and related conflicts such as the English Revolution. But climate during the 18th century was very stable by comparison and, in fact, on the eve of the French Revolution harvests improved… it all depends on how humans chose to react to their environment.”
ASP is right in arguing that natural disasters can lead to competition for scarce resources, which can lead to conflict. We even saw that, on a much smaller scale than Africa, in Katrina when resources became scarce and prices were driven up. This will become more prominent if we enact a cap and trade system that cripples our economy. Production will dwindle, resources will become scarcer and innovation and entrepreneurial activity will fall, which will be more detrimental to regions like Darfur because many adaptations are driven by markets. Seed companies develop drought and heat resistant strains that have increased agricultural productivity in the face of global warming. Low tech, but efficient, dams create reservoirs in the Himalayas to provide water supplies and irrigation during dry months. These simple, cost-effective technologies will help developing countries adapt as well rather than forcing them into costly international carbon reduction treaties.
Capping CO2 only hinders the overall economic development of poorer countries and thus puts them in a worse position to adapt to climate change, if necessary.
In response to Heritage analyst James Carafano’s paper, “National Security Not a Good Argument for Global Warming Legislation”, the American Security Project responded to four “myths” in Carafano’s piece.
But their retaliatory facts ignore Carafano’s central premise that the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill will do much more economic harm than environmental good and would undermine “the nation’s capacity to deal with natural disasters here and abroad.” The truth is the climate has been changing on its own for centuries and wide scientific dissent exists disputing how much warming is human-induced or even caused by carbon dioxide. In any event, climatologist Chip Knappenberger modeled the climate effects of the Waxman-Markey climate legislation and found the regulations would only lower temperatures by only hundredths of a degree Celsius in 2050 and no more than two-tenths of a degree Celsius at the end of the century.
Let’s take a look at ASP’s critiques:
1.)ASP argues Carafano’s notion that we should allow “nations to adapt to the national security challenges implied by long-term global climate changes” is misguided: “While Carafano would rather wait and see what catastrophic repercussions transpire from climate change, the truth is that these harmful changes are not far off and have already started to take place.” They further argue that a radically changing climate would put U.S. military facilities at risk.
But the Waxman-Markey does little to address climate change and a lot to cripple economic competitiveness. The policy most often suggested is a cap-and-trade bill to reduce carbon dioxide. Although the benefits in terms of global temperature decreases would be negligible, the costs would be astronomical. Carafano is right to argue that a “collapse in U.S. economic growth would result in even more draconian cuts to the defense budget, leaving America with a military much less prepared to deal with future threats.”
2.) Next ASP attacks Carafano’s assertion that “Catastrophic predictions…are poorly supported by the evidence.” They say: “History is filled with examples of climate induced conflicts and humanitarian disasters, and climate change has already contributed to conflicts in regions like Darfur where droughts reduced water levels in Lake Chad by 90 percent. This lack of water has helped to spark the deadly conflict between Sudan and Chad which has cost almost half a million lives. Conflicts like this will become more common as climate change increases competition for dwindling resources. Carafano suggests that advocates use alarmist scenarios to push their agenda, but the truth is that even conservative estimates of climate change – as highlighted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – will have major impacts.”
First, catastrophic predictions are poorly supported by evidence and often greatly exaggerated by the likes of Al Gore. In fact, Senior Policy Analyst Ben Lieberman writes, “ The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which Gore considers to be the gold standard of consensus science, projects an increase of 7 to 23 inches over the next century. The lower end of that range is about what has occurred — without serious consequences — over the last two centuries.”
Moreover, natural disasters are just that: natural. The reality is adaptation to climate change is prudent; but changing the weather like cap and trade attempts to do is impossible without reverting back to living standards comparable to the Stone Age. Take hurricanes, for example. Changing the weather to prevent hurricanes is currently impossible, but adapting to hurricanes is not. States and cities have shown this by better preparing for hurricanes—building better levees, rebuilding sand dunes and upgrading building codes to withstand damage. In response to Katrina, the US Army Corps of Engineers installed sheet pilings as emergency closures in order to prevent water from entering the canals and re-flooding the city. Furthermore, the engineers took measures to raise and armor portions of area’s levees for better protection and worked with Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force to better understand hurricane movements.
(More on this in part II)