The Right Way to Save the Planet

by Nathan Beaton | Conservative solutions to global warming.

In 2006, Republican Representatives Wayne Gilchrest, Roscoe Bartlett, and Vern Ehlers requested seats on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.  All three supported the premise of global warming resulting from carbon emissions, and the latter two had previously worked as research scientists.  All three were denied seats by House Minority Leader John Boehner.  This year’s Republican vice-presidential pick, Sarah Palin, infamously said that global warming was not man-made.  While over three quarters of Americans accept that global climate change is occurring, Republican leadership remains decidedly skeptical.

As a result, the Republican Party has completely ceded to the Democrats an issue of growing concern to the American people.  This will not only continue to hurt the GOP in the future, contributing to the narrative that Republicans are anti-intellectual zealots standing in opposition to science and reason, but will disservice the American people as well.  Because liberals control global warming as an issue, Americans have been presented a problem with solutions that appear exclusively liberal. By sticking their heads in the sand for the last decade, Republicans have allowed an issue that requires science and technology to be hijacked and thus serve a segment of the Democratic coalition that is anti-capitalism and anti-modernity.

The irony of the liberal green movement is that it is not based on an appreciation for science nor for human progress.  Rather, it is diametrically opposed to both.  The green movement is about curbing our demand for energy, for walking rather than driving cars, for buying local groceries rather than imported foods.  In short, they long for a return to some pre-industrial utopia.  ‘Greens’ see human progress as being at odds with nature, and seek to strengthen the latter of these two competing forces at the expense of the former.  This conflict, however, is largely a false construct.  For the world to address the issue of climate change, it is these modern, progressive forces that man will be required to harness.

Changing the demand for energy through ‘green’ taxes promotes an eco-moralism that is as inappropriate a tool of government as it is unrealistic a mechanism for solving our climate crisis.  The solution must be--and Republicans must loudly articulate this--based on changing the supply of energy both in size and in nature.  The debate should be about how best to promote new, more efficient methods of producing energy and reducing harmful emissions.  Hydroelectricity, wind power, and photovoltaic cells promise to meet approximately one-fifth of America’s energy needs by most estimates.  To make up the difference, Republicans should be ardent in their support for nuclear power as a carbon-free source of energy production.  They should be equally vocal in explaining how transmutation helps to alleviate some of the concerns over radioactive waste by reprocessing transnuranic waste in reactors with nuclear fuel cycles.  In the meantime, carbon sequestration remains and will remain crucial.  Subsidizing these improvements, however, would be a mistake. 
Removing prohibitive restrictions on building nuclear reactors and offering tax relief to alternative energy development would suffice.  In the time that it will inevitably take for these infrastructural changes to occur, the Republicans should follow John McCain’s lead and support a cap and trade system to curb the growth of and eventually decrease emissions without placing radical strains on businesses.

The liberal response to global warming is, by design, concerned with altering personal and private behavior.  This manifests itself most apparently in ‘smart’ growth urban planning, which intentionally increases traffic congestion and limits opportunities for businesses and people to build homes and stores.  Today there is a growing movement for carbon taxes on businesses which will invariably be passed on to consumers as well as a smaller but not insignificant push for personal consumption taxes.  These liberal ideas overreach; the government should endeavor neither to punish nor reward the consumption habits of individuals or corporations.  Instead it should make the question of private energy use irrelevant by promoting alternate forms of energy.

While the American people are ready to accept the theory of global warming, they are not prepared to accept the consequences of liberal limits on personal consumption and economic growth.  It is for this reason that Republicans still have an opportunity to appeal to a large segment of the electorate on the issue of climate change.  In order to capitalize on this, Republicans must make two things clear: current liberal proposals to combat climate change will be economically crippling, and more effective negotiation on an international level is needed in order to produce meaningful results.  Taxing corporations for their environmental sins will only force them to move their operations abroad, taking American jobs while still polluting at the same rate elsewhere.  By contrast, conservative, free-market approaches promise energy independence and a corresponding increase in domestic ‘green-collar’ jobs.  The Kyoto Protocol, an easy symbol of Clintonian internationalism and source of liberal nostalgia because of President Bush’s immediate withdrawal from the treaty, is not enough.  Republicans must promise tough diplomacy that makes the developing world, and China and India in particular, responsible as well.  The Kyoto Protocol and other potential treaties like it punish the United States for its profligate energy use more than they support carbon reductions.

Republicans can and should package their energy policy as comprehensive.  While the liberal solution to climate change is more cultural than political, Republicans can offer a conservative, pro-growth set of proposals that promise energy independence, an increase in jobs at home, and strong commitments and accountability abroad, but first they must admit the problem exists at all.

Mr. Beaton is a freshman who has not yet declared a major.

Comments

[Tim]

I think the most important thing about combating energy concerns is to:

a)get people to start using energy more efficiently, such as switching off unused appliances and lights in your home, or making use of passive solar design at home.

b)Investing in renewable energy research to make solar and wind power as efficient and economical as possible so everyone can afford to use it at home.

So, in essence we should use a hybrid of the Liberals and the Republicans approaches to combat energy usage and global warming.