Climate Change: It's Time for a Conservative Alternative
| Date | 01 September 2013 |
| Author |
43 ELR 10728 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 9-2013
Climate Change: It’s Time for
a Conservative Alternative
by Eli Lehrer
Eli Lehrer is President of the R Street Institute.
President Barack Obama’s climate agenda announced
in June represents the latest of many Democratic
Party eorts to address climate change.1 Although
it includes no new legislation, the president’s plan makes
unprecedented use of executive branch powers and oers
a great many things that appeal to core Democratic con-
stituencies. Implemented in full, power plant carbon rules,
further delays in economically benecial pipeline projects,
and added green energy projects would result in a bigger,
more intrusive government that exerts greater control over
the economy, rewards perceived “good guys,” and punishes
supposed “ bad guys.” Not surprisingly, the plan, like all
previous Democratic eorts, has earned a suspicious a nd
hostile reaction from conservatives.2
It doesn’t have to be this way. Rather than pretend cli-
mate change is not a problem, there are ample opportuni-
ties for Republicans to point out the obvious aws in the
left’s plans to deal with it and oer alternatives of their
own. In short, conservatives can take a page from the lib-
eral playbook and use the climate change issue to push
policies that they favor anyway.
A detour into the undisputed facts about climate change
illustrates why this strategy makes sense. Nobody seriously
involved in the policy debate over climate change—not
even those the left unfairly labels as “deniers”—actually
denies that humans inuence global climate.3 ere is also
no dispute that the ea rth is wa rmer than it wa s before the
Industrial Revolution or that carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases (GHGs) can trap heat energy.4
Likewise, there is little doubt that the worst plausible
projections of sea-level rise and temperature change result-
ing from this warming trend would present major problems
1. Barack Obama, Climate Change and President Obama’s Action Plan, June 26,
2013, http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/climate-action-plan (last visited
July 22, 2013).
2. See, e.g., Nicholas Loris, 11 Problems With President Obama’s Climate
Change Plan, T H F B, http://blog.heritage.
org/2013/06/26/11-problems-with-president-obamas-climate-change-plan/
(last visited July 22, 2013).
3. See, e.g., James Taylor, A 98 Percent Consensus of Nothing, F, Sept. 8,
2011, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/09/08/global-warm-
ing-a-98-consensus-of-nothing/ (last visited July 22, 2013).
4. I P C C (IPCC), C
C 2013: T P S B, https://www.ipcc-wg1.unibe.
ch/ (last visited July 22, 2013).
in almost every corner of the globe. While more ca rbon
in the atmosphere could have some benets, such as fewer
deaths from cold, it is also likely to pose a variety of severe
problems ranging from droughts and oods to the destruc-
tion of commercial shing. Nearly any accounting of these
costs indicates they will exceed the benets.5
On the other hand, the extreme alarmism from some
corners of the environmental movement is not warranted.
e scenarios sketched out by climate models cover a broad
gamut of possibilities. And the models themselves remain
imperfect. For example, although current overall carbon
levels and arctic ice melt are higher than most scientists pre-
dicted they would be today, actual temperature changes
tend toward the lower end of most models.6
In any case, focusing on the science can be something
of a dead end. e scientic consensus that exists about
the c auses and eects of climate change cannot point to
an optimal policy solution any more than improvements in
heart surgery techniques can provide guidance on health
care reform.
Indeed, if free-market conservatives really want evi-
dence of climate change, they ought to look toward the
insurance markets that would bear much of the cost of cat-
astrophic climate change. A ll three of the major insurance
modeling rms and every global insurance company incor-
porate human-caused climate change into their projections
of current and future weather patterns.7 e big business
that has the most to lose from climate cha nge, and that
would reap the biggest rewards if it were somehow solved
tomorrow, has universally decided that climate cha nge is a
real problem. An insurance company that ignored climate
change predictions could, in the short term, make a lot of
money by underpricing its competition on a wide range of
products. Not a single rm has done this.
5. See, e.g., J. Scott Armstrong, Taking a Stand on Climate Cost/Benet Analy-
sis, W M., Jan. 7, 2013, http://whartonmagazine.com/blogs/
taking-a-stand-on-climate-change-cost-benet-analysis/ (last visited July
22, 2013).
6. A Sensitive Matter, T E, Mar. 30, 2013, http://www.economist.
com/news/science-and-technology/21574461-climate-may-be-heating-up-
less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions (last visited July 22, 2013).
7. Eli Lehrer, Insurance and Climate Change ... It’s Complicated, T H-
P, May 28, 2013, http://www.hungtonpost.com/eli-lehrer/
insurance-and-climate-cha_1_b_3333782.html (last visited July 22, 2013).
Copyright © 2013 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.
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