Climate Coup: Global Warming's Invasion of Our Government and Our Lives.

• Author: Cordato, Roy E.
• Position: Book review

* Climate Coup: Global Warming's Invasion of Our Government and Our Lives

Edited by Patrick J. Michaels

Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2011.

Pp. 270. $24.95 cloth.

Climate Coup is an important collection of essays. Although its editor, climatologist Patrick Michaels, is probably the best known of the "global-warming skeptics," this book is not primarily about the science, but instead about the political economy of the hysteria over global warming. The essays in total describe how the politics and ideology of global warming have had a corrupting influence on science, education, international trade, foreign policy, and other areas. As Michaels points out in the introduction, "[G]lobal warming's reach has become ubiquitous.... [It] has become a threat multiplier" (p. 1). He is not referring to the actual warming of the planet, but to the global-warming movement's corrupting influence and its use of unsubstantiated or outright false claims to justify major expansions of government power. As Michaels concludes, "[W]e have witnessed a coup. Global warming has taken over our government and our lives" (p. 13). In assembling and editing these essays, Michaels aimed to produce an expose of these corrupting influences and how they have lead to this "coup."

In addition to Michaels's introduction, the book contains eight essays, all commissioned by the editor and each pertaining to a specific influence that global-warming politics has had on scientific and public decision making. If readers want to be selective in reading these essays, I suggest giving priority to chapters 1, 2, 3, 6, and 7. These essays relate, in order, to legal and constitutional issues, the current political/ legislative environment, the scientific process, the impact of global warming on developing countries, and claimed impacts on human health. I emphasize these chapters in this review. The remaining three chapters--on foreign policy, trade, and education, respectively--though interesting and worth reading, are less compelling than the other five. Space constraints dictate that I not discuss them here.

The first chapter, "The Executive State Tackles Global Warming," by Roger Pilon and Evan Turgeon, takes a historical look at constitutional decision making to explain how we have arrived at a point where the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can grant itself the authority to centrally plan the U.S economy via the power to regulate carbon dioxide (C[O.sub.2]). This action...