When I was a boy, presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was excoriated for saying “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.” Ah, simpler times. Now it seems that moderation in anything is the vice, even if you’re just talking about toy-inspired movies. (I haven’t seen it yet and wouldn’t comment anyway.)
Absolutism is a better description for politics these days, with many arguing that any compromise with ‘the other side’ is unacceptable if not traitorous. This is kind of like the Dilbert cartoon which explains that curse words’ effects have been so diluted that to have an impact you have to say something so horrible that a person’s head explodes. Problems have been replaced by crises, difficulties by catastrophes, challenges by existential threats.
But this approach to politics implies that somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of Americans are unAmerican and their candidates pose an existential threat to the country. This is nonsense given that nineteen presidents have been Republican and seventeen have been Democrats, and the nation has not only survived the horror of [read the party you dislike here] presidents, but thrived. Yes, we’ve had some terrible people in office (Andrew Johnson gets my vote as worst president), but none have destroyed the country or even attempted to.
This type of political extremism is unfortunately mirrored in policy extremism. Climate change policies are often absolutist, and primarily because those advocating them are ignorant, willfully or not. Since the 1990s, it has been widely noted that electric vehicles are not Zero Emission Vehicles but Remote Emission Vehicles and numerous analyses have explained that electric vehicles require a large amount of energy and greenhouse gas emissions to build and operate. Since so much of the vehicles’ content embodies components from China, with its heavy reliance on coal for power, that will continue to be the case for years and years to come.
The use of the term ‘clean environment’ is not only absolutist but nonsense and reminiscent of the 1970s fallacy that banning nuclear power would eliminate exposure to radiation. After years of public education, most people came to understand that the environment is full of (minor) radiation, mostly natural, and reducing human exposure to zero was literally impossible, especially given that humans are also radioactive.
But now, an absolutist approach to climate change is regularly found with regard to atmospheric and other pollution. For example, many opponents of fracking and pipelines argue that ‘no’ petroleum contamination is acceptable, not realizing that some is natural: about half of the oil in American waterways is estimated to come from natural seeps, for example, and much of the rest from automobiles, not tankers or oil wells. Organic farms are more at risk from oil pollution due to their use of diesel tractors, trucks, etc., than contamination from fracking or even just conventional drilling. Banning fracking might reduce pollution risks to a minor degree, but hardly eliminate it.
Proposals by numerous governments to ban internal combustion engine vehicle sales are just as misguided, as they imply that this would ‘end’ emissions. The reason for not saying the intent is to ‘reduce’ instead of ‘eliminate’ emissions apparently stems from an underlying desire to promote electric vehicles not reduce climate change, and to deceive the public while doing so. Policy makers should listen to “Who Killed the Electric Car?” where Allan Lloyd of the California Air Resources Board noted his job was to clean the air, not promote electric vehicles. There is a serious argument to be made for using hybrids or plug-in hybrids instead of pure battery electric vehicles, but this is overridden by the pretense that fossil fuel use must be eliminated not reduced, as if this would yield a ‘clean’ environment.
The latest demon du jour in the media is natural gas, as reports warn us that using natural gas indoors emits pollution (how much? How dangerous?) and fracking for natural gas is ‘linked’ to some health concerns. (How linked? Does correlation mean causality?)
This has led to what is becoming called a ‘war on gas stoves,’ as some cities ban new gas hookups and appliances. Except that relying on heat pumps and electric stoves still results in emissions: over half of American power production is from fossil fuels and even if solar and wind power continue increasing, they will need natural gas for backup—or energy-intensive, expensive batteries. Banning gas stoves now because electricity will be significantly cleaner (but not clean) decades in the future is an extremely cost-ineffective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Ultimately, recall the old saying, ‘the dose makes the poison.” As so many schoolchildren have pointed out, even life-giving materials like food and water can have deadly consequences, depending on the circumstances. No one suggests we ban food because of the choking hazard, or at least require that all food be pureed. Lakes and ponds are not drained to prevent drowning, even though nearly 4,000 deaths occur each year from fresh water drowning, coincidentally almost the same number who die from choking on food. The public is quite capable of making rational choices, even if every choice has negative consequences.
The absolutist approach to energy policy and climate change reflects primarily a reliance on cliches and superficial arguments rather than comprehensive cost-benefit analysis and coherent policymaking. And given that so many of the proposed solutions are very expensive, the social impact of promoting supposedly clean energy sources regardless of their cost on the pretense of eliminating rather than reducing emissions disguises this. As this becomes understood by the public, expect some serious political blowback against the more extreme energy transition policies.
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