Dear Cato: Climate Action Delayed Is Climate Action Denied

It might be easy to imagine that the folks at the Cato Institute aren’t as bad as some other “think tanks” that work at the denial of the science that reveals and explains the phenomenon of global warming. After all, right up front, on their web page on global warming, they clearly say, “Global warming is indeed real, and human activity has been a contributor since 1975.”

OK, before we go any further, the part about 1975 is a little weird. Does the Cato Institute demarcate the start of our warming of the globe to when “Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting” hit the airwaves? Or do they want to pin it on the start of Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign? The Cato Institute has never liked Jimmy Carter.  Just to be clear, we’ve been warming the world since we started burning fossil fuels, more like 1750 instead of 1975. But I’m not going to ding them for being off by about 225 years.

            The rest of the sentence is something that seems incredibly reasonable coming from a “think tank” that was started in part by Charles Koch and whose purpose is to support oil industries and an economy based on the extraction and use of fossil fuels. They acknowledge that global warming is real and we’re part of the problem. Wow! How reasonable. These folks sound like they’ve done their homework and are willing to follow through and do their part to reduce carbon emissions.

            That’s the way it seems until you read the rest of what Cato has to say:

But global warming is also a very complicated and difficult issue that can provoke very unwise policy in response to political pressure. Although there are many different legislative proposals for substantial reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, there is no operational or tested suite of technologies that can accomplish the goals of such legislation.

Fortunately, and contrary to much of the rhetoric surrounding climate change, there is ample time to develop such technologies, which will require substantial capital investment by individuals.

Where do I start with this? Global warming is “very complicated.” OK, I guess it is. What does that have to do with reducing carbon emissions? In some cases it might be complicated, and in others it might be quite simple. The other red flag here is the use of the word “provoke,” which can simply mean to stir to action, but also carries the connotation of inciting anger and rashness, and here in this case insinuates that climate policy may not be well thought out or poorly designed.

And while the phrase about “no operational or tested suite of technologies” that can accomplish the goals of climate change legislation has a germ of truth to it—we are, after all, on untested territory here with global warming. We have never tossed up tons and tons of carbon in the air and substantially warmed the entire earth—that does not mean that we should not work to remedy the tight spot that we’ve put ourselves in. I could cite a hundred examples of the past, from Columbus to Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon, to illustrate that although we sometimes find ourselves in uncharted territory, we can still be successful in our efforts.

And renewable energy, hybrid cars, and other technologies that are to help us reduce or mitigate climate change are only part of the solution. A lot of economists will tell you that the easiest way to bring about reductions in greenhouse gas emissions is a carbon tax. A carbon tax can be simple, designed to be fair to the poor and lower classes, and be quite effective in making all of our carbon footprints smaller and smaller.

As the Cato Institute wraps things up, they swerve into outright falsehood when they say that there is plenty of time to develop the technologies to stave off global warming. This is risible. We have pushed the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere up to 400 ppm, the planet is sufficiently warmed, and we are seeing some of the consequences of the forcing caused by all this new carbon dioxide in the air. Glaciers melt, the oceans rise, and our weather patterns are changing.

The Cato Institute tries to come off as being responsible and reasonable, acknowledging our contributions to climate change. But they are as bad as any of the organizations or industry hired guns who deny the link between our carbon emissions and a warmer world. They remind me of the “responsible voices” who claimed that they themselves were not racists yet were quick to caution Martin Luther King that he was asking for too much too quickly.

In his Letter From a Birmingham Jail, King clarified what was at the core of this delaying tactic. In the letter he wrote, “For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’”

And so it is with Cato. Their “ample time” is the same as the racist “Wait.” Saying that we should take our time to work on climate change means that they don’t ever want to work on climate change. Their “ample time” rings in the ears of Alaskan natives loosing their towns and homes; it rings in the ears of Filipinos whose homes and villages were ravaged by Haiyan; it rings in the ears of all of us whose food, water, and safety is jeopardized by global warming with piercing familiarity.