When Environmental Politics Kill Environmentalism
December 2009
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In politics, however, there is an even higher form of flattery: having your opponent lie about your beliefs.
Candidates and political activists faced with an opponent whose position they find difficult to attack often resort to the tactic of simply lying about what their opponent believes. Such a tactic is an admission that in an honest debate they doubt they could win, thus conceding the strength of their opponent’s position.
It is an all-too-common tactic and one that climate alarmists are turning to with increasing frequency.
Take, for instance, New York Times columnist Thomas Freidman’s latest diatribe on climate policy. He pretends to speak for those who question the claims of impending climate Armageddon, saying, “But here is what they also surely believe, but are not saying…” He puts words in the mouths of his opponent, then valiantly rebuts them.
Of course, his characterizations are not only false but are, ironically, closer to what would happen if we followed his own ideas, rather than those of his opponents.
Those who disagree with him must believe, he claims, that “people in the developing world are very happy being poor.” This argument is so foolish that he almost immediately contradicts it, writing that in the future more people will “live like ‘Americans’ — with American-size homes, American-size cars, eating American-size Big Macs.” Ironically, he argues that this is a bad thing. So who really wants to keep the world poor, Mr. Friedman?
I should note that I don’t believe we should ignore the risks from climate change in the vain hope that it will all work out in the end. We should, however, address these risks honestly and with science rather than invective.
This is not simply a malady of newspaper columnists. The recent race for King County Executive featured a similar impulse. Attacking his opponent for praising our research, Dow Constantine called Washington Policy Center climate “deniers,” using an article in The Seattle Weekly newspaper to back up his assertion.
Constantine knew the claim was false, but he persisted in repeating it because an honest statement would not have been fruitful for him politically. Indeed, his spokesman Sandeep Kaushik, in defending the claim, comically told The Seattle Times, “We are being absolutely truthful.” Such Nixonian phrases, found frequently in politics, indicate that the speaker means the opposite of what he is actually saying.
How brazen was Constantine? When The Seattle Weekly retracted the article his campaign cited, Constantine continued to cite it.
Additionally, while the campaign attacked some of the positions in the WPC’s book Policy Guide for Washington State, they ignored one key recommendation – “adopt a revenue-neutral carbon tax to encourage reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.” Despite this clear statement of our position on how to deal with climate change, Constantine continued to claim the opposite.
Given a choice between lying about our position and addressing it directly, he decided that attacking a false position offered more opportunity for political success. Frankly, I think they are right to avoid a direct debate.
The political games played by Friedman and Constantine, flattering though they are to their opponents, are emblematic of a growing trend in environmental policy. Politicians judge policies not on environmental benefit, but on the political rewards such positions yield for them. From biofuels to cap-and-trade, politicians highlight proposals that would do little for the environment (or in the case of biofuels, are actually damaging it), but yield political dividends at election time. We see a rising emphasis on unscientific, but trendy, eco-fads.
As a result, environmental policy is more about politics than sustainability.
The losers are environmental policies that might work but aren’t as sexy politically. Years from now we will lament the lost opportunities to make a positive impact and the choice of fads over sound science.
That, however, is the state of environmental policy today, and Constantine and Friedman aren’t likely to be the last examples of public figures who take the disingenuous approach.
