Yes, the Earth heated up at certain times during history naturally (for example when tectonic plates shifted and caused the release of methane gas) but that doesn’t mean I can flood your house and say it’s ok, rain is natural.
Chosen Answer:
I have my personal theory. And although right-wingers might doubt it, I have deep right-libertarian sympathies, and I hate the government.
That said, they have to deny it, because at this point, there is no way that popular sentiment or the market mechanism can resolve these impending ecological disasters. There isn’t time to free the market and hope that the market mechanism will reflect the populace’s underlying environmental concerns, and so our only hope is that we can twist the arm of the government to use the power of the state to implement drastic environmental protections.
Compare it to the CFC ban. There’s no way that was going to be resolved through non-governmental means in time to stop the depletion of the ozone. But if the right admits that, they are admitting that the current market mechanism is not a free market, and that state intervention might actually be effective at something. They cannot abide this, so they’d rather deny that there’s a man-made global climate change problem.
I don’t know why the right-libertarians deny this (in fact, some don’t – there are right-wing green libertarians out there), but they shouldn’t find it terribly damaging to their position. Most of the reason that we have so much carbon-emitting dirty energy is because of state subsidies and protections to the coal and oil industries which are distorting these markets. It is the state-corporate power nexus that is responsible for the pollution that is creating global warming, and in a free state, there’s no reason that communities couldn’t band together to sue polluters for shoving their negative externalities onto communities that don’t want them. What prevents things like this now? State-enforced limited liability and the refusal of the government to call certain kinds (and amounts) of pollution a crime.
by: Pull My Finger
on: 2nd June 13