With his post Global Warming Is Not a Threat But the Environmentalist Response to It Is, George Reisman comes to the rescue of the capitalist values that justify the actions of global corporations as they continue their irresponsible abuse of the planet.
Since I posted my own comentary about the IPCC report about a month ago, in the spirit of facing the critics I wanted to give some space to the arguments being used by Reisman to discredit this global initiative.
At the core of his argument, the main premise is that it would be more damaging to society to halt progress in the name of controlling the warming of the planet:
global warming should simply be accepted as a byproduct of economic progress and that life should go on as normal in the face of it.
Citing the fact that industrial civilization has enabled growth to the point where the average person has a better life today than the most wealthy a few generations ago, he cautions the stakes are high. To keep the industrial civilization running as we know it, we have no alternative but to continue the use of fossil fuels.
If we assume that everyone accepts global warming as a fair price to pay for our life styles, these are some of his arguments to feel good about it:
Central Canada and large portions of Siberia will become similar in climate to New England today. So too, perhaps, will portions of Greenland. The disappearance of Arctic ice in summer time, will shorten important shipping routes by thousands of miles. Growing seasons in the North Temperate Zone will be longer. Plant life in general will flourish because of the presence of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
I find it particularly ironic that someone who is defending the unrestricted advance of industrialization uses the fact that plants will flourish as a positive aspect to consider. But he continues to illustrate the simple way forward, even in the face of rising sea levels:
the portion of the world not threatened with rising sea levels would accept the people who are so threatened. In other words, instead of responding to global warming with government controls, in the form of limitations on the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, an alternative response would be devised that would be a solution in terms of greater freedom of migration.
From this point on, Reisman goes on an attack of the environmental movement (if you can call the IPCC a bunch of environmentalists). It tries to establish the premise that the only progress possible is the one based on the technologies we know today. But in doing so, he is talking more like a CFO worried about shareholders and board of directors, than an economist. With the right incentives applied to the right fields, innovation will surely blossom. Putting a cap on greenhouse gases may be just the right incentive for some enterpreneurs to take the risk and push forward that one idea that will turn our civilization to a more sustainable future. I’m sure that for every corporation currently doing business at the cost of the environment, there are 100 small businesses ready to overtake and do things right, shifting growth from bad business to good business.
Even if it means to take a couple of steps back in terms of our degree of civilization the right solution must be the one that can preserve life on the planet as we know it. Even without global warming, I believe there is a certain agreement that a few bad corporate citizens are playing dangerous games and it would be in our best interest to stop them now. This agreement is implicit in the definition of a new Global Culture. Call it a renewed global conscience or awareness.
I found this site while looking for another and yet I took the time to read it thoroughly.
The writer of this opinion piece falsely states what George Reisman core premise is, and then builds a false framed and illogical arugment againt what Reisman wrote in whole. The fact that this opinion piece writer has done that I find questionable and it has lead a lot of commenters to believe his fallacy.
The writers inexperience in business and being part of a free enterprise productive operation and what makes it tick and stay alive shows in spades with most of what he writes. Laking that experace then, one of the best things he could do to help save the plant is to read and understand exactly what George Reisman is talking about in his main premise.
Here is the main premise that was over looked which was linked to the article at “to make non-compliance with emissions caps an international crime”.
A Free-Market Response to Global Warming
Even if global warming is a fact, the free citizens of an industrial civilization will have no great difficulty in coping with it—that is, of course, if their ability to use energy and to produce is not crippled by the environmental movement and by government controls otherwise inspired. The seeming difficulties of coping with global warming, or any other large-scale change, arise only when the problem is viewed from the perspective of government central planners.
It would be too great a problem for government bureaucrats to handle (as is the production even of an adequate supply of wheat or nails, as the experience of the whole socialist world has so eloquently shown). But it would certainly not be too great a problem for tens and hundreds of millions of free, thinking individuals living under capitalism to solve. It would be solved by means of each individual being free to decide how best to cope with the particular aspects of global warming that affected him.
Individuals would decide, on the basis of profit-and loss calculations, what changes they needed to make in their businesses and in their personal lives, in order best to adjust to the situation. They would decide where it was now relatively more desirable to own land, locate farms and businesses, and live and work, and where it was relatively less desirable, and what new comparative advantages each location had for the production of which goods. Factories, stores, and houses all need replacement sooner or later. In the face of a change in the relative desirability of different locations, the pattern of replacement would be different. Perhaps some replacements would have to be made sooner than otherwise. To be sure, some land values would fall and others would rise. Whatever happened individuals would respond in a way that minimized their losses and maximized their possible gains. The essential thing they would require is the freedom to serve their self-interests by buying land and moving their businesses to the areas rendered relatively more attractive, and the freedom to seek employment and buy or rent housing in those areas.
Given this freedom, the totality of the problem would be overcome. This is because, under capitalism, the actions of the individuals, and the thinking and planning behind those actions, are coordinated and harmonized by the price system (as many former central planners of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have come to learn). As a result, the problem would be solved in exactly the same way that tens and hundreds of millions of free individuals have solved greater problems than global warming, such as redesigning the economic system to deal with the replacement of the horse by the automobile, the settlement of the American West, and the release of the far greater part of the labor of the economic system from agriculture to industry. (pp. 88-89)
[...] Globalized, capitalist society thrives on rampant consumerism. And it is this system that is helping to degrade the environment and contribute to global climate change. But you can take a jab at the consumerism machine by reducing your consumption. For example, you can do this by buying used clothing, joining a co-op, and participating in events like Buy Nothing Day. There are endless means by which you can learn to live more simply, and in turn, more lightly upon the earth. [...]
I found this blog to be very disturbing by the fact that global warming is a serious issue. We as human beings, have always avoided or “made light” of a problem that will definetely afffect us in the future. It’s sad to know that there are people who actually have the nerve to devalue our environment and the world we live in.
This Reisman chap needs to get back on his meds. (As does AdamP.)
The reason to care about the dear plants is that’s what you eat and that’s what makes your air. Plants do not simply flourish when it’s hotter. (Credential moment: I’m a biologist, 20 yrs teaching in universities, etc, etc, etc.) Fixation of carbon (AdamP: this is important because of the “what you eat” business above) increases with very small rises in temperature. After that it decreases because of the way that particular reaction works. Higher temperatures also mean plants lose more water. Most plants can only fix carbon while they are also transpiring water. Desert plants, for instance, have a very complex adaptation that allows them to gain sun energy during the day, but fix the carbon at night.
The plants in Canada do not have adaptations to heat. They will die off. They will not be replaced by a vibrant ecosystem capable of supporting humans and agriculture. They will be replaced by weeds, or “early successionals” as we biologists like to call them. Useful ecosystems only come much later in the succession.
Another example: higher temperatures mean insects get ahead of those birdies AdamP has no use for. Some of those insects carry diseases. Dengue, for instance, has recently appeared in the southern USA.
Moving right along, I’m sure that nations battling disease outbreaks and crop failures will be delighted to welcome environmental refugees from the global South. Or even from the US South, as time goes by. I mean, look how happy the US is right now to welcome Mexicans and other Latin Americans.
And as for costs, which I gather is Reisman’s whole shtick, let’s look at a recent example. Estimated cost of fixing New Orleans’ levees and dealing with the coastal erosion, pre-Katrina: 17 billion was the high estimate. Estimated cost of post-Katrina damages, which doesn’t begin to get it back to where it was: 200 billion and counting.
The corporate toadies keep trying to pretend it’s a choice between no cost and some cost. If they’re smart enough to be writing articles, they’re smart enough to know they’re lying, just so they can for now keep robbing our children blind.
The choice is between some cost now and staggering costs later. And the staggering costs won’t buy the good life. They may, *may*, enable a few to save scraps from the wreck.
Jorge: Indeed. The best tool we have is communication. Spread the word.
AdamP: you should care for the same reason Reisman does… because their flourishing as a result of higher concentrations of carbon dioxide will be a signal that we’ve crossed the point of no return.
Woah, boy!
Why, exactly, should I give a crap one way or the other about the birdies and the deer and the plants?
Thanks for the link –it’s a frightening read. Reisman’s spin of the environmentalist movement as one that “does not value human life” is particularly absurd.
That’s what we’re up against.