George Rebane
[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 6 June 2018.]
Steven Hayward of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies has put down some observations about climate change (here) that summarize what millions around the world acknowledge daily – namely that “climate change is no longer a pre-eminent policy issue. All that remains is boilerplate rhetoric from the political class, frivolous nuisance lawsuits, and bureaucratic mandates on behalf of special-interest renewable-energy rent seekers.”
Now neither Dr Hayward nor, for that matter, these commentaries have been telling readers and listeners that climate change, formerly sold as global warming, is not happening. Of course it is, and humans are no doubt contributing to this change, but we have nowhere near the impact on climate that hysteria mongers in politics and special interests have been getting all purple-faced about over the last few decades. The supporting consensus or pseudo-science of climate change has failed to live up to the terrible predictions wrested from tortured data and dodgy computer models, neither of which can seem to get their stories straight.
Barraged by all the revelations of data doctoring and missed prognostications, the True Believers have tried all manner of approaches to convince the world’s nations to start economy-crippling decarbonization programs. On national levels there have been a flood of laws passed to lower carbon emissions in both consumption and energy production. But on the international level, since 1988 when the climate hysteria was launched with a series of highly publicized congressional hearings, the UN’s big global warming conferences have been an utter bust. Since then, nations have gathered several times to pay lip service to reducing carbon emissions. But after leaving the conferences and running the numbers on the impact of their promises, none of them have come close to living up to their carbon reduction commitments. And many have actually increased their CO2 outputs.
As Hayward points out, “A good indicator of why climate change as an issue is over can be found early in the text of the Paris Agreement. The “nonbinding” pact declares that climate action must include concern for “gender equality, empowerment of women, and intergenerational equity” as well as “the importance for some of the concept of ‘climate justice.’ ” Yes, you heard that right – the politically correct world is definitely pivoting away from the unconvincing consensus science about global warming to something more fuzzy and currently in vogue – social justice and identity politics issues of which there are an uncounted number just waiting to be raised into people’s consciousnesses. Hayward calls this “the last gasp of a cause that has lost its vitality.”
The downward descent of such politicized attempts at central control was explained years ago in 1972 by political scientist Anthony Downs as “a five-stage cycle through which political issues pass regularly.” The first cycle has experts and activists raising the alarm about a problem, which in then is picked up by the media as the next big story of “global peril and salvation”. This establishes the peril’s priesthood – for global warming it has been Al Gore and Jerry Brown. Third comes the sudden realization that fixing it is going to cost a lot of money, more than anyone had imagined. In the fourth cycle people have become accustomed to the volume of the hysteria, have become convinced that no one can fund the solution, and quietly enter the last cycle, shifting their interest to other more recent and immediate things, which then completes the sequence.
Today no one is really interested in actual global warming solutions as shown by the direction of climate-related philanthropy from the green-leaning foundations. These overwhelmingly fund only “mobilizing public opinion and opposing the fossil fuel industry.” Hayward concludes that “treating climate change as a planet-scale problem, that could be solved only by an international regulatory scheme, transformed the issue into a political creed for committed believers. Causes that live by politics, die by politics.”
My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively. However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
rebanesruminations.com 
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