Climate change may very well be the most complex socio-economic, political, scientific problem ever confronted by the inhabitants of the planet earth. But it will not be solved by hundreds or even thousands of teeny-boppers and college kids shouting pithy expressions like “350.org.” Nor is it any more likely to be solved by 178 heads of state meeting in Kyoto or by 193 meeting in Copenhagen as was recently the case.
The prevailing scientific theory explaining global warming is that climate change is caused by excessive carbon emissions produced by human sources such as automobiles, power plants, and manufacturing plants. To curb carbon emissions political activists like Middlebury College’s Bill McKibben consider one and only one option, namely, trying to persuade Congress to tighten carbon emission standards nationwide. His so-called 350.org campaign is aimed at convincing Congress to set carbon emission standards at levels well below 350 particles per million units of carbon dioxide, a level thought to be safe for human survival.
There is a problem with the McKibben paradigm. Politically speaking, it is unbelievably naïve. McKibben comes from the wing of the political left which truly believes that only the federal government can solve all of our problems all of the time. What he fails to grasp is that the federal government, particularly the Congress, is owned, operated, and controlled by Wall Street and Corporate America which would be quite content with no carbon emission standards whatsoever. They like things just the way they are. No matter how many 350.org rallies Mr. McKibben organizes, nothing is going to change. The U.S. government has lost its moral authority and is unfixable.
Not content with trying to influence Congress, McKibben vigorously promoted the recent international conference on climate change held in Copenhagen. It was as though he were betting that if the U.S. Congress could not solve the problem of climate change, then surely a global body of nearly two hundred heads of state could do so. That’s quite a heroic leap of faith!
On the final day of the 12-day conference an agreement was reached which was hailed by President Barack Obama as “a significant breakthrough.” What Obama, who McKibben refers to as “the most interesting politician of my lifetime,” called a breakthrough was a nonbinding agreement in which no one was committed to anything. The Copenhagen agreement was a complete sham. Nothing at all was accomplished.
But why did this come as a surprise to anyone? The track record of big international organizations such as the League of Nations or the United Nations is singularly unimpressive. How many wars has the U.N. prevented? Certainly none in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Palestine, or Africa. Indeed, assembling two hundred of the world’s leaders in one room would appear to be one of the least likely ways to solve any problem.
As economist Leopold Kohr said in his prescient book The Breakdown of Nations, “There seems only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness. Whenever something is wrong, something is too big.” Kyoto and Copenhagen were both too big to accomplish anything. So too are the United States, China, India, Russia, and Brazil. Not to mention the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.
If there is a path to the solution of the problem of global climate change, it is highly unlikely that it will be initiated by either China or the United States, the two largest producers of CO2 emissions. It will be initiated by a handful of smaller, more manageable countries building a coalition of like-minded nations, one country at a time. Only after the coalition has reached a size of, say, fifty or sixty countries, should negotiations begin with the United States and China. Such a process could take years – not twelve days. This is not kids’ stuff!
Both 350.org and the Copenhagen climate change conference were complete flops. McKibben and his friends should take a large dose of the elixir known as humility. Hard work should replace breast-beating and self-aggrandizement. We might all gain from the experience.
Rebél
Thomas H. Naylor
January 1, 2010
