Are global-warming activists--some of them, anyway--principally motivated by a desire for global income redistribution? Does climate-change theory simply give them an excuse to pursue a leftist economic agenda, under the rubric of a "crisis" that requires radical, save-the-planet solutions?

That is the conclusion of Ronald Bailey in the libertarian publication, Reason magazine. A few excerpts:

"Without going into the details, the Greenhouse Development Rights Framework (GDR) proposal foresees levying the equivalent of a climate 'consumption luxury tax' on every person who earns over a 'development threshold' of $9,000 per year. The idea is that rich people got rich in part by dumping carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuels into the atmosphere, leaving less space for poor people to dump their emissions. In one scenario, Americans would pay the equivalent of a $780 per person luxury tax annually, which amounts to sending $212 billion per year in climate reparations to poor countries to aid their development and help them adapt to climate change. In this scenario, the total climate reparations that the rich must transfer annually is over $600 billion. This contrasts with a new report commissioned by the U.N. Development Program that only demands $86 billion per year to avoid 'adaptation apartheid.'...

"It is not also clear whether the authors think that rich countries must cut their emissions by lowering their living standards, or by adopting not-yet-invented low-carbon energy technologies, or both. One person in the audience was overheard to ask why we don't just divide up all the wealth equally anyway? Of course, the entire 'climate crisis' could have been avoided if today's rich countries had eschewed the industrial revolution in the first place. In any case, while a $780 per person climate luxury tax would be painful, it would not bankrupt the U.S., even if bundles of dollar bills were shipped abroad and burned in bonfires. ...

"IEA analyst Laura Cozzi noted that the world currently emits 27 gigatons of CO2 to produce energy. In a business-as-usual scenario, in which energy demand increases by 50 percent by 2030, CO2 emissions are projected to rise to 42 gigatons. To achieve CO2 atmospheric stabilization at 450 parts per million by 2050, emissions would have to be cut by 19 gigatons to only 23 gigatons by 2030. Such cuts, according to Cozzi, would mean that every electric power plant built after 2012 would have to emit no CO2. That would require the development of a robust carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology to bury CO2 in the ground, building vastly more nuclear power plants, the invention of second-generation biofuels, and improvements in energy efficiency at twice the rate that we've seen in the past 25 years. ...

"Finally, I mentioned at the beginning that the mood of the climate activists here in Bali was triumphal. I suspect that's because many now really believe that an impending climate crisis will at last endow them with the power to completely remold the world's economy in a more egalitarian direction. And that's what they've always wanted, anyway."

And a link to the entire article: http://www.reason.com/news/show/123846.html

Any thoughts on this?

No, it's not, but he makes an interesting, long-winded appeal to motivations instead of the actual reason. He shouldn't psychoanalyze scientists. He's not good at it.

I beg to differ. The author makes some very sound points, in my opinion.

The point of this thread is not to determine either (a) if global warming is real; (b) if so, to what extent (if any) it is caused by human actions; or (c) what, if anything, should be done about it. Those are all very important issues; they are just not central to this point.

On this subject, I believe the syndicated political columnist, George Will, said it very well a couple of years ago:

"For some people, environmentalism is collectivism in drag. Such people use
environmental causes and rhetoric not to change the political climate for
the purpose of environmental improvement. Rather, for them, changing
society's politics is the end, and environmental policies are mere means to
that end.

"The unending argument in political philosophy concerns constantly adjusting
society's balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of
collectivism -- of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in
America -- is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals' lives.
This is done in the name of equality.

"People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constant
enlargement of its supervising power is necessary for the equitable or
efficient allocation of scarce resources.

"Therefore, one of the collectivists' tactics is to produce scarcities,
particularly of what makes modern society modern -- the energy requisite for
social dynamism and individual autonomy. Hence collectivists use
environmentalism to advance collectivizing energy policy. Focusing on one
energy source at a time, they stress the environmental hazards of finding,
developing, transporting, manufacturing or using oil, natural gas, coal or
nuclear power."

Frankly, it is hard for me to find a single clause within the above quote with which I would quibble.

In my opinion his points are only sound if you agree with a redistribution of wealth.

George Will's comments are on target-

I don't believe collectivism is the better path for us to take.

The author, Ronald Bailey, was endeavoring to make the point that global income redistribution is the iconic end to which many save-the-planet enthusiasts point; and that we ought to be very careful, indeed, about embracing such a philosophy of near-Marxism. I think that is a sound point.

I agree with you that collectivism is a very unwise choice for a socio-political philosophy--to phrase the point in a most understated way.

Collectivism to some extent, or communitarian concerns, are necessary for a healthy society. When people forget that others exist and there is a collective need and give the individual undue importance, influence (almost religious worship of the concept), problems ensue.

A society that places religious-like worship of individuality is not a good society.

It is true that rugged individualism, if taken to an extreme, can cause "problems [to] ensue"; but the collectivism envisioned by Marx and his disciples, and the Socialist Man that would bring it into being, is a nightmare to those of us who are philisophically devoted to the maximization of liberty and the minimization of the state.

Although I am not entirely comfortable with libertarian philosophy, I find that far less objectionable than anything that even remotely resembles socialism. Fortunately, however, one does not have to choose between just these two options.

Most likely it is. Any effort to help the poor or try to reverse the economic disparity in this country should not be construed as socialism or Marxism.

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"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."



~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This argument is the same thing people always trot out when they don't like what good science tells them--they accuse the scientists of having some sort of agenda, like we hide behind the scenes and decide to claim we've discovered something in order to achieve some ideological goal.

Scientists are not Communists (well, I'm sure some are, but the vast majority are not). When any reputable scientist (such as the 99% of climatologists who accept the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis) states a new discovery, finding, hypothesis, theory, or what have you, there is but one motive--to state fact. Science is all about objectivity.

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Please allow me to reiterate what I stated previously:

"The point of this thread is not to determine either (a) if global warming is real; (b) if so, to what extent (if any) it is caused by human actions; or (c) what, if anything, should be done about it."

That is still true.

If you wish to debate any of these issues, or the purity of most climatologists' and meteorologists' motives, that would make for a fair discussion--in a different thread. The point here is emphatically not about the motivation of those who are expert in some pertinent branch of science; but rather, the motives of those who wish to rush ahead, pall-mall, with plans that would require global income redistribution.