Al Gore As Churchill?
Jon Henke over at QandO (one of my favorite blogs) has a post up comparing recent Nobel Prize-recipient Al Gore to…Winston Churchill.
The Right likes to cast its leaders in the role of Churchill in 1938 – a visionary, warning the world of a gathering threat on the horizon. The US invaded Iraq because of an uncertain risk that we thought it important to guard against, spending thousands of US lives, tens/hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and around a trillion dollars so far.
Well, climate change – to some extent or another – is a far more certain threat to the world than was Iraq, and Gore is genuinely playing the role of Churchill to warn the public of the risk. In that sense, he seems like a very good choice [for the Nobel Prize].
I couldn’t disagree more, for several reasons.
First, I don’t think global warming has been proven to be anywhere near the threat Hitler/fascism was, or even the threat Iraq was under Saddam. For one thing, we don’t even really know if global warming is anthropogenic in nature (that is, caused by humans) or if it simply the result of natural cooling/warming trends that have been taking place on this planet for eons before mankind came along. Why are we trying to stop something we can’t even prove we caused? What’s more, the “threat” Gore is talking about is the globe warming a degree or so a year (or something like that). So what? Does a degree difference in change really pose that much of a threat? And if it does, when will this threat arrive? In the next century? The next millennium?
If you ask me, Gore’s global warming movement has less to do with Churchill’s warnings about fascism and more to do with the Millerite movement of the mid-19th century. Multiple predictions of armageddon and all.
Second, how in the world can anyone who claims to be a proponent of limited government support a carbon tax? We don’t even know if human carbon emission is causing global warming (or contributing to it in any meaningful way) or even if global warming is the apocalyptic event Gore and his disciples make it out to be, so how can we justify such a tax? Also, since when did people believing in limited government start thinking that the tax code should be used for social engineering? The tax code exists to raise necessary amounts of revenue for the government in a transparent way. It doesn’t exist to manipulate the behavior of citizens in the way politicians want. Now I’m fine with going to a consumption-based tax system (see: The Fair Tax), but going to a tax on the use of a particular fuel doesn’t strike me as very “free market.”
