Assumptions of Political Theory in Climate Change

In conversation, yesterday morning, somebody asked me point blank whether I believe in climate change.  The only direct answer I can offer is that I believe that the climate changes, but that the incentives of the issue make it much less simple a question than whether one acknowledges a scientific consensus.  Consequently, the whole issue begins to give the impression of a scheme, as — like that old game Chutes and Ladders — all of the spaces between a scientific observation and specific government policies slide away.

Do I believe that the climate changes?  Do I believe that it is in a long-term warming trend?  Do I believe that it is mankind’s doing?  Do I believe that it’s possible even in the abstract for mankind to turn it in another direction now?  Do I believe that mankind actually has the social and civic structure to implement that change?  Do I believe that the costs of implementation are worth the benefit of the change?  Do I believe that human beings can resist the corruption that would be made possible by the massive amount of global control necessary to change the climate?

The problem in this debate is that the “alarmists” allow their “yes” to the first question to flow all the way through to the last in a wave, while the “deniers” feel the need to place their “no” to the last question as a dam somewhere among the first three.  (I’m speaking overly broadly, here, obviously.)

The related question that distracted me through most of yesterday afternoon was actually one of political theory: Is the top-down dictation of government necessary to identify, assess, and address an issue like climate change?  Or the inverse:  Is a bottom-up system of mutual interaction and individual incentives up to the challenge?

Obviously, people who benefit from a dominating government would give their “yes” to the first question, such that a belief that climate change is a real threat on such a scale implicitly means that humanity must risk the corruption of centralized, mammoth government.  I’m not so sure, though.

One need only look at the independent work of academics or (more intriguingly) of hobbyist bloggers to get a sense of how the “yes” could go to the second option.  This is idealized, but it’s an illustration:

  • A person takes an interest in a topic and secures the resources of time and money to investigate to a degree commensurate with his or her interest, often beginning as a hobby.
  • As the person finds and presents the information, he or she increases the likelihood that others will find it interesting, which, in turn, increases the resources that society allocates to it.
  • As the resources allocated to the topic increase, less innate interest is necessary in order to draw people to it, until there’s a veritable industry.
  • Within this industry, consensus grows, and people change their behavior accordingly, often enforced through social norms, rather than government mandates.

When the topic is as compelling as the end of the world as we know it, the potential market, so to speak, is potentially huge. The risk in this case is that the people can be whipped into an unjustified frenzy, or suppressed from achieving a justified frenzy, by powerful interests that benefit from a particular reaction.  But phrasing it that way, it’s clear that this problem also exists within the top-down government approach.

So, the single question, ultimately, is whether powerful self-interests will be better able to distort the debate using the mechanism of a centralized discussion among those who are able (somehow) to secure a limited number of high-profile platforms, ultimately claiming authority to force everybody else to go along, or whether the hand of the powerful is stronger when it comes to asserting their voices in a less organized, more haphazard and loose public social debate, which requires mutual consent and agreement for the implementation of changes.

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