My kind of Just-in-case!

Whether global warming comes or not, it is certain that nature itself will sooner or later produce major changes in the climate. To deal with those changes and virtually all other changes arising from whatever cause, man absolutely requires individual freedom, science, and technology. In a word, he requires the industrial civilization constituted by capitalism.

The Toxicity of Environmentalism is truly an inspiring piece of writing. The above statement says it all, and serves as a useful reply to the Leftist-greenie "we should abandon the modern society for the sake of possible human-induced global warming" with a more appealing way of thinking, namely:

Just in case global warming (or cooling, or whatever) is on the way, we should endorse free markets, liberty and economic growth, because rich people can better adjust to changes in the state of nature.

So, for the case of argument, we assume that drastic changes in the climate are around the corner (be it natural or not), and realize that the best way to tackle those changes is to become wealthier and healthier and better prepared for whatever is at hand!

Just in case what?

Now that science, reason and logic has left the climate change debate, one thing stands behind: The Just In Case (JIC) argument. Its core and soul is that mankind must cut his use of carbon based fuel drastically down. If that isn't done, men will "tip the ice" of drastic human-induced climate change that will lead to famine, droughts, floods, freezing, drying, rising ocean levels, more hurricanes and what else there is that is bad and can be blamed on mankind.

This is just about the only "climate science" left in the debate. The numbers show nothing of interest: A slow and steady increase in temperature, measured in points of degrees for each decade. A swinging number of hurricanes, falling nicely into a pattern of at least 50 years of varying hurricane-frequency. Ever-shifting ice on the poles, where ice is somewhere on the run and somewhere gaining ground. Shifting solar spot activity, often matching a change in temperature but sometimes not. The examples are endless and conclude nothing, which would in any case not make any difference, because hundreds of millions of people rising out of poverty is far more important than hundreds of millions being kept there, and rich people can adapt to anything much more easily than poor people.

So we have the JIC-argument standing alone behind as a useful tool to influence the way people think about the climate and its ever-changing nature. The JIC-argument is the core feature of the recent Oscar-winning propaganda-film, "An Inconvenient Truth", and of the famous report sponsored by the climate-alarmist Tony Blair's government, "The Stern Report" (as it is known as). Thousands of reports and pamphlets are published to promote the JIC scenario, and more or less have one thing in common: The message that men must cut down on carbon based fuel consumption, or else!

Of course there are ways to do that, and the fact of the matter is that for the last decades, energy consumption of any kind has been on the run because of better technology and alternative sources of cheaper energy (nuclear, hydro power and so on). This trend will continue on the free market because fuel is expensive, and less use of it is cheaper than more! But this is neatly ignored, because action is needed "now" according to the JIC-alarmists, not in 10 years or 20 years.

So how to tackle this debate? An analogy comes to mind. How was the nature of Communism exposed to the public? Communists could for some years claim that communism is some kind of science - that Karl Marx and his followers had somehow managed to create a system of thought that was consistent with reality and could be implemented in a human society. This myth was exposed, but it took time and energy. Decades went between the earliest predictions of the Soviet collapse (such as these), until the collapse finally took place. By then, everyone knew what communism really stood for. Will it take decades to expose the JIC-alarmists, and will we have suffered greatly in material well-being and standards of living by then, while hundreds of millions of people still live in desperate poverty?

I truly hope that now when the science is out of the debate, and alone stands the weak argument of JIC, we will slowly but surely be able to stall all expansion of State-control and green taxing as much as possible, and hope that the coming of the next Ice Age will cool the global warming debate down (as it happens, the alarmists shift between the coming of the next global warming and global cooling period, thereby resetting the debate every 20 years or so). Is it enough to stall the statism of green State-expansion? Perhaps not. But for now, it seems to be the most practical thing to do in terms of effort and results.

Just in case?

A forgotten truth: "Real scientists understand uncertainty. Real science deals with uncertainty through relentless, skeptical inquiry. Real science resolves arguments not with consensus, but with data." (#)

This simple truth is forgotten today. Today we are either yes-sayers og no-sayers when it comes to many complicated, uncertain, evolving science, most notable the science of climate change (be it natural or man-induced, short-term or long-term).

Anti-state, pro-market and the world will make sense!

Being an anti-state, pro-market believer is a beautiful thing indeed. I'm not a "believer" in the sense that I accept religious sense philosophy - I didn't just read a book by some clever man who wrote a whole lot of "I think the State should.." or "I feel we should do this and that..", but a believer in the sense that I accept the existence of logic and reason (man), and hence the preachings of men like Ludwing von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Walter Block and the like. In other words: The message of the Mises Institute and the likes (for most part).

What is the anti-state, pro-market attitude? It is a one of reason and logic, that of acknowledging the self-ownership of individuals and hence their private property rigths, automatically meaning the denial of "public" ownership over individuals and their property.

How does this attitude simplify the world? First of all, it divides men into two types: Anti-state (anarcho-capitalist libertarians) and Statists (pro-State libertarians, anti-State socialists, and everything in between). A great majority of people fill the second group, and they waste their time discussing the pros and cons of different State-actions (wars, welfare-subsidies, taxation and so on). The exception is perhaps the anarchist Socialist, who does not approve of the State-apparatus, but denies human logic and reason. All others are stuck in a huge confusion of self-contradicting endless discussions about the acceptable role of the State.

What Statists fail to see that if a State is created, and it is allowed to perform actions while banning others from the same actions (taxation, monopoly of law-enforcement and dispute-solving), they have given up their self-ownership and private property rights. If you accept "some" loss of self-ownership, you have created a monster that will, if it can, swallow up the rest of it. Constraints are made on the State in most places (constitutions being the most popular one), but even though you chain down the dragon, the risk always exists that it will find the key to the lock or break free from it, and eventually fly over your village and burn it down.

Anti-state, pro-market attitude is a beautiful thing. Of course it creates a lot of irritation in a world of Statists, but contradictions and confusion is eliminated.

Do two individuals gain or loose rights by forming or living under the rule of a State?

I bumped into an interesting article the other day, on an Icelandic website called Vefritid.is (the humble name "The Web-magazine" in loose translation). The article is called "The rights of individuals and libertarianism" and discusses a seemingly obscure book-review by Thomas Nagel, who seems to be a philosopher who sometimes dips into the political debate. The book under review is the famous but fuzzy "Anarchy, State and Utopia" by Robert Nozick.

According to the Icelandic article, Nagel's critic on Nozick attacks Nozick's claim that individuals have rights and those rights cannot be violated. Nagel's stand (according to the article, I repeat) is the following: "The fact that the rights of governments (!) are derived from the rights of individuals does not imply that we can find out about the rights of individuals without considering the State; this can be seen by the fact that since the properties of molecules rest on the properties of atoms does not mean that we can find out about the properties of atoms without studying molecules."

Amazing statement, but the argument doesn't end here. It goes into a Rawlsian mode where individuals don't have rights of their own, but rights derived from the kind of society we would "like" it to look like. In other words, rights of individuals derive from the rights of groups of individuals who in one way or another live under the rule of the State.

Of course it is always tempting to imagine how society "should" look like, for example by writing a book about some non-existing think-tank of human ghosts who own nothing (not even a body of their own) but have some kind of knowledge in economics and other science. But how does this shake the libertarian theory? It doesn't. It might make a dent in Robert Nozick's complicated, self-contradicting fuzzy-logic about the minimal state, but casts no shadow on a more robust and radical libertarian theory.

You are an individual who chose to read these few words without asking permission. You thereby took charge over your own body, and by doing so, and not physically subjecting other individuals to the same task, admitted your self-ownership of it. No smart philosopher can write you out of that stone-cold fact.

Doomsday, again?

Yesterday, the IPCC released its "[s]ummary for Policymakers of the first volume of “Climate Change 2007”, also known as the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)". Once again, doomsday is at hand, and once again, its because of actions of man.

The media will cover this well. Already, as a response to the (politically polluted) summary of the IPCC-report, big headlines in many newspapers have stated that man is destroying the climate of Earth with his fossil-burning activities. People get scared, understandably, and demand action from politicians. Politicians respond with increased State-control, more regulations and higher taxes. They grasp every opportunity they get to do that, and having the public on-board is certainly not making it harder.

Thankfully, there is a weak sound of logic and reason in the debate, although not as readily heard as the doomsday-stories. In that respect I must give a great applause for the work of the Cato institute. Two articles have already appeared on its website, New Climate for Global Energy Policy, and Live with Climate Change. They are a must read for the calm-headed, and I will do my best to spread them to those I think still have the ability to think sceptically about the coming of Doomsday.

Not to say that I am fully convinced that forecasting the weather for the next 100 years is anywhere near of being called a robust science, personally leaning towards attitudes like these, but any protest against the political correctness of the public climate change debate is better than none.