What if they had chosen respect and freedom rather than statist coercion?

From The media got it all wrong on the new US climate report by Bjorn Lomborg, a rational and measured critic of the policies attached to the AGW hypothesis. His public position is that climate is changing and that some portion of that change is caused by CO2. However, he is also cautious about the reliability of existing climate model forecasts and very focused on the underestimation of costs and overestimation of benefits which plague most AGW related recommendations.

I am broadly in agreement with his argument in this opinion piece. As an aside, it is a paradox that this "Opinion Piece" has a far stronger foundation in science, logic and evidence than does most the "straight" reporting of the mainstream media. If measured by evidence, logic and science, his piece would be the straight reporting and most the alarmist pieces from the mainstream media would be categorized as opinion.

Activists tend to exaggerate the impacts of climate change while underestimating the costs of tackling it. The reception to the new US climate assessment was instructive. The report largely attempts to remain soberly scientific, and follows the even more careful global report by the United Nations’ climate-science panel, known as the IPCC.

Sadly, accurate science doesn’t make for good television; predicting the end of times does.

Among many others, widely quoted climate scientist Michael Mann talked up the report to NPR and CNN, saying its predictions are already borne out in today’s “unprecedented weather extremes.”

Actually, the assessment, and science, tell a different story. “Drought statistics over the entire contiguous US have declined,” the report finds, reminding us that “the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s remains the benchmark drought and extreme heat event.”

On flooding, the assessment accepts the IPCC’s finding, which “did not attribute changes in flooding to anthropogenic [human] influence nor report detectable changes in flooding magnitude, duration or frequency.”

Even more dramatic was CNN’s headline, screaming that “climate change will shrink [US] economy” by 10 percent, a figure also repeated on The New York Times front page.

Actually, the UN’s climate scenarios envision US GDP per capita will more than triple by the end of this century, so this 10 percent reduction would come from an economy 300 percent larger than it is today. A slightly smaller bonanza, in other words.

Later in the article, there is this line.

While activists overstate the costs of climate change, they suggest its reversal is simply a matter of political will.

Lomberg does not develop this observation but I think is the crux of the issue - the use of "political will".

We can all legitimately argue about the degree, or really, the nature, of climate change and even more so, what might be causing that climate change. For the record, I believe that climate, as a loosely coupled set of complex, dynamic, chaotic, systems is always evolving. I also believe that we are materially handicapped in assessing to what degree, where, and in what direction those changes are occurring based on the recency, incompleteness, and inconsistencies of our data records. I suspect that there are plenty of hard-to-measure corollary benefits to emissions reductions (all emissions, gas and other) which enhance the possible value proposition beyond the monomaniacal focus on CO2.

Regardless of how we resolve the description (what has happened?), the diagnosis (why did it happen?), and the forecast (what will happen?), the rub of the issue is in the prescription (what should we do?)

All the prescriptions are inherently statist - the state will resolve the description, diagnosis and forecast and based on that, the state will then settle on a prescription and use its monopoly of force to execute that prescription regardless of the impact on citizens. The State will behave as an unconstrained state and not as a republican democracy with all its checks and balances.

Avid AGW enthusiasts attempt to characterize any questions about description, diagnosis, and prescription as science-denying, blindly and incongruously objecting that free inquiry and skepticism are somehow injurious to rational decision-making.

The crux of the issue is that avid AGW enthusiasts have not made their case to the citizenry. They have presented it, but it has not been accepted. The Mandarin class has accepted the premises and argument of AGW-enthusiasts but then they would. Since the prescriptions are entirely beneficial to the Mandarin class, they get to posture virtue and enhance their power. AGW prescriptions are entirely beneficial to the Mandarin class.

But those who pay, in terms of higher taxes, lower life quality, less freedom, etc. have yet to be convinced that the possible dangers actually warrant the statist prescriptions. Here in America and across the OECD, and certainly in still developing countries, the citizenry do not view AGW as a pressing issue and are strongly averse to the prescriptions (handing money, freedom and control to the Mandarins) for addressing it.

Hence, I believe, the hysteria and misrepresentation of AGW science by the Mandarins, including the MSM. The citizenry are not buying what the Mandarins are selling and the Mandarins see no prescription other than coercion and force. Otherwise known as Political Will.

I think we are long past the point where AGW ideologues can regain trust and credibility in this argument. They have already shown their hand and it is the careless, crushing, coercive hand of the state.

But it is interesting to speculate - thirty years ago, as this all began, would we be in a different place if the AGW ideologues had been committed to respecting the intelligence and value of citizens and had focused on convincing rather than coercing? And if they had taken that approach, might we not be further along?

It is striking that the country most resistant to the centralized, coercive approach, the US, has also been the one which has achieved the greatest reduction in economic energy intensity, the greatest reduction in emissions, and at the same time, shown the strongest economic performance among OECD countries.

Perhaps there is a lesson in there. Don't rely on statist coercion, work within the system of checks and balances in order to obtain commitment and agreement from citizens. A pretty radical idea.