A Brief Conversation With Fox News' John Stossel About Climate Change

As mental nourishment for the alumni who gather each spring on the beautiful Princeton University campus for the annual reunion, morning panels are offered on topics of the time. Non-alumni, if not clearly welcomed, are not unwelcome, so I took the opportunity to attend a panel discussion entitled "Perspectives on Modern Conservatism and Libertarianism", moderated by Robert George.

Of the two libertarians on the panel, the first to speak was someone named John Stossel, currently with Fox News, and surely one of the most youthful looking members of the class of '69. He said he graduated from Princeton with a liberal perspective like most others, but that he began to see flaws in liberalism and gravitated towards a libertarian perspective. He is, by his own account, "a lousy conservative", because he was against the Iraq War, believes in the right to die, drug legalization, even prostitution--anything that's peaceful and doesn't harm others. He said the welfare state has obviously failed, and though he doesn't think that Walter Cronkite really was telling us "the way it is", he believes that liberals, conservatives and moderates are now much too isolated and should be talking to each other more.

What followed from other panelists were recurrent themes associated with modern conservatism: government regulation and debt are bad, privatization and charter schools good. Liberals were presented as wanting to impose a culture of dependency, in which government takes care of you from cradle to grave. This characterization sounded over the top. Panelist Bob Ehrlich, former governor of Maryland, found particular catharsis in turning liberals into straw men who could easily be knocked over. If I give my daughter money to buy lunch at the mall, or help pay her college tuition, am I imposing a culture of dependency? Or is it only when government doles out money, usually to people who don't have prosperous parents, that dependency is cultivated?

Robert George, director of Princeton's James Madison center and a strong promoter of the conservative perspective on campus, made some interesting interjections. Conservatives, he said, view freedom as an absence of outside interference, while liberals view freedom as something given by government, through programs that help people live a good life. He also suggested that conservatives more closely reflect Hamiltonian liberalism than liberals do. By coincidence, I had just been thinking that liberals adhere more to the definition of conservative-the-adjective than the current sort of conservative who promotes destabilization by shutting down the government and denying climate change. 

If called on during Q and A, I would have asked what conservatives will say when they have to admit that climate change is real, largely human-caused, and that the failure to act in recent decades is risking massive damage to the planet and human economies. "Oops," perhaps, in the tradition of Texas governor Rick Perry?

Afterwards, noticing Mr. Stossel standing alone, I asked him. Yes, he acknowledged, "Oops" is a possibility. But he says there's too much doubt to act, and besides, action is unlikely to be successful. I responded that he was denying both the problem and the solution. He said that maybe it won't be so bad, and besides, there's always a chance that someone will come up with a way to fix the problem at the last moment. He said we will eventually run out of fossil fuels, at which point people will have to come up with some different source of energy. 

There were a number of things I pointed out to him, and another alumnus who joined our conversation. One was that we are collectively creating the problem, each one of us contributing, and it makes no sense to allow people to collectively create a problem while denying all possibility that we can work together to solve it. The idea that we have the freedom to consume all of this wonderful energy, then leave future generations to deal with the negative consequences, seems irresponsible and unfair. And how can a free market be free if it doesn't factor in the future cost of consuming a commodity like carbon-based fuels?

Now, Mr. Stossel may have thought he was being optimistic. After all, he thinks that climate change, if it's real, won't be so bad. And he holds out the possibility that someone will solve the problem at the last moment. But this is the optimism of a gambler, a form of wishful thinking. It's like a coach telling team America to wait until the game is all but lost, then throw a hail mary.

Mr. Stossel is in fact preaching a form of resolute pessimism, about America's capacity to identify hazards in its path, about America's capacity to take on a technological and leadership challenge and win, about the power of collective action, about the government's capacity to complement the private sector. 

I didn't say all of this at the time, but did point out the pessimism embedded in Mr. Stossel's denialism. He appeared less than pleased, drifted off into another conversation, and I continued talking to the other alum, who characterized Germans as having foolishly cluttered up their towns with unattractive solar panels and wind generators while turning their backs on nuclear energy. France, I noted, had invested heavily in nuclear. And at that point, when I didn't respond negatively to nuclear energy, we started to find some things in common. I would say the appearance of solar panels seems a small price to pay for clean energy, but we agreed that the government's ethanol requirement is a destructive boondoggle, harmful to the environment and, according to him, harmful even to car engines, and that the only reason ethanol production is subsidized is because the first presidential campaign primary is in Iowa. He gleefully said that fossil fuel had saved the whales, because the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania provided an alternative to whale oil. Interesting, though the next question is who will save us from the consequences of fossil fuels? And the whales could easily be hunted to extinction now, by deadly fishing fleets made possible by fossil fuels. Only regulations and international law stand in the way.

I suggested that the conservative panelists were exaggerating the intensity of government intrusion, that the back and forth about government and markets sounds like past debates on nature vs. nurture. Both play a role and have their place. Too little regulation is as harmful as too much.

Afterwards, I had to agree with Mr. Stossel on one thing, that liberals, conservatives and moderates are too isolated and should be talking to each other more. One example of this is when Stossel had NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt on his program. Schmidt's performance is a tour de force of optimistic realism. Stossel suggests we can't know how much climate is changing or what's causing it. Gavin details how it's changing and how various natural factors that have caused climate to change in the past have been considered and ruled out, leaving human influence as the primary cause. Stossel then goes through a rapid sequence of one pessimistic view after another: We can't do anything about it, and if we can it won't do any good anyway, and if action would do some good, then poor people will suffer. To each of these negative propositions, Gavin offers a positive solution. After Gavin left the stage, the rest of Stossel's program on climate change was a celebration of the good that fossil fuels and carbon dioxide have done. Burning fossil fuels means fewer trees being cut down for wood. Machines have taken the place of slaves. Carbon dioxide helps plants grow. All of this is true, but just because a substance is beneficial in one way does not mean it isn't harmful in another. Though water is essential to my life, that doesn't mean I want it flooding my basement. Nor does our need for warmth make an argument for parking our cars in the summer sun with the windows rolled up. Whether something is good or bad depends on how much and where.

At some point, John Stossel will have no alternative but to say "oops". When he does, he'll gain in optimism and realism what he loses in identity, ideological certainty, and wishful thinking. Meanwhile, precious time is being lost.


Details of the event:
http://alumni.princeton.edu/goinback/reunions/2014/events/SOE_2014.pdf
Alumni-Faculty Forum: Views of Modern Conservatism
and Libertarianism
Moderator: Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of
Jurisprudence, Professor of Politics, and Director, James
Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.
Panelists: John F. Stossel ’69, Host of Stossel; Robert L.
Ehrlich, Jr. ’79, Senior Counsel, King & Spalding LLP;
Henry E. Payne, IV ’84, Columnist, The Detroit News;
Andrew L. Malcolm ’09, Communications Director, Office
of Representative Greg Walden. To 10:00 AM. Sponsored
by the Alumni Association of Princeton University. Frist
Campus Center, Room 302.

Being Part of Something Larger Than Ourselves

(originally published in Princeton's Town Topics newspaper, after Memorial Day, 2014)

Every time Memorial Day comes around (or July 4th or Veterans' Day, for that matter) it feels more disconnected from reality. Yes, it's important to acknowledge those who died for our country. Parades are a spirited celebration of community. But are we fighting to protect the legacy of that past sacrifice? What I see is people going about business as usual, while the warnings grow that we are headed in a very dangerous direction.

This year, I went searching for meaning in Memorial weekend's speeches and sermons. A common theme was that soldiers face a difficult and sometimes perilous transition back to civilian life.

Whether it was Iraq War veteran Elana Duffy, speaking at the ceremony in front of Monument Hall, or the Reverend Bill Neely eloquently recounting the ancient tragedy of Ajax the next day, the stories were of soldiers unable to adjust to a civilian world lacking in shared purpose or any outlet for a soldier's engrained readiness to do battle.

Sergeant First Class Duffy spoke of a persistent desire to be part of something larger than herself, and finally found an outlet in Team Rubicon, a group that joins veterans and first responders in helping victims of tornadoes, floods, and storms like Hurricane Sandy and Typhoon Haiyan. For others, with an average of 20 veterans committing suicide each day and thousands being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, civilian life still brings a sense of isolation and alienation.

Meanwhile, there are those of us who have never worn a uniform, yet were deeply influenced by the afterglow of World War II--a time when civilians sacrificed for the war effort, when everyone found a way to contribute to a unified and ultimately successful struggle against a global threat. Many of us also find the dissipated energy of civilian life--the apathy, denial, pessimism, and reflexive political polarization--to be alienating and incongruous in a time when humanity again faces a global threat, this time of its own making.

Though veterans like Sergeant Duffy are finding meaning in helping repair the damage made worse by a destabilized climate, we will not truly be on the offensive again until we go beyond fighting symptoms and take on the causes of radical climate change. Only then can the giant and perilous chasm between uniformed and civilian outlooks be bridged, and a deeper healing of spirit, nation, and planet begin.

Car Bombs, Carbon, and the Hijacking of America

Even if we were able to end all acts of terror, we’d still have the mimics of terrorism to contend with. As can be seen in ships lost at sea, or collapsing bridges and dance floors, inattention can mimic malicious intent, with even more destructive results. The collapse of a dance floor is a particularly good analogy for the ultimate imitator of terrorism, climate change. In both instances, each individual participant contributes inadvertently to a collective impact that the support system was not designed to bear.

Here are ten ways climate change is being allowed to imitate terrorism, as we downplay its importance and focus our attention elsewhere.

1. Disguise--Hijackers present themselves as ordinary passengers on an airplane. Car bombs arrive in unmarked vehicles. Climate change comes disguised within the variable nature of weather.
2. Unorthodox, improvised weapons--Whereas al Qaeda hijacked commercial airliners with full tanks of jet fuel, climate change hijacks the normally beneficial warming power of carbon dioxide and methane to melt ice caps and increase weather extremes. With 220 feet of sea level rise currently parked on Greenland and Antarctica, ice caps are a massive weapon to steadily unleash against coastal cities. The 40% increase in atmospheric carbon is also driving ocean acidification, a form of chemical warfare.
3. Indifference to life, including one’s own. Climate change trumps the suicide bomber’s inhumanity. What could be more indifferent to life than an elemental process that has no life to begin with?
4. Use the enemy’s infrastructure and technology against it. Al Qaeda used our flight schools to train its hijackers, then turned our airliners into missiles. Climate change uses our crowded highways as factories for the production of global warming molecules. It uses the energy needs of every building to do its work. The more we express our power through carbon-based fuels, the stronger and more destructive climate change becomes.
5. Maximum destruction with a minimal budget. Climate change doesn’t need a budget when our economy is doing all the work necessary, busily transferring carbon from underground fuel deposits up into the atmosphere. It was the ticket-buying passengers who unwittingly paid the bill for al Qaeda’s 9/11 flights, and it’s all of us who are sponsoring climate change through utility bills and payments at the pump. Our good intentions are essentially being hijacked to achieve a completely unintended result.
6. Terrorists are not connected to any nation. Molecules in the atmosphere driving climate change are unconnected to anything other than the laws of physics.
7. Promote and exploit polarized political atmospheres. Though it should be seen as a common enemy for all people to rally against, climate change has been turned into a divisive issue. An actively cultivated resentment and distrust of the messengers has allowed climate change to gain critical time and momentum.
8. Maintain the element of surprise. The common and usually false refrain after disasters occur is that “nobody saw it coming.” Even though the mechanism of global warming has been known for a century, and the science is clear about the huge risk we’re taking, many still refuse to “see it coming.” 
9. An effective terrorist is patient and in it for the longterm. There is no more patient enemy than an elemental process. An overdose of carbon dioxide molecules lingers in the atmosphere for centuries.
10. Terrorists seek to destabilize the existing world order, to eventually impose a new one. Climate change over time will disrupt and destabilize not only civilization but most of the natural world as well. Time and inaction are on its side. The destabilizing effect of climate change--as the predicted food shortages and dislocations feed discontent and put governments under increasing stress--will do the terrorists’ work for them.

We are, then, confronted with an enemy that is invisible, uses our power and people against us, hides in the natural variability of weather, is endlessly patient, has penetrated into every recess of our lifestyles, and exploits our fractious politics to gain time. Even as movies continue to feed us evil in the form of charismatic, monstrous enemies to be vanquished at the last possible minute, climate change tightens its grip on our future by being boringly incremental, diffuse, and immune to last-minute reprieve. One of our greatest resources, our adaptability, we seem to be saving for adapting to a changed world, rather than adapting our lifestyles now to reduce how much the world changes. The demonization of collective action means we are left helpless to counter collectively created problems. Another resource, our optimism, fails those who are skeptical of our powers of invention and suspicious of working towards a shared goal. Plants, thrift, and proactive action--our greatest allies in the fight against too much carbon dioxide in the air--gain little respect.

The 21st century, then, is playing out like the long form of 2001, when increasingly urgent warnings of peril were given low priority, culminating in the tragedy of 9/11. The mimics of terrorism, like terrorists themselves, thrive when our attention is elsewhere.