Dem
47
GOP
53
It takes very little knowledge of the politics of climate change to know that the very best way to sell people on eco-friendly policies is not "save the spotted owl" or "the glaciers are melting," since the people who are alarmed by those things are already on board. No, the way to win over the skeptics is with an economic argument: Ultimately, fighting climate change will be cheaper than not fighting it. Much cheaper, in fact.
It would appear that the United Kingdom is about to provide the world with an object lesson in support of that point. That nation's independent Climate Change Committee has just released its seventh annual report assessing the U.K.'s efforts to reach NetZero (all carbon emissions are canceled out by sequestering and other maneuvers). And their number crunchers believe that these efforts will cost Britain about £4 billion per year, or about £100 billion between now and 2050. And the return on investment will be somewhere between £200 billion and £400 billion.
The primary determinant of which end of that scale will come to pass, and the reason we are running this item this week, is—you guessed it—instability in the Middle East. What that means is that in addition to the financial benefits of NetZero, supporters can also make an argument that getting away from oil will keep the U.K. economy from being held hostage by OPEC, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, etc.
We hope the day will soon come when an American president can sell the great majority of the American people on a climate-change-fighting agenda by saying: (1) the economic benefits are clear, (2) Britain has already proven that, and (3) wouldn't it be nice to be disentangled from the constant issues in the Middle East? Probably that president would have to be a Republican, and a Republican not very much like the ones that the party is favoring these days. That said, there are a few Republicans who try to be pretty MAGA-y on culture wars stuff, but who seem to be reasonably clear-eyed on science stuff. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) leaps to mind, and we would bet that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) also knows climate change is real. He certainly knows that the climate in Cancun in December is way better than the climate in Texas.
The other thing that will ideally help the U.S. pull its head out of the sand is this number: 90. That is the age of Charles Koch, the still-living half of the Kochtopus. The Kochs, who have significant petroleum interests, have been far away the most vocal and most effective anti-green-policy propagandists for at least 20 years, and probably more like 30 or 40. Once Chuck shuffles off this mortal coil, the anti-green forces will have lost their general.
Humans have done a heck of a lot of damage to the one and only planet available for our habitation, and have continued to do so after the flower children started to sound the alarm 60 years ago, and after Al Gore scared the hell out of at least half the country 25 years ago. Still, we try to run about one item every 6 weeks or so that suggests there's still hope.
Have a good weekend, all! And if your dentist says, "Don't worry, this won't hurt a bit," don't believe them. (Z)