The Smart vs. the Stupid
The smart, in this case, is David Riggs, a Ph.D. in applied economics with whom I became friends when he worked at the Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota-based think tank on whose board of directors I served for some years, and of which Scott is currently a member. David's specialty is environmental economics, and, generally speaking, he advocates free enterprise solutions to environmental issues.
On its face, this is a sound perspective. Where have environmental catastrophes mostly occurred in the world? Where governments have been all-powerful--Eastern Europe under the Communists, for example. And where people are poor; as in much of sub-Saharan Africa. Where have societies best dealt with environmental issues? Unquestionably, where economies are prosperous--that is to say, free--and where government is limited. So one could say that being a free-market environmentalist is almost a redundancy.
That's not, of course, how Nick Coleman sees it. You probably haven't heard of Mr. Coleman; he is an obscure local columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. His father was a leading Democratic politician in the state, and he has carried water incessantly for the Democrats for as long as he has had a column in local newspapers. The only good thing to be said about Mr. Coleman is that hardly anyone reads him.
I would normally ignore a local nonentity like Coleman. But in his most recent column he attacks Riggs, an old friend, as well as the Center, of which I am fond. So please indulge me for a moment.
Coleman claims that the Center of the American Experiment is to blame for Hurricane Katrina. Really. Here is how Coleman expresses that paranoid fantasy:
Part of what drowned New Orleans is a political ideology determined to shrink government and ignore scientific evidence of global warming. Well, "stuff" flows downhill, and some of those tainted ideas came straight from Minnesota.Take a 1998 publication of the Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis that has pooh-poohed global warming and pushed for "limited government." ...
The results of such recent American Experiments are on view in New Orleans...
So David Riggs and the Center are to blame for Hurricane Katrina. How does Coleman support this astonishing charge? He doesn't, of course, but his "logic" proceeds as follows:
In "Global Warming: Divided Science and Unfounded Policy" (and many other papers) the center argued that even if global warming is real, the cost of fighting it is too high. Cutting back on emissions (by agreeing to the Kyoto Protocols), the report contended, would put a damper on the economic wealth that will save us from hurricanes that might take lots of lives in poorer countries but not here, by gum.Fatality lists might be "tragically long" in Bangladesh, Riggs wrote. But storm fatalities in the U.S. -- even with global warming -- would be "few" because "our economic well-being reduces our exposure to risk and facilitates recuperation when disaster strikes."
Quoting another author, Riggs explains: "The wealth of our society makes it possible for people to incur the expenses of relocation."
Oh, really? Tell that to the people who drowned in nursing homes while waiting for help from "emergency" agencies that moved like molasses in January. Tell it to all the babies who have lost their mothers. Tell it to all those who hungered and thirsted and prayed and begged for help.
The paper that David wrote, which forms the basis for Coleman's outrageous attack, can be accessed here. My request: please read David's article in its entirety before proceeding further. Consider whether Coleman's column consitutes a rational response to the argument that David made.
First of all, Coleman pretends that Riggs admitted that the global warming theory--that the earth is getting inexorably warmer because of human activity, especially the release of CO2 into the atmosphere--is correct. This is absurd. The bulk of David's article was devoted to pointing out how many flaws and uncertainties there are in that theory. As David noted, most scientists in the relevant disciplines reject it:
In a 1997 survey of U.S. state and regional climatologists, 58 percent disagreed with this statement: “The overwhelming balance of evidence and scientific opinion . . . is that global warming is for real [and] there is ample evidence that human activities are already disrupting the global climate.”
David went on to argue that, since it is extremely doubtful that reducing our carbon emissions would have any perceptible effect on the environment, whereas it is certain that signing on to the Kyoto treaty would severely impact the American economy, it would be foolish to do so. Impoverishing America would only impair our ability to respond not only to global warming, should it continue--the earth is constantly getting either warmer or cooler, due to varying energy output from the Sun--but to respond to many other threats as well:
One can reasonably hypothesize many plausible scenarios in which our society and future generations risk some type of devastation. Only two decades ago we were warned about the imminent danger of falling worldwide temperatures, and the risk of earthquakes, hurricanes, viruses—and even asteroids—is not negligible. Given all of the possible risks, how should our democratic society respond? A balanced approach to global warming seeks to improve society’s overall ability to prevent and respond to disaster. In the future, we are likely to face social, biological, geological, economic, and political risks—and quite possibly risks from potential climate change. Because we do not know which of these risks is likely to be dominant, we ought to improve our overall ability to adapt, survive, and recover from whatever surprises the future has to offer. This resiliency strategy is based on the empirically valid notion that a prosperous economy nurtures a healthy society.Only a prosperous economy has the resources to effectively protect against risks and undertake remedial activity. In a book titled The Costs of Kyoto, Fred Smith describes an appropriate analogy for the resiliency strategy:
When a hurricane occurs in Florida, people are alerted early and move out of the path of the storm. . . . The wealth of our society makes it possible for people to incur the expenses of temporary relocation, and it funds rapid clean-up, restoration, and recovery. The storms in Bangladesh are not dissimilar. Yet Bangladesh lacks the wealth, the communication technology infrastructure, and the mobility needed to respond to such risks.The consequences reflect differences in resiliency: there are few fatalities in the United States, while fatality lists are tragically long in Bangladesh. Our economic well-being reduces our exposure to risk and facilitates recuperation when disaster strikes. The energy restrictions of the Kyoto Protocol attempt to avoid one uncertain problem while potentially imposing substantial cost. This, in turn, diminishes our ability to adapt, survive, and recover from potential climate changes and a variety of other risks.
The contrast between David's rational, well-balanced approach on the one hand, and Coleman's hysterical, ignorant and politically-motivated screed on the other, could hardly be greater. Coleman evidently thinks that David is not only wrong, but that by writing his article he actually caused Hurricane Katrina! Or maybe it was David's fault that the local authorities barred the Red Cross from getting supplies to citizens stranded in New Orleans. Coleman writes so incoherently that it is hard to tell. But actually, Hurricane Katrina gives us a good opportunity to test this part of David's thesis. Which performs better in case of emergency, an economically free and therefore prosperous country like the United States, or less prosperous countries like, in David's example, Bangladesh?
Let's compare Hurricane Katrina to the tsunami that recently swept across the Indian Ocean and devastated Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. We now know that, due to our early warning system and to the infrastructure that, despite appalling errors by the New Orleans and Louisiana authorities, allowed the vast majority of citizens of the Gulf states to get out of the way of the hurricane, deaths will be--while tragic--relatively few. So far, the confirmed total is less than a thousand, although the final tally will presumably be a few thousand, distributed over four states. How does that compare to the effects of the 2004 tsunami? That natural disaster cost more than 200,000 lives, and the recovery will be prolonged and painful due to the relative poverty of the countries involved.
So David Riggs was right, and Nick Coleman was wrong. It isn't contemptible to be wrong, of course. But it is contemptible to smear an opponent, impugn his motives, and misrepresent his position--all while arguing from a posture of complete ignorance of the relevant scientific and economic facts, to serve a radical political agenda. Coleman's obscurity is well-deserved.
