Motus Mentis

An item in today’s Washington Post informs us that our only hope to avoid total annihilation is to reduce our carbon emissions to zero. Now.

The article begins:

The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades.

Their findings, published in separate journals over the past few weeks, suggest that both industrialized and developing nations must wean themselves off fossil fuels by as early as mid-century in order to prevent warming that could change precipitation patterns and dry up sources of water worldwide.

Using advanced computer models to factor in deep-sea warming and other aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon dioxide (CO2), the scientists, from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message: The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further.

Well, some party-poopers might say that we ought, perhaps, to consider the downside of bringing the global economy to a complete standstill. The article does acknowledge that there could be a little push-back:

For now, at least, a goal of zero emissions appears well beyond the reach of politicians here and abroad.

Yes, just slightly out of reach, and for good reason, too. In the current climate, if you will, of hysteria surrounding this issue, we have heard very little discussion of what balance ought to be struck between the undesirable climatic effects of human activity — and indeed, there is actually some serious dissent about both how much warming is in store, as well as the degree to which humans are responsible — and the severity of the political and economic measures that will need to be imposed to ameliorate them. Assuming that human activity is indeed the cause of recent warming (and I’m not saying it isn’t, though I do note that Mars has warmed lately also), we’ll feel awfully silly if we manage to cool the planet only by crippling the global economy so badly that we can’t even afford to buy ourselves sweaters.

I also think that this sort of worldwide crisis is catnip for the sort of people who yearn for collective planning, grand social-engineering schemes, and who go all misty at the thought of bringing capitalism to heel. Dennis Mangan made these points in a recent post in which he quoted Czech president Vaclav Klaus, who spent much of his life in a statist Utopia, as saying that “the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now is ambitious environmentalism, not communism.” Dennis also quoted blogger James D. Miller, who wrote:

Socialists used to oppose capitalism in the name of the workers, so they were embarrassed when most workers decided they liked capitalism. Having learned from their mistake socialists now oppose capitalism in the name of Mother Earth and are highly confident that Mother Earth will never speak out against them.

Mind you, I hate warm weather — and I am not denying that we need to get our house in order, stop mining our sustainable resources, and generally make the transition from an adolescent species living in an infinite world to a mature one that takes proper care of its only home. But it’s just in my nature to get uncomfortable around brand-new religions, regardless of whether they focus on the impending destruction of the entire planet, or just the junior senator from Illinois.