This is the third in a series of answers to a common, popular defense of drastic measures to combat manmade global warming. For the first, click here, and for the second, click here.

The third and fourth points “Bob” made were these: “For most people, I think this would be a no-brainer issue if it weren’t politicized. But if the above two points are true, your political party affiliation doesn’t matter. Desiring to see the world less polluted is non-partisan. Practically, if there is ANY chance we are the cause of climate change, failing to act on that possibility is the same as sentencing yourself, your kids, and your grandkids to live in a world much less beautiful, vibrant, and verdant than the one we grew up with.”

As to the third point, since human beings are political animals (Aristotle’s definition), pretty much everything is politicized. The interesting questions aren’t whether but how and how much and to what ends?

The politics behind the formation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the IPCC and the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement are quite fascinating, and they reveal a huge incentive for developing countries to sign on in order to get wealth redistribution from developed countries—as well as a huge contribution from (mostly European) advocates of global governance to replace the sovereign nation-state. Such people recognize that since the alleged cause of anthropogenic global warming, namely, CO2 emitted when we use fossil fuels for energy, is global in use, and its emission can’t be held within national boundaries, regulating that is the best path to global governance. It’s a point that French President Jacques Chirac made when he called the Kyoto Treaty the “first step toward global governance.”

If you’re like most Americans, you think our local, state, and federal governments (with their elected and unelected members of their legislative, executive, and judicial branches) are difficult for citizens to control and hold accountable. And you’re right. Now just think how much more difficult it will be to maintain transparency and accountability as government becomes increasingly global and decreasingly local.

Our Founding Fathers understood human nature, particularly our sinful tendencies, when they wrote into our frame of government the requirement of checks and balances, and division of powers, and government by consent of the governed—all of which are increasingly difficult the farther removed the government is from the people. If you really want to get a grasp of the politics behind the UN FCCC and IPCC, you might read Donna Laframboise’s humorous but hard-hitting book The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Scientist. Just remember, the IPCC’s name is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It’s dominated by political appointees, who ensure that what goes into its periodic reports meets their governments’ requirements.

As to the fourth point, rhetorically, that it sounds good, but nobody lives that way. Wise decisions rest on wise risk/benefit analyses. Did you know that in America the risk of dying because you slip and fall in your bathtub is greater than the risk of a coal miner’s dying in a coal-mining accident? Yet I suspect you still take showers. That’s because you consider the chance of your dying that way far, far less than the chance that if you stay dirty all the time you’ll die because of disease related to lack of proper hygiene—or at least lose all your friends!

The question isn’t whether there’s ANY chance of X, but of the comparative risks and benefits of X and of the various possible responses to it.

Bob’s last point was, “On the other hand, if climate change isn’t our fault but we choose to act like it is, we still end up with a world less polluted and more enjoyable. And we will have done everything we can to protect the creation we have been made stewards of. I don’t see a downside.” For my response, click here.

Photo by Emma Hall on Unsplash.