Motivating the bill is our dependence on fossil fuels. When burned, coal, oil, and natural gas release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. More carbon dioxide means rising temperatures and rising temperatures means more floods, more droughts, and more heatwaves. The end result? A frightening spike in mental illness, food insecurity, and armed conflict.
The president understandably wants none of it. Nor do any other world leaders weary about losing their green mojo. British now-caretaker PM Boris Johnson labelled a recent climate change briefing his, “road to Damascus” and vowed action. French President Emmanuel Macron echoed similar sentiments promising “structural decisions” to address rising temperatures. And never to be outdone is Justin Trudeau. Canada’s commander-in-chief (and seemingly self-professed eco warrior) has pledged aggressive government action to meet Canada’s 2030 climate goal.
Free marketeers are predictably miffed. “American ingenuity and innovation will help us lead the globe in solving (climate) problems,” one prominent U.S. politician recently opined. The federal government can—and should—we are told, “nurture this development without economically damaging regulation.” Not so, say progressives. After decades of inaction from the free market, strong and forceful intervention—courtesy of the state—is needed.While climate change is often blamed on fossil fuels, the real problem is unfettered, unadulterated consumption. Take the United States. Americans constitute five percent of the world population but consume 16 percent of the world’s energy. All told, the world’s last remaining superpower burns through nearly 20 million barrels of oil per day. That’s nearly double the consumption rate seen in the 1960s when climate science was less certain. And since the 1960s, per capita use of electricity across America has more than tripled.
Europeans admittedly fare better. Across the old world, six percent of the world’s population uses some four percent of the world’s energy. But here too, per capita consumption rates are rising, and fast. Not to be outdone of course, is Canada, the only country in the Group of Seven that saw harmful emissions rise between 2015 and 2019. Trudeau’s predecessor, Trudeau likes to remind us, is to blame; not the millions of Canadians who—ever keen to best their southerly neighbors at something—have taken consumption to new heights.
Public sentiment is clear: rising temperatures are worrisome. Yet the public seems unwilling to sacrifice in ways that that address it. We say we love Mother Earth. But we love multi-car garages more. Over the past few decades, climate scientists (and science) have delivered one clear, unequivocal message. Burning fossil fuels is bad. The public response? To burn even more fossil fuels. Take gas-powered autos. Despite dire climate warnings, ownership of these vehicles is up, miles travelled in these vehicles, and public excitement for doing more of the same is up. In fact, until the war in the Ukraine, the only thing that has stayed consistently down are gas prices. So much for nourishing Mother Earth.
Green gizmos—a predictable panacea for politicians—offer little relief. The likes of Biden, Macron, and Trudeau may have invested political capital in wind, solar, and everything in between. But the payoff is—in many instances—unclear at best. It’s just as well. Electric cars for example can—contrary to public discourse - do more harm than good. In fact, studies show that that under some conditions, climate minded voters are better off driving gas guzzlers than switching to ‘EVs.’ These findings may seem counterintuitive. But intuition isn’t always right. And where climate change is concerned, intuition has previously been proven dead wrong.
Government policies are admittedly crucial to tackling climate change. But so is public action. Worrying about rising temperatures is one thing: acknowledging the public’s contribution to the problem, another. Moving forward, we need a concerted national effort by Americans to reduce how much we consume. To buy less, drive less, and waste less. Anything short of that is not the way.
Ashley Nunes is a research fellow at Harvard Law School.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
