Sorry it’s been so long since my last post. I’ve been traveling in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah. Most of my time was spent in National Parks — Glacier, Yellowstone, and the Grand Tetons (see above). — I do like open, undeveloped country.
I learned some things there that I will eventually work into my posts here. First, however, I’ve got something for you that came to mind as I was reading about the Republican debates and one of the issues with which the candidates were reportedly having trouble — global warming.
THE RIGHT WAY TO DEAL WITH
GLOBAL WARMING!
I have a hard time understanding why conservatives let liberals get off so easliy on the issue of global warming (or climate change or whatever they’re calling it these days.) After all, this issue plays so well to conservatism’s strengths that we should win every argument associated with it. In fact, if we conservatives use our heads on this issue I believe liberals would soon be too terrified to even bring it up.
The way to win this issue every time it’s brought up is simple. Don’t bother to argue whether the globe is warming or cooling or whatever, the data is too easy to cook. The same goes for how much of this alleged cooling or warming is due to human impact That data is too easy to cook, too, and it’s all speculation anyway.
The only aspect of this issue that matters is... if the globe is warming, or if it’s cooling, or if it is merely experiencing “climate change” (which the Earth has been doing every instant it has existed,) the free market is the only effective tool we have of dealing with it. In fact, it has been proved every time it has been tried that the free market is the most effective way to deal with any challenge, or crisis we face, whether that crisis has been caused by nature or by accident, or by us.
But, wait a minute, you might say, the free market and capitalism is what got us into this mess so how can we use it to get out of it? How can we solve this problem and problems like it in any way but to have the government intervene against the excesses of capitalism and place controls on the free market
I want to make it clear that I know humans cause problems, plenty of them. And I know that we cause some of those problems via our use of a free market economy. Anything that is free makes mistakes (so do economies that aren’t free).
But I also know that, when the marketplace is free to respond to a crisis, and the humans who operate within that marketplace are free to innovate and to apply their creativity, this most valuable tool ever created by humans is the most effective means we have for solving problems and defusing crises.
Want an example of the free market solving a human-caused problem? How about “overpopulation” and the associated “overconsumption” of natural resources? That’s a problem undeniably caused by humans. To boot, overpopulation is considered the root cause of all the other environmental problems for which we humans are responsible, among which, of course, is global warming.
In the 1968 book, The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich predicted that:
* Humanity was overpopulating at such a rate that hundreds of millions would die from starvation and other “overpopulation-caused problems” during the 1970s, no matter what we did.
* We were using raw materials, including oil, at such a rate we would run out of oil and many other commodities by 1980.
* By 1985, so many billions would have died that the Earth’s population would have shrunk to 1.5 billion.
* By 1999, the overconsuming U. S. would suffer such devastating environmental catastrophes that the life expectancy of its citizens would have dropped to 42 years, and its population would be a mere 22.6 million.
Instead of this predicted human caused disaster, the free market and human enterprise, flourishing most notably in the U. S., have enabled the planet to support a population of 6.9 billion and growing. The U. S. population has surpassed 300 million and is growing, and our prosperity is unprecedented (in spite of the current economic crisis). Our life expectancy is at 78 and rising, and, with regard to famine, our primary food-related problem is obesity not starvation.
To underscore how wrong Ehrlich was, many of the countries that heeded his overpopulation warning now are concerned about underpopulation rather than overpopulation. The reason for their concern? Their “Ehrlich scare” birth rates are too low to produce the workers needed to keep their economies running (and to support all those seniors).
How about the government alternative, the socialist alternative? How does it work to solve crises, human created or otherwise? FDR’s New Deal and European versions of the same (Hitler’s National Socialism, Mussolini’s Facism) failed so miserably to solve the economic crash of the 1920s that they produced, instead, the Great Depression, WW II, and the Holocaust. It wasn’t until American enterprise was unleashed to win World War II that we saved ourselves, and Europe and Asia as well, from socialist “solutions.”
And what about today? How well would Europe, mired in its current socialism-caused economic crisis, deal with a major natural disaster if it were to face one? And compare how well liberal Democrat-run New Orleans responded to Hurricane Katrina with more conservative Nashville’s response to major flooding or Joplin, Missouri’s reponse to a huge tornado.
What these and plenty of other examples should tell all of us is: if we really are worried about an impending crisis such as global warming, or a new ice age, or whatever, the worst thing we can do is cripple our free market economy with the kind of overregulation, over-regimentation, and high taxation that the Obama administration has made its crusade. In other words, if we really are facing a crisis, or just dealing with the everyday problems that make life on Earth complex and challenging, the worst thing we can do is elect liberals, because socialism and government solutions are always worse than any problems they purport to be able to solve.
