Thursday, February 15, 2007

Uncertainty, climate and the need for new roads in Britain

Refreshing to read a different perspective on climate. Here Arnold Kling offers some reasoned advice and some constructive policy options.

I particularly like his reference to the macro-economic modelling on the seventies and how it was unable to achieve its stated aims: you simply can not model a free market nor the pace of new innovation. Similarly, the dynamics of climate change present an enormous challenge to modellers: all the more reason for questioning any proposals for massive economic intervention as to its true purposes and ideological advocacy.

What is mainstream environmentalism today, is most often yesterday's socialism as this discussion of transportation policy in the UK by Mick Hume reveals. Although his article focuses on road construction in UK, his comments apply to a whole slew of issues that have become enveloped in the environmental green of socialist politics.

Climate change, road (non) construction, recycling, energy options: eco-myths infused with an ideology of alarmism necessitating government control, widespread austerity and a suppression of human enterprise -- the "science" compels this, action must be immediate and no debate can be sanctioned. To question or to disagree is to be "in denial", to be anti-environment and an obvious corporate stooge.

Blessedly, there are enough independent free thinkers like Kling to posit alternatives and sufficient common sense in the silent majority to challenge green orthodoxy when it passes from humorous into intrusive and stupid.