Global Warming, A Friendly Riposte

My good friend, Mr. 42, left a comment on my last post that I think raises an interesting and a key point, to which I would like to reply. Here is the comment, in full:

First off, let me say that I completely agree with you that the science of global warming is at best debatable, and that we really don't know exactly what is going on. However, I feel we must be prepared for all circumstances.

I think the point you are missing is that in this case, the freedom exerted by these businesses could possibly be infringing on the lives and well-beings of countless other people. People, especially businesses, need to be responsible in controlling how much they contribute to the environment. Will it completely stop global warming? I don't know. Do we, as consumers, also need to be less wasteful? Probably.

If these businesses cannot see that the improvements can not only help them, maybe the government should be involved. The government's primary job is to protect it's citizens. If that means that they have to place laws to protect the environment, then it should.

I think 42's concern is one that is widely shared; it is a legitimate one that cannot be dismissed out of hand. The problem comes at several points, which I would like to outline.

The argument can be sketched out in this way: 1. There is a possibility that businesses' practices are contributing to the incidence of global temperature increase in such a way that other people may be hurt. 2. The government's primary job is to protect its citizens. 3. Therefore, government may have to step in to limit businesses' range of activity.

I realize that my argument will make a departure from current mainstream thought (though not from the classical liberal tradition on which our Constitution was based). However, the problems are with the second premise and with an unstated assumption built into the argument.

The premise that "the government's primary job is to protect its citizens is false. The government's primary job is actually to protect its citizens' freedoms. The point in my bringing up the statement "Give me liberty or give me death" is to say that freedom is more important than life, and that that is a defining and founding creed of our republic. The truth is that the Constitution does not authorize the government to take any action regarding environmental concerns--not even the actions the government has already undertaken. The reason is that the Founders were more concerned with liberty than with life; that's why so many of them risked so much to gain their freedom. In fact, I believe that morality requires us to choose freedom over life, if such a choice becomes necessary.

The unstated assumption is that government action could potentially protect citizens in this area. Increasingly, real world experience tells us that the answer is an emphatic "no." I'll link to a column from Britain's Guardian paper today that will elaborate, but the fact is that government action has contributed to economic stagnation and even deaths throughout Africa, and that government action has done little more than create an enormous new lobbying arena that inevitably leads to inefficient and outright destructive actions, such as ethanol subsidies, restrictions on oil drilling and refining, and promotion of wind power over nuclear.