Climate Change: Time for the GOP to Shift the Debate

Foreign Policy has an interesting story on climate change. It seems that some are convinced that climate change is now irreversible and that countries should shift their policies: Policy makers in the [U.S.] and elsewhere must start hedging their bets and prepare us to live in this new world. This emphatically does not mean giving up on efforts to slow climate change, which could still measurably reduce the costs of protecting the people and infrastructure most vulnerable to higher temperatures and new weather patterns. Nor should it suggest that the task of adaptation will be easy or cheap. World leaders will face many of the same dilemmas that complicate the current debate: Developed countries, which have produced most of the human-origin carbon dioxide in the air, will be in the best position to cope with climate change and developing countries will want them to bear a disproportionate financial burden for its consequences.

Republicans ignore the scientific and public consensus at their peril. Global warming, at least in the minds of the overwhelming majority of the scientific community, and more importantly, in the minds of the public at large, is happening. But rather than trying to deny this, there’s a better way to approach the debate which has the potential to derail our economy. As I said back in February, beating the environmentalist chicken littles requires first acknowledging that global warming is real. As I said then: In order to combat further attempts to initiate a Kyoto-like, carbon-restriction, regulatory regime, the right in America must be equipped to take on the enviro-chicken littles on the left. This requires a nuanced understanding of the problem and a message that resonates with the American people. Trying to convince voters that what they’re convinced is happening, really isn’t, makes for a weak approach. Trying to convince them that what’s happening is survivable and that the costs of tacking climate change is too great, just might work.

And it’s not just me; folks much smarter than me (and 99% of the rest of the world, in my opinion) like Newt Gingrich have adopted a more defensible position on global warming.

Bottom line: there’s defendible ground in this debate. The hilltop sanctuaries of adaptation and the cure’s-worse-than-the-headache are still open. So why are we occupying the low ground and getting the hell shot out of ourselves?