Earth Day has always had a spiritual, even religious feel to it, more so than a scientific one. The reverence for the planet, and the concern for its inhabitants, it tries to provoke serves as a sublime experience for many people who don’t find the sublime in traditional religion. And people who do practice a major religion can also find something of value in the holiday - stewardship of God’s creation meshes nicely with the humane outlook on life many organized faiths try to promote. Concern for the health of Earth has as much a moral rationale as a practical one, even when it aligns with the scientific consensus on climate change.
Facts about the planet and its climate, however, do not dictate specific moral and political choices. Equally intelligent, reasonable, compassionate, and public-spirited people can absorb the same set of facts and reach extremely different conclusions about what government and society should do with that information. While climate change is far from the only issue where this applies, it is one where the stakes are quite high. If environmentalists are serious about enacting public policies that will achieve their stated goals, moralizing about the environment is probably something to avoid. There are powerful alternatives on both sides of the climate issue.
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The fact that the planet is warming due to humans’ widespread burning of fossil fuels does not automatically mean we have to shift to widespread use of non-fossil energy. I’m all for doing so. I would love to see the human species shift away from coal-fired power plants and petroleum-fueled cars, toward solar panels, wind turbines, advanced nuclear reactors, electric cars, and high-speed rail. I’m in favor of taxing fossil fuels to help pay for that shift. But that is not the only option we have.
We could choose instead to adapt to a warmer planet. That would obviously entail costs. The political, economic, social, public health, and other costs of living on an Earth that is significantly warmer than modern humans are used to would be vast. But a large-scale shift from dirty to clean energy has costs, too. The loss of jobs in coal mining and oil drilling; the social effects on communities that depend on those jobs; the geopolitical shift of power away from petrostates; higher prices to pay for electricity and transportation during the transition period - none of these are cheap. It is not inherently immoral or irrational to completely accept the facts about climate change and conclude that the favored policy choices of many environmentalists are nonetheless too expensive to adopt.
The debate over whether to go green in our energy supplies is not a debate over whether or not to incur costs. It is a debate over which set of costs to incur, and society’s willingness to bear tangible burdens to achieve goals supported by affluent and highly educated progressives is often severely limited. As Ruy Teixeira recently pointed out in The Liberal Patriot, most working class Americans are not willing to see their energy bills go up for the sake of going green.
On political questions, it’s rare that one side has complete control of the moral high ground while the interests of the other side deserve to be completely dismissed. Viewing energy and climate as a good-versus-evil contest - with enlightened progressives on one side and Big Oil, Big Coal, and their brainless minions on the other - helps no one. Fortunately for enthusiastic greens, there are other lenses through which Americans can view the climate problem, at least one of which can be very helpful when trying to persuade skeptics of a big push for clean energy.
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Less than 150 miles southeast of Washington, DC, in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, is Naval Station Norfolk. It is the largest naval base in the world, home to dozens of warships, including six of the U.S. Navy’s eleven aircraft carriers. The security of this base, including its ability to withstand natural disasters, is essential to the security of the United States.
Thus, the fact that floods are a major problem at Norfolk is a concern not only for greens (unless the more cynical and ultra-left-wing among them actively want the U.S. military weakened by storms), but for all Americans. If the Navy cannot house and repair its ships safely, it cannot play its part in deterring China, Russia, and other threats to American interests and allies. And Norfolk is not alone - U.S. military installations around the world are threatened by rising sea levels, more intense storms, and other effects of generations of fossil fuel use. The Department of Defense takes climate change very seriously.
It is partly for this reason that the U.S. military has invested heavily in non-fossil sources of energy throughout the early 21st century, even during the term of a commander-in-chief who told us climate change was a Chinese hoax. The Army is developing electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles and installing solar-powered microgrids at its bases. The Marine Corps developed portable solar panels and solar-powered generators for its remote bases in Afghanistan. The Navy’s Great Green Fleet experiment demonstrated that partially replacing diesel with biofuels does not compromise capabilities. Given the long history of technologies originally meant for military uses spilling over into the private sector - jet engines, nuclear energy, lasers, the internet, GPS - it would not be at all surprising for these innovations to make their mark in the civilian world, too.
Even if the military were not concerned about climate change, though, it would still have strong incentives to break free of fossil fuels. The need to bring fuel to bases in far-flung locations was a factor in American casualties in recent wars. From 2003 to 2007, one in every 24 Army fuel and water resupply convoys in Afghanistan, and one in every 38 in Iraq, resulted in at least one casualty. Likewise, the Marine Corps' decision to go big on small-scale solar power came from the fact that one in 50 of its fuel and water convoys in conflict zones led to a dead or wounded Marine. As Army veteran Adam Tiffen put it in a 2014 article for War on the Rocks, going green on the battlefield saves lives.
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The pro-military case for cleaning up our energy supply may well resonate with many Americans who find the environmental/spiritual case for doing so off-putting. President Biden has made references to national security when promoting his climate agenda. Congressional Democrats with military experience - like Jason Crow of Colorado and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey - have made the connection, as well. But patriots in uniforms usually don’t come to mind for most Americans when they hear the words “climate change” and “clean energy.” The people they visualize are far more likely to be smug, judgmental types who loudly proclaim their concern for the planet, and who condemn anyone uneasy about a rapid shift to renewables as a nature-hating monster.
It is always very tempting to try and claim moral superiority on a contentious issue, and to argue that your opponents’ stance is inherently immoral. On a complex, large-scale problem like climate change, however, that kind of moralizing doesn’t win over nearly enough supporters to make a serious dent in the problem. Appealing to sentiments like patriotism, and concerns like national security, probably has a much better chance of making an impact. Greens would be well advised to temper their moral enthusiasm for saving the planet with the practical matter of winning support, including from people who won’t have the zeal of a true believer.