Climate Change Proposals: Do Details Matter?

Critics have pounced on presidential candidates’ climate change proposals, ridiculing everything from the aggregate cost to the banning of things like meat, straws, and offshore drilling. Are these sensible objections? Let’s try to be fact-based and rational.

 Every public policy topic of importance can be discussed by defining, focusing, and seeking agreement on the core issue or be derailed by the distraction of the least important aspects of the topic. The presidential candidates’ climate change proposals certainly provide multiple opportunities for such derailment. They range from Bernie Sanders’s proposed $16 trillion investment (charge: unaffordable) to immediate banning of offshore oil production (charge: impractical) to the banning of meat (charge: laughable) to population control (charge: Orwellian). When these charges fail, critics resort to the argument that even if the US does all of the above, it won’t matter if the rest of the world doesn’t comply (charge: true!).

All of this distracts from the main issue and stands in the way of fact-based, rational debate and compromise. 

The critical issue for this election cycle is the core issue: Do we as a country accept the scientific evidence that indicates that carbon emissions drive global warming, or not? Do we accept that global warming threatens how and where we live, or not? There is currently no consensus on this core issue, and we have the opportunity to use the ballot box to address it.

 If in November 2020 the country answers yes to these questions, as the Democratic candidates clearly do, then will be the time to engage in a discussion of the details of a realistic climate plan. This discussion should be framed first by an effort to define parameters of the cost benefit of responding. In other words, how aggressive do we want to be? How much can we afford? How much disruption to our lives are we willing to endure? How much dislocation in fossil fuel based employment can we tolerate? These are the questions to focus on first and where compromise ultimately should be sought. Everything else for now is a derailer and will not advance the ball.