Humans, Climate Change

Despite growing consensus among scientists regarding human-induced
climate change, the U.S. remains a leader in resistance to corrective
action. Some blame our recalcitrance on the small minority of climate
skeptics or on the simple self-interest of oil companies. There may,
however, be deeper and more intractable reasons.

In a provocative new blog, https://contemporarycondition.blogspot.com,
Johns Hopkins professor William Connolly, a friend and mentor, points
out that self-interest alone can't explain resistance to climate
initiatives.

Self-interest is colored and partially shaped by deeper intellectual
and moral commitments. Along with the immediate self-interest of the oil
companies, one may include a belief among some evangelicals that only
God can alter climate and that it is the height of hubris to claim that
man can.

Connolly also highlights another quintessentially
American conviction, neoliberalism, or market fundamentalism. This creed
insists: "The market is a self-organizing, self-regulating system. It
optimizes freedom and benefits IF the state confines itself to adjusting
the money supply, waging war, and punishing crime, and IF it sets
severe limits to the organizing power of consumers and labor."

In the wake of an economic crisis only barely contained by massive
federal fiscal and monetary intervention, this creed still thrives. Its
salience is a tribute to its deep cultural resonance -- and its
destructive power.

A doctrine so embedded as to resist the challenge of economic crisis
impedes governmental efforts to address climate change. To suggest the
seriousness of climate change is not merely to tap deep fears of death
and destruction but also to challenge one powerful salve of those fears,
our faith that the untrammeled market, Adam Smith's invisible hand, can
always deliver us. For many Americans who resist biblical
fundamentalism, the invisible hand replaces God.

Connolly points out that markets are not unique. And herein resides
the limits of market fundamentalism: "the world is full of open,
self-regulating systems of multiple types." These include ocean
currents, animal habitats, the global economy and the human body itself,
with its complex mind-body interchanges. "All display some powers of
self-maintenance."

All, however, also "pass into stages of sharp disequilibrium, often
created by conjunctions between internal

perturbations and new intrusions" from other systems with which they
interact. When and with what consequences tipping points are reached may
be inherently unpredictable.

Just as systems are never fully predictable even internally and
interact with other systems, so too a response to the current conflation
of market fundamentalism and evangelical conviction must be flexible
and many sided. Connolly argues that "The defeat of this combine will
require the emergence of a new pluralist assemblage, consisting of
multiple constituencies who forsake hubris, cultivate positive spiritual
affinities" across ethnic, national, and philosophical boundaries.

Thus evangelicals are not all of one cloth, and secular
environmentalists and deep ecologists can team with those who see
dominion over the Earth in terms of stewardship. In a world of periodic
flux, progressive assemblages should be continually willing to adjust
strategy and be open to new issues and rights claims.

It also would confront neoliberalism directly. Elites use government
not merely to enforce the law, crush unions and make war, but also to
override market outcomes when their own finances are threatened. They
repeal New Deal walls between commercial and investment banking, but
when their convoluted deals explode, they orchestrate bailouts for
themselves.

Neoliberalism has become a narcotic to soothe amid troubled times but
its "market discipline" seldom curbs the elites who profess it. Even
before the bailout government moved beyond attacking unions and
neglecting regulations to directly channeling resources to established
corporations. Think no-bid contracts with defense firms, the Medicare
prescription drug program and media spectrum giveaways that bothered
even Sen. Bob Dole.

These programs betray a hypocrisy that may open space with some of
the evangelically minded. The elite favoritism embodied in these
giveaways also by implication challenge one long-standing barrier to
reform, the pervasive American faith that everyone can become rich.

The trick, however, is to use such discussions not to revive market
fundamentalism. A new social ecology should treat not only markets, but
also regulations, and public goods as complex and adjustable tools we
employ in a world of open systems subject to periodic disturbance.