The Climate Surprise

during President Obama’s first term, summed
up this truth with pithy finality in a much-read
arcle for The Wall Street Journal. The conten-
on that the “science is seled” with respect
to climate change, he wrote, is “misguided,”
i.e., it is wrong. “It has not only distorted our
public and policy debates on issues related to
energy, greenhouse-gas emissions, and the
environment. But it also has inhibited the scienfic
and policy discussions that we need to
have about our climate future.”
But of course science is only part of the issue.
You cannot read far into the literature on
climate change before you realize that science
is oen dragged in as window dressing for the
real issues, which are polical, on the one hand,
and economic, on the other.
The two hands, it is worth poinng out, belong
to the same body and are working to feed
the same maw.
Considered as a polical movement, environmentalism
may, as Harvey Mansfield said,
betray a religious or cult-like aspect. But for
every true believer in the religion of Gaia, there
is a squadron of cynical opportunists eager to
exploit the new paganism of earth-worship for
decidedly secular ends. We’ve heard a lot about
the radical community organizer Saul Alinsky
these past seven plus years. A fundamental
rule of thumb for a paid-up Alinskyite radical
is that “the issue is never the real issue.” In
the present context, that means that “climate
change” is largely a pretext. For some, it is a
pretext for personal enrichment. Consider,
to take but one egregious example, Al Gore,
who peddles the philosophy of Chicken Lile,
on the one hand, and has managed to rake in
hundreds of millions of dollars by exploing
various government-subsidized “green energy”
iniaves, on the other.
Climate alarmism can also be a pretext for
the redistribuon of wealth on a global scale.
You can never be green enough, Comrade, and
climate change offers a potent pretext for the
consolidaon of governmental power: it is, as
one wag put, the “killer app” for extending
governmental control.
Like the House of the Lord, governmental
control is a domicile of many mansions, from
intrusive, prosperity-sapping regulaon to the
silencing, inmidaon, dismissal, and even the
legal prosecuon of crics. Indeed, in its transformaon
of crics into herecs we see once
again the religious or cult-like aspect of radical
environmentalism. One argues with a cric. One
must silence or destroy a herec. Galileo would
have understood exactly how this new Inquisi-
on would proceed. And this brings me to one
of the most frightening aspects of the gospel
of climate change: its subordinaon of independent
scienfic inquiry to parsan polical
imperaves. Scienfic inquiry depends upon the
freedom to pursue the truth wherever it leads,
regardless of polical ideology or vested interest.
Recently, climate hysterics and their polical
and academic enablers have begun describing
those who disagree with them about the science
of climate change as “climate deniers.” The
echo of “holocaust deniers” is deliberate and
pernicious. A “holocaust denier” is someone
who denies an historical enormity. But a socalled
“climate denier” is merely someone who
disputes an ideological construct masquerading
as a scienfic truth. The irony, of course, is that
this farce should proceed in an era in which
science and technology have remade the world
for the benefit of mankind.
Climate-change hysteria takes issue with
those benefits, which is why it has also been
a pretext for the systemac aack on specific
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