Climate Catastrophes Await Us, And All Conservatives Can Do Is Embarrass Themselves
A sign at the Stop Mount Valley Pipeline rally held in front of the White House on June 8.
Two things.
First, why are Republicans opposed to capitalism that pursues new and innovative ways to make money?
Second, when it comes to the climate crisis, why not do something about it? What is the worst that could happen?
Many industrial companies in the United States are taking innovative steps to protect their operations and profits in the face of climate change. But Republicans are trying to punish them for it because, to them, those business efforts are about something they don’t like called environmental, social, and corporate governance, or ESG.
There are several ways to define ESG, but ultimately, it’s a fiscal or business path that screens investments based on corporate policies and encourages companies to act responsibly in areas each of those letters — ESG — represents.
Critics say companies making ESG investments are doing so to advance liberal policies, such as moving the United States away from fossil fuels, addressing gun violence, or protecting abortion rights. But you know how this works: Republican lawmakers and their “Make America Great Again” cohorts hear “climate change,” or “the Second Amendment,” or “give women free choices,” and that turns into “woke liberals are coming to steal your money, take your guns, kill your babies, and make you watch reruns of ‘Barney.’ On PBS.”
But businesses big and small, private investors of every caliber, and state government pension funds are always thinking of the long game and investment diversity, not only to stay in business but to satisfy their investors, if they’re public entities, or pension holders, if they’re state workers or teachers.
So along comes Nucor — a steel manufacturer in South Carolina, the largest steel producer in the United States, and the biggest recycler of scrap in North America.
Steel is everywhere in our lives, from transportation and infrastructure to construction and agriculture.
It also drives global warming, accounting for up to 9% of all the carbon dioxide emissions humans generated in 2020.
The solution: low-carbon steel. All steel contains carbon. Without it, you’d just have conventional iron. Carbon is what creates steel, making it stronger than iron. But carbon creates pollution, which contributes to global warming.
Nucor has invested in innovations that allow it to make low-carbon steel, which is just as strong; cheaper to make (which means bigger profits for the manufacturer); and a lower carbon footprint, which means it’s good for the environment. It’s also a paradigm shift in steel manufacturing, and Nucor is on the cutting edge.
What could possibly be wrong with that?
It’s liberal! Quick! Hide the children!
According to the state treasurer’s office in South Carolina, the goals of ESG “align perfectly with [a] progressive social agenda to undermine the American way of life and take away our economic freedoms.”
It’s amazing how Republicans can continue to create new facepalm moments.
What sounds like a more reasoned but equally bogus Republican argument is that investors who reward companies like Nucor are more interested in pushing “woke” policies (there’s that word again) instead of making money.
And yet Nucor posted record profits of $7.61 billion last year.
Besides, what business is it of helicoptering parent Republicans what a firm invests in or how it’s benefiting their investors, a company, a corporate board, or anyone else in the private sector? Don’t those investment firms, businesses, and companies have a right to choose their own business strategies?
Translation, why do Republicans like South Carolina’s treasurer hate economic freedom?
Palmetto State Republicans aren’t punishing Nucor directly. That would be unwise. Nucor’s steel was voted last year as the “coolest” thing made in South Carolina.
Instead, Republicans target financial firms that invest in companies like Nucor based on ESG factors, which, of course, does punish Nucor by impeding its efforts to grow its business. Yay, capitalism!
As of June 2023, Republican lawmakers in 37 states have so far introduced a total of 165 bills and nine resolutions that aim to eliminate or target state-level investment strategies and contracts involving ESG.
The dark-money hellions behind most of these proposals are names you know: The Heartland Institute, The Heritage Foundation, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and everybody’s favorite, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). They all have ties to the oil and gas industry. They and the energy conglomerates have a history of denying the existence of climate change dating back decades.
You might remember various shills nattily dressed who went on cable networks telling you that global warming was a hoax, a narrative that went into overdrive after Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” made the splash that it did.
The fact is, through disinformation, propaganda, and lobbying campaigns, the fossil fuel industry, along with those GOP dark-money powerhouses, has a history of denying the existence of climate change and its solutions dating back decades. Themes have included: it’s not real; it’s a hoax; it’s chicken little, it’s not caused by human activity; it’s a natural, eons-long heating and cooling cycle. And as authors Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes noted in 2021, it’s a campaign that continues to this day:
“Six big oil CEOs were summoned to US Congress to answer for the industry’s history of discrediting climate science — yet they lied under oath about it. In other words, the fossil fuel industry is now misleading the public about its history of misleading the public.”
But also in that hearing, while the oil barons acknowledged that the burning of their products was driving climate change, none pledged to end their financial support for efforts to block action on climate change, and they said fossil fuels were here to stay.
Didn’t we already go through this with the tobacco companies?
I’m not a climatologist, geologist, geochronologist, or any other kind of -ologist, but the scientific community — the national science academies of all major industrialized nations — consistently and overwhelmingly recognizes that our planet is warming and the primary cause is the exponential increase of greenhouse gases produced by human activity. If you can’t see this, what with more intense weather events, droughts, wildfires, floods, extreme heat, and increasingly violent storm systems, to play off a phrase of comedian Jeff Foxworthy, you might be a Republican.
Save for very few outliers, there’s no controversy in the scientific community, and the denialists are dwindling. Or paying a price.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) thinks climate change is a hoax but he’s willing to take federal aid to help his state get through — take a guess ― a 1,200-year drought plaguing the West and hammering Kansas wheat farmers especially hard.
Bootstraps, skippy. Pull them. That’s what I’d like to say, but it wouldn’t be fair to those farmers. It’s not their fault their senator is a hypocritical embarrassment.
For those still cemented in their views, no amount of scientific data will matter. I get it. You’re not interested in the science. You don’t trust it. You don’t believe it. Someone’s lying or maybe not telling you what you want to hear. Or you manage to find data you think affirms your beliefs, you shout it out and say, “See? Hoax!”
So, let’s try this. Take your belief — I don’t care what it is — and ask yourself this question: What’s the worst possible consequence if you’re wrong? There are two opinions and two possible courses of action for each opinion:
1. Climate change is a hoax; do nothing.
2. Climate change is a hoax; take action.
3. Climate change is real; take action.
4. Climate change is real; do nothing.
In each course of action, what’s the worst thing that could happen?
1. If climate change is false, doing nothing would be correct. Our usual problems would exist but climate change wouldn’t be one of them.
2. If climate change is false and we take action, the worst-case scenario would be its imposition on global citizens: increased taxation, burdensome regulation, bloated government, and a potential global economic crisis. But the air would be cleaner, the water less foul, and the pursuit of alternative energy sources, from solar to nuclear, would create new economic opportunities.
3. If climate change is real and we take action, we’d have made the right decision. The cost associated with that decision would remain, but it would be money well spent. The climate may still change some, making it a different world, but livable because we took steps to avert an ecological calamity.
4. If climate change is real and we do nothing, the consequences are cataclysmic: economic upheaval, environmental ruin, public health disasters, political and social pandemonium on a global scale. Millions of displaced people would be at odds with others, fighting over scarce resources; breadbaskets in Canada, here and Russia would become dust bowls; coastal population centers, the nerve centers of most nations, would be devastated; famine and disease would be rampant.
The world would be unrecognizable. No one would escape its impact. No one is right now.
When the number of extreme heat days in Phoenix expands to a third of its year, when coastal cities are flooded, when waters off the coast of Florida are hitting temperatures better suited to your backyard hot tub, when mass migration causes chaos, when water suppliesdry up, when crops fail due to rising temperatures, when glaciers and ice shelves melt completely, when the oceans get too acidified and decrease fish supply, when extreme weather events become even more prominent … will all these events taking place finally be convenient for oil conglomerates, climate denialists, and Republican lawmakers to get serious about carbon emission reduction? How many deaths and disasters will it take?
No one says preventive measures would be inexpensive, easy or trivial, whether those efforts are driven environmentally, socially or capitalistically.
But how do you measure the cost of catastrophic destruction that may not happen in the near term compared with the precautionary cost needed to protect us from it? By weighing whether the potential risk of taking action outweighs the risk of doing nothing.
Think about it in terms of buying car insurance. You may never need it, but what price do you pay if you do need it and don’t have it? My guess is, those decrying the cost of “climate insurance” would be the very same people declaring the motorist a fool for not buying auto insurance.
The difference, of course: Far fewer people are affected by a motorist’s imprudent choice. Is that the sort of game we want to play with the lives of 8 billion inhabitants?
No amount of money would be adequate enough to compensate for the inevitable cataclysmic losses from climate change. The only thing more dangerous are the denialists and partisan pig heads.
Ultimately, it’s the old “ounce of prevention” lesson our mothers used to preach. When it comes to the future of our planet, following Mom’s advice seems like a pretty good idea. What’s the worst that could possibly happen? Except maybe MAGA snowflakes getting their feelings hurt.
