How to Spot Tabloid Climate Science
2018-08-03 · Guest: Sterling Burnett (Heartland Institute) · 51:51
Climate science public policy and personal liberty
Bob Zadek and Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute discuss the intersection of climate science, public policy, and personal liberty. They critique the reliability of climate models, the politicization of environmental issues, and the moral implications of sacrificing current economic well-being for theoretical future climate benefits.
Topics: Climate Change, Global Warming, Public Policy, Environmentalism, Climate Models, Heartland Institute, Personal Liberty, Economic Growth, Scientific Method
Speakers:
- Bob Zadek: Host
- Sterling Burnett: Guest, Heartland Institute
The Politicization of Science [00:00]
Bob Zadek: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show on all of radio. Thanks so much for listening this Sunday morning. Today, us ordinary Americans are going to try to decide a hyper-technical, terribly complex scientific issue. We are going to learn the pros and cons of pure science and decide who is right. Doesn’t that seem impossible? Of course it is. And yet, the subject of climate change—it used to be called global warming, but since the globe wasn’t warming, they had to—they, those people who fight about these issues—had to change the topic from global warming to climate change. After all, who can dispute that climate changes? It changes from one day to another, from one month to another, from one year to another, and from one decade to another.
So, what is all this debate about science? We don’t debate geometry. We don’t debate trigonometry. We don’t debate the laws of physics. Yet here we are in a bitter, bitter public political debate. We are debating science. What could be more absurd than that? And yet, how the vote, if you will, comes out will affect profoundly economic life in America and indeed economic life on Earth. To help us sort out this insanely complex issue, I’m happy to welcome Sterling Burnett. Sterling is the perfect guy to help us sort all this out. He will help us understand the complex issues so that when we vote, when we read articles, when we watch the media and hear this subject discussed, we can at least make a more informed observation on what is going on. Sterling is with the Heartland Institute and he has studied environmentalism and climate change for a real long time. Sterling, welcome to the show this morning.
Sterling Burnett: Thanks for having me on, Bob. I’m really looking forward to it.
Bob Zadek: Now, Sterling, in my introduction, I presented the issue that is so hard for me to get my arms around. I am not a trained scientist, of course. I practice law and I read whenever I can, but certainly, I bring no climate change, no environmental credentials to the table. I just read and struggle to understand. And I find, and in my brief research, I find that here we have—this is maybe the first time and the most intense time—that all of society, indeed the entire planet, is conflating a political issue, an economic issue, and a scientific issue, all three of which are complex. And yet we are voting and making voting decisions based upon what we ordinary citizens believe to be the case. How did we get here so that we are required, through the exercise of our voting privileges, we are asked to decide which scientist is right? How did we get to this important debate in the public sphere instead of having it reside where it belongs, purely in the world of science?
Sterling Burnett: Well, gosh, you packed a lot in there. I guess I would disagree that this is the first time we’ve ever had these kinds of debates over scientific issues. We’ve had debates about sociobiology, evolution, going back over a hundred years. In the ’60s, before people were worried about global warming or climate change, we had public debates about the use of pesticides and, in particular, DDT. Rachel Carson came out with her book, Silent Spring. We banned the production and use of DDT, which was effective at wiping out—I don’t know if you remember, but malaria used to be endemic to the United States. We had 50,000 cases a year in the ’50s. We don’t anymore. We wiped it out with DDT. But after we solved our malaria problem here, we told people in developing countries they couldn’t have our cure because there were some birds that we thought it was thinning their eggshells and killing them.
So, we have had scientific debates in public policy for a long time. Climate change is just the—in the late ’60s, early ’70s, the environment became a very large public policy issue for the first time. And the people who—I don’t want to say environmentalists, because I don’t know many people who don’t care something about the environment. But the leadership of environmental groups started taking environmental issues as the most important value people could have, that it trumped every other value: environment and resource issues. So, they started talking in admiring terms about China’s population policies. We need population control because we’re running out of resources, we’re destroying the environment. We need to change the way we do all sorts of things. Basically, they wanted to change the economy. And once you start talking about changing the economy and changing the way people live, you’re in politics. You have left the realm of science and you are in politics.
And when they were unsuccessful in certain respects in changing—they’re always looking for the next issue to change the way people live. And what could be bigger, more comprehensive than climate change? Climate is constantly changing. It is everywhere. As you say, at one time they were talking about global warming. And warming is what’s supposedly driving the climate change. But they would have conferences, or they’d have to cancel meetings on global warming because there was too much snow. And then the temperatures stopped rising for 18 consecutive years, despite the fact that CO2, carbon dioxide emissions, were going up. And how could you call it global warming when the globe wasn’t warming anymore? So, they shifted gears, like they did from pesticides in the late ’60s to endocrine disruptors and some other things in the early ’80s. They shifted gears from global warming to climate change. And now they’ve got an issue that you can’t—basically, they’ve tried to paint people into a corner because you can’t dispute that the climate changes. And that’s true. You can’t. The question is, the big question is, and the one that gets us all in politics—this is why it’s important—is: are humans causing the present climate change? And we can have a debate about that. And more importantly, can we say with any kind of certainty that they’re doing it? And this is the most important factor: if they are, does it mean catastrophe is in the offing and that we need to do something dramatic to prevent future climate changes? Can we control, basically, the weather? And that’s where we are.
The Scientific Method and Climate Models [08:31]
Bob Zadek: Now, Sterling, what’s interesting is it’s kind of assumed that, of course, there are a lot of humans on Earth and we behave in a certain way, and there’s a lot of us, and therefore, of course, we affect, affect the climate. If there never was a human on Earth, the climate would be different. The question is—there’s a bunch of questions wrapped up in that, as I see it, however. Assuming that, as I think we must, that of course humans affect—I didn’t say negatively affect—affect the climate. Let’s stipulate that. Is that effect, which will change something, a change for the better or a change for the worse? And the discussion seems to stop at “there will be a change.” And very little economic analysis, very little geophysical analysis on whether that change is for the better or for the worse. Because it stops at change. The calculation on whether it will be for the better or for the worse is staggeringly complex, almost impossible. Therefore, if you are opting to change the economic life on the planet, it’s easier to stop and say “there will be a change” and end the conversation there without discussing whether the change is positive or negative. And so I think that part of the conversation gets lost. Now, if there’s only a change—if the discussion among scientists is whether the planet is one degree warmer in a thousand years or two degrees warmer—that is so abstract it does not capture the attention of, nor should it, people living on Earth. However, if, as you do, Sterling, if you interject the word “catastrophe” or other words like it, that gets people’s attention. They imagine the next day, the next day life will be horrible and therefore we better do something about it. So tell us, once we concede, at least for the purpose of this show, that there will be a change, that humans affect the climate, tell us what is likely to be the result, what kind of effect will humans have on the planet and when, and is there any agreement whatever among scientists on that issue?
Sterling Burnett: Well, gosh, I think you’re trying to make me a seer, and I’m not. I’m going to agree with you that we have an impact. Nor is anybody else. Nor is anybody else. There you go. There you go. I’m going to agree with you that we have an impact, but I’m not sure how much of a climate change. You’ve got to remember, climate is a large matter. Weather is a day-to-day phenomenon. But climate is a region’s weather averaged over time, over large periods of time. And so climate doesn’t change day to day; weather does. But climate does change over decades, certainly over centuries and over millennia. And whether we—the important question is not whether climate changes, because anyone who disputes that, I can’t have a conversation with. The question is whether we are driving, not just having an impact, but whether we are driving the present change in climate and whether that is dangerous and we can do something and should do something about it. Those are two separate questions.
And so, before you get to the second question, we should address the first question: is whether humans are driving climate change. That’s the scientific—that’s where the scientific debate is. And there are people, as you say, once they get to climate change is—climate is changing, they add an addendum: “and humans are causing it.” Because they believe nature knows best, it’s got to be—the assumption is, if humans are changing it, it’s bad. And once you start from the premise that humans changing nature is bad, and then you make the assertion that humans are changing nature, well, you’ve got your answer there. The answer is obvious: we’ve got to do something about it because humans are changing it and we know it’s bad because anything humans change is bad. That’s their assumption. The problem is, it doesn’t hold water.
You have to ask yourself this, and this is what I always come back to when I debate climate scientists or when I discuss this with people, is ask yourself how the scientific method is supposed to work. You propose a hypothesis to explain certain phenomena you want to understand. You go out and you gather your data, and then you test your data against your hypothesis. And the more likely your data conforms to what your theory says should be occurring, the more likely your theory is to be true. But the more the data confounds or is the opposite of what your theory predicted, the less likely it is to be true. Climate change doesn’t work that way. No matter what the data says, they assert it’s just more proof of climate change. Because they—it’s all based on these climate models. And they’ve got 30 models, 30 or more models, and they use the same physics but they predict completely different phenomena. That’s not how science is supposed to work.
If you’ve got two climate models, and one says the Great Lakes will be lower a hundred years from now due to climate change, and the other climate model says the Great Lakes will be higher, well, guess what? One of those is going to be right. But that’s guesswork. That’s flipping a coin. If one says the desert Southwest is supposed to be more arid, will be more arid a hundred years from now, and the other says the desert Southwest is going to have more rain, well, that’s flipping a coin. That’s not science. Physics should point one way or the other, not both ways at the same time for the same time period. And so, if you get less rain, they say it’s climate change; if you get more rain, they say it’s climate change. That’s faith. That’s a religion. It’s not a testable hypothesis.
To the extent that they make predictions that can be tested—and this is where the rubber hits the road—their predictions are routinely wrong. Even on the most basic prediction. The most basic prediction is temperature. According to climate models and the physics of what they say how the climate should respond to carbon dioxide, to additions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which humans are doing—we’re adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere—the temperature for the globe should be warmer, more than a degree warmer than it is right now. And it should be warming faster than it is right now. That’s the most basic prediction. If they don’t get the most basic prediction right, why should we trust their other predictions? They have these climate models. They don’t reflect the past accurately. And so what they’ve done is they fiddle with them until they match what the past temperature record is. And they keep fiddling with them and fiddling with them so the past temperature record more closely coincides with the climate models. And they say, “See, we’ve tuned them and now they reflect reality. So trust us for the future.” But the problem is, the climate models predicted more warming in the past. They predicted it should be more warm now than it is. And they’re wrong about the past, they’re wrong about the present, but we’re told we should trust them for the future.
And if we can’t get the temperature right, how can we trust them on everything else? So they predict Antarctica, for instance, should be losing ice. It should be melting. It’s not. It’s gaining tens of thousands of tons of ice a year. Records are being set with sea ice and ice on the peaks. Climate models can’t explain that because none of them predict that. According to the climate models, they’re mixed as to whether we should be having more hurricanes. But we should certainly be having more powerful hurricanes. And yet, before last year when we had a couple of powerful hurricanes, guess what? We had the longest sustained period in US history of no Class 3 or above hurricanes making landfall in the US. Climate models didn’t predict that. They predicted just the opposite. So they’re wrong on the Antarctica, they’re wrong on hurricanes, they’re wrong on the speed at which sea levels should be rising. They predict more sea level rise than we’ve experienced. They’re wrong on droughts and floods. Right now, we are not experiencing anything near the historic droughts where, for instance, in California, we have histories of 50-year and 100-year droughts, not seven-year droughts. 50-year and 100-year droughts. We’re not experiencing anything like that. We’re not outside of the normal. Climate models don’t predict that. So when time after time, prediction after prediction, their projections are wrong, you have to ask yourself, if you’re a scientist, you should be asking, “Well, maybe we start questioning the theory.” But climate scientists don’t question the theory. They question the data. They try and make the data conform to the theory. And that’s not how science is supposed to work.
The Economic and Moral Stakes [18:51]
Bob Zadek: And what’s most interesting—I, as you’re explaining all of this, Sterling, I flashed to something in my brain that seems to be totally irrelevant, but let me make it relevant. I flash to capital punishment. Now, what am I talking about? Well, for the state to execute somebody is profound, profound. Now, in when we have criminal trials, we require the jury to universally agree on guilt because we don’t want to—we, the state, don’t want to make a serious mistake because we got it wrong. So we require 12-0 to convict. Now, now we have the debate, the scientific debate over climate change, which as I said earlier, has a profound effect upon life on Earth. It affects the development in the Third World, their health, their longevity, the health of their children, their education, their prosperity—profound effect upon hundreds of millions of people in the Third World. Therefore, following the guidance of the criminal justice systems, before we make profound global decisions on the economy of cutting back this and doing that and spending money here, we darn sure better be right. And where we have a serious debate where as many people disagree as agree with the same credentials, where we simply, as Sterling mentioned, do not know for sure, how can we possibly gamble the well-being of hundreds of millions of people on the hubris “our side is right”? And therefore, even if, and I profoundly doubt it, but even if man is affecting the climate long-range in some way, even if that’s possible, we cannot make profound decisions upon the life of everybody on Earth based upon “well, I hope we’re right.” And that is where we are today because those people who opt for the profound changes that Sterling will expand upon after our break, those people who opt for profound economic changes, virtually undoing or limiting the free market, are jeopardizing the well-being of hundreds of millions of people alive today and alive in the future. And we simply cannot do that when there’s any danger whatever we could be wrong. So Sterling, is it fair to say that at very least, at very least, serious scientists can disagree on this?
Sterling Burnett: Yes, there’s no question about it. You know, I can give you the names of dozens of scientists who are skeptical of claims that—not that humans impact the climate, not that the climate is changing, but that humans are driving a dangerous climate change and that we have policies now that won’t be worse—that won’t cause worse problems than the potential problems caused by future climate change.
Bob Zadek: And what scares me is what scares me is a issue which should be decided in the scientific community is decided in the ballot box, is decided in who gets appointed to be a federal or state judge. That we have so politicized science. And Sterling, I accept your correction. Nothing makes me happier on my show than for me to be shown wrong, because every time one of my guests shows me that I was mistaken, I learn something. So we’re friends for life already because you showed that I was wrong in observing that there haven’t been political/scientific debates in the past. Although with the DDT, it wasn’t—it was just a mistake. There wasn’t any strong pro-DDT movement at the time. We trusted science more then, or we trusted Rachel Carson more then than we would perhaps today. Maybe the stakes weren’t that high at the time. So you’re quite right that when science makes a mistake, or when the political system adopts a wrong scientific view, as it clearly did with DDT trying to save little eaglets who we thought were living in very fragile eggs, we did that, we killed lots and lots of people in the Third World through malaria. So when we make a mistake, a lot of people are harmed. And therefore we should be quite careful in not making a mistake in relying upon what might be wrong science. This is Bob Zadek. I’m spending a morning discussing environmental issues, how they became politicized, what is really the issue, can we sort out right from wrong, and can we find the right policy that satisfies everyone. Sterling Burnett is with the Heartland Institute. He has studied environmentalism for a good part of his life and brings great wisdom to the show. We’ll be back in 30 really short seconds. Please stay tuned. We will try to sort out what the policy should be. Stay tuned.
Policy Recommendations and Adaptation [25:32]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show on all of radio. The show always of ideas, never the show of attitude. Thanks so much for listening to my conversation this morning with Sterling Burnett. Sterling is with the Heartland Institute. We are discussing the intractable problem of environmental climate change, aka global warming. Who is right, who is wrong? But far more importantly, we can’t decide on this show who is right and who is wrong. We’re going to try, but we can’t do that. But what I do want to sort out is what should the policy be in our country given this split in scientific thinking, and what should we do politically and economically in light of this conversation? And Sterling, what should be—given the uncertainty, let’s be charitable, the uncertainty and maybe the impossibility of reaching an answer as to what the planet is going to be like in a thousand years, what should we be doing about this discussion? We as intelligent voters, as people who elect decision-makers in our country, what is the sensible policy for our country, indeed for the world, to adopt in light of this conversation?
Sterling Burnett: Well, before I answer that question—and I do have an answer for it—but let me point out to your listeners one thing. Because yours is a libertarian show, you’re honest and open about that. There’s no question that you believe in limited government, that you think that individual liberty and freedom is a paramount virtue. When science—the real corruption of science and its impact on politics, when it became political, began—I don’t know that it began then, but it was highlighted as long ago as President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address. It’s very famous, 1960 I believe. Very famous for his discussion of the military-industrial complex. Everybody thinks of his speech and the military-industrial complex and they think, “God, he was really far-sighted and warned us about this, the military-industrial complex.” And they ignore the second half of the speech. In the second half of the speech, he talks about how the government has become funding science, has become not just funding it, but come to dominate the funding and thus direction of science. And he warned, in the similar way that he warned of the military-industrial complex, he warned of a technological, a scientific-technological elite taking over and directing public policy. And that’s precisely what has happened.
I invite your readers to go back and read his speech in full and see how far-sighted he was, because it’s playing out today in the climate field. Scientists—a small field that got relatively little funding before the late ’80s, early ’90s—has received more money in the past decade than it received in its entire history cumulatively. And to think that that does not affect the kind of research that people undertake and the findings is to deny human nature in this one area when you don’t deny it in any other field.
Now, in answer to your question: if you are concerned that humans are causing dangerous climate change, you have to look at what the predicted impacts are going to be. And so you say, for instance, there’ll be new cases of malaria. They expect that there’ll be new cases of malaria and other tropical diseases because mosquitoes will now be able—that carry these diseases—will now be able to thrive and survive in regions that they didn’t previously. Now, that wouldn’t be the United States, that wouldn’t be Russia. They’re talking mountaintops. They’re talking going higher up mountains. So they predict 10,000 to 20,000 additional cases a year. Okay, you’re worried about 10,000, 20,000 additional cases of malaria a hundred years from now, when two million people are affected by malaria today. Not a hundred years from now. Hundreds of thousands die every year from malaria now. So rather than attacking, affecting a small portion of 10,000 future cases by regulating fossil fuel use, by basically making people poorer by taking away the use of fossil fuels for electricity and transportation, attack malaria directly and solve the problem now and in the future. Prevent the 10,000 additional cases because you will have wiped out malaria now. And we know how to do that. We did it in the United States in the ’50s through the use of DDT. Use its widespread use in those countries and other prophylactics, you know, the medicines that are treating—but address the two million people that are affected today and you’ll prevent the 10,000 additional cases in the future because it will be gone.
If you’re worried about sea level rise—because seas are going to rise, let’s be clear. Seas have risen 400 feet over the past 10,000 years. They’re rising at a slower average rate now than they have risen on average over the last 10,000 years. But they are rising and they will continue to rise until the next ice age comes, because history shows us that’s what happens between ice ages. Ice melts and sea levels rise. What climate change may be doing, may be doing, is adding an additional inch or two to expected sea level rise. So rather than addressing the extra inch, start your planning today for the full 12 inches that it was going to rise anyway. Quit subsidizing home building in wetlands and coastal waterways. Quit subsidizing flood insurance and hurricane insurance, which just encourages people to move to the coast because they don’t pay the full cost when their homes are damaged. If my home gets damaged by a tornado, no one pays my homeowner’s insurance. But if someone on the coast gets hit by a hurricane, I’m paying their insurance because we subsidize their insurance. So they don’t pay the full cost and they rebuild in the same area where hurricanes are going to come whether climate changes or not. If you build in a floodplain along a river because it’s a beautiful place, you know, you’ve got a great view of the river, but you’re building in a floodplain, when it floods, I shouldn’t be picking up the bill. But we’re doing that. So change policies that encourage people to live in places that we probably shouldn’t be living.
Wealth as the Best Adaptation [33:34]
Bob Zadek: And when you made your comment about malaria and future generations dying of malaria and we’re kind of ignoring—that wasn’t your word—present generations, what occurred to me was, as I am processing information with a libertarian point of view, is that in effect, all of the monumental changes in economic life in the name of climate change, of saving Earth if you will, to be almost absurd about the whole thing, that’s a wealth transfer from the present to the future. That’s what we are doing. We are compromising our economic and social and political and longevity, our well-being today so that people we will never meet and we just assume will be here in a thousand years might live better. First of all, the prediction is impossible because in a thousand years they will probably have tools we can’t even imagine today. But putting that aside, what is the moral justification for us to transfer wealth today to people who will be on our planet in a thousand years? That’s incomprehensible to me, and I can’t imagine any moral theory to defend that.
Sterling Burnett: Let’s even be more blunt. We have a hundred million people or more who don’t have adequate nutrition every day. You have people, millions of people who starve and die every day, who die of material want, who live in abject penury. They’re dying today. They will die tomorrow. They will die the next day. You’re asking us to continue sacrificing them and their well-being, you’re asking them to sacrifice themselves on the off chance that a few additional thousand people a hundred years from now might live a little bit better. You’re saying people should die today so much wealthier societies in the future can live even better. That’s immoral.
I don’t know if you know it, but my training is in moral philosophy. I have a PhD, my specialization was environmental ethics. And the sacrificing of living human beings today for possible future human beings, and huge numbers of living human beings today for relatively small numbers of much wealthier human beings in the future, that’s not progressive. That’s regressive. You know, people like to talk about being progressive in politics. That’s regressive because you’re sacrificing the poor. It ain’t the wealthy that’ll suffer if we make these sacrifices. It’s the poorest among us who will suffer the most if we stop the use of fossil fuels today to prevent modest climate change a hundred years from now.
And the funny thing is, the best thing you can do to ensure that anyone living a hundred years from now is better off than present generations is to ensure greater economic freedom and greater wealth creation. Because wealthier societies are better able to adapt to natural disasters, to climate changes, regardless of the source or cause of the climate change and natural disaster, and regardless of the direction. Ask yourself, within a few years of each other, going on 13, 14 years ago, New Orleans had a terrible flood after a hurricane. And part of that was human-caused because of the way we built our dikes and dams and stopped natural flows of rivers. But we had a couple of thousand people die, and it was terrible. Within a year or two around the same time, there was a huge tidal wave that hit Indonesia. You weren’t talking 2,000 people that died there. You were talking 250,000 people that died there in the islands down there. Now, what was the difference? It wasn’t the climate. The climate wasn’t the difference. The difference was wealth, infrastructure. The kinds of things wealthier societies both are protected against climate changes better, but when natural disasters occur, they also have better warning systems and they have better responses. They have better infrastructure that doesn’t wash out the sea. The walls still stand. That was the difference. It wasn’t a difference of climate between Indonesia and New Orleans. It was a difference of wealth. Wealthier societies are better able to respond to climate changes regardless of the cause or direction. And to say that we should sacrifice wealth today is telling—is cutting economic growth today means people in the future will be less wealthy than they otherwise will be and thus less able to adapt or respond to climate change regardless of the cause and direction. That’s crazy.
The Political Divide [39:13]
Bob Zadek: And the changes that those who propose, who worry about climate change and who want something to be done about it, the “something” inevitably, inevitably the “something” that is to be done about it means more government, more control, less freedom of choice, less economic freedom. It isn’t a coincidence that universally those people who worry the most about climate are those people who care the least about personal freedom and who favor a top-down, tightly controlled society. That’s not a coincidence. And what I have observed so often with my guests on this show is that the other side, if you will, cheapens freedom so much as if if a policy to enact a policy requires a surrender of freedom, well, so be it. Freedom is not all that important. My view would be freedom is the most important. And any policy that requires even a minor surrender of personal freedom, my freedom to do with my life as best I see fit so long as I don’t harm anybody around me today, I should have that freedom and I’m not prepared to give it up even a little bit in the theoretical hope that somebody who doesn’t yet exist on Earth might be, might be better off. And I resent so much the easy way that those who think differently can surrender freedom as “oh well, a little freedom must go for the common good.” It’s not a coincidence that that’s how the fault lines are divided on this issue of climate change.
Sterling Burnett: Well, you know what? I think it’s even worse than you described because for a lot of these people, it’s “freedom for me, but not for thee.” They’re not just willing to sacrifice freedom, they’re willing to sacrifice your freedom. They still want to go on living the way that they want to live. Al Gore is not wearing a hair shirt. Leonardo DiCaprio, since he became a climate spokesperson, did not cease to take private planes across the country multiple times for different events, for fun, to party, take his friends to an island. They don’t live the way that they want you to live. They want their freedom, but they don’t want you and me to have the equal and same freedoms because when we do it, evidently it’s causing climate change, but when they do it, somehow, miracle of miracles, it doesn’t affect the climate.
Advice for Voters [42:18]
Bob Zadek: Sterling, what kind of—the listeners to our show and to the podcast are a couple of times a year they become voters. They have to decide things. In the closing moments of our show, what advice can you offer to people who are determined to use their privilege as voters, to use their intellect as they observe the debate? How do they behave? How do they see the issue in terms that they can find useful so that they can vote and behave in their self-interest?
Sterling Burnett: Well, thankfully, thankfully, voters seem much smarter than public spokesmen on this issue. Because poll after poll shows climate change ranks dead last or doesn’t even rank on the issue of concerns for voters when they go to the polls. There’s a very, very small minority of people who think climate change is the most important issue and that’s the issue they vote on when they go to the polls. Most people realize, you know what’s going to affect my life more? Education, my kids’ education. Crime. The economy. My ability to afford healthcare. Whether we are in an open war conflict with a foreign country and my kids are going to wind up, or I’m going to wind up being sent overseas. Whether I’m going to be mugged on the street. Whether my front end will be destroyed because of the pothole in my street.
Most people vote based on their local issues that they can actually have an—that human beings can actually have an impact on. And so that’s what I encourage them to focus on. It’s like, look, do you feel safe in your home? Are your schools good and safe? Are your roads good? At the national level, is our economy doing well or badly? Which policies are likely to make our economy continue to do well or prevent it from doing badly or take it back in a bad direction? Those are the policies that people should focus on. I’ll never tell anyone how to vote. That’s their business. But when I go to the polls, I think about the issues that’s most important to me. Now, you’re openly a libertarian, I’m a radical libertarian. For me, the first issue I ask is: where does the candidate stand on the Constitution? And I don’t mean does he swear an oath. I mean when he has acted in his life, has he defended the Constitution or has he eroded the Constitution by growing government beyond the bounds specified in the Constitution? That’s the most important issue to me. If it turns out that he’s voted against the Constitution, that he’s constantly growing government beyond the bounds described in the Constitution, then he doesn’t get my vote regardless of where he stands on the other issues.
But for other people, the Constitution may not be the big issue. It may be: will I have a job? How’s my job? Will I be paid more by the policies they take? Will my energy costs rise or decline because of the policies they are going to enact? If they restrict fossil fuels to fight climate change, your energy bills, both at the filling station and your electricity bills and your natural gas bill at home, will increase because restricting fossil fuels, whether through taxes or cap-and-trade programs, will raise the cost of energy because the alternatives are more expensive and less efficient than fossil fuels. That’s just the fact. There’s no debate about that. That’s the facts. So if that’s important to you, you think about that to the extent that you think about climate change.
Bob Zadek: That’s great advice, Sterling. We’re going to be back in a in one short minute for our closing comments from Sterling and information about the Heartland Institute. Please stay tuned. We’ll be back in one really short minute.
Closing Remarks [47:51]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show on all of radio. The show always of ideas, never the show of attitude. Thanks so much for listening to my conversation this morning with Sterling Burnett. Sterling is with the Heartland Institute. We are discussing the intractable problem of environmental climate change, aka global warming. Who is right, who is wrong? But far more importantly, we can’t decide on this show who is right and who is wrong. We’re going to try, but we can’t do that. But what I do want to sort out is what should the policy be in our country given this split in scientific thinking, and what should we do politically and economically in light of this conversation? And Sterling, I presume that in the short run, government—at least in the area of alleged climate change—not responding to the tabloid climate science, but at least in the short run, it seems like our federal government, at least they are the big actor in this field, they are moving in a way that—it’s always the short run, of course, in politics—that you think makes some sense.
Sterling Burnett: At the present, the present administration is largely rolling back policies by the previous administration that were pushing harmful responses to climate change, that were restricting fossil fuel use. The present administration’s rolling those back. It is much more skeptical that humans are causing dangerous climate change or, more importantly, that that’s the most important issue facing our country. So at the federal level, that’s happening. But at the state level—I believe you’re in California, if I’m correct in that—Jerry Brown and your legislature is very pro-moving forward with climate legislation, restrictions on fossil fuels, carbon taxes, restrictions on automobiles. There are other states that are also responding that way. So at the state level, what I’d call regressive climate action is actually moving forward. And since most people—politics for most people, politics is local—that’s something to consider when you go to the polls. Look, at the national level, we seem to have a handle on this. We’re working in the right direction. But in many states, that’s not true. And ask yourself, is your local politician pushing policies that are going to raise my energy cost and do nothing to change the weather in the vain hope that action in Massachusetts and California will change the weather despite the fact that action in India and China are going to keep pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for the foreseeable future?
Bob Zadek: But I like it that way because people, voters, citizens will vote with their feet and shortly states will learn that the states which prosper and which have positive immigration, population inflow, are those states that adopt a sensible policy and not a nonsensical policy. And you always can tell, Sterling, when I’m speaking to my libertarian friends on the phone, because you will hear sometimes during the conversation I say a bit defensively something like, “I know, I know, but the weather’s nice.” So yes, California makes plenty of mistakes, but Sterling, the weather’s darn good. Thanks so much for giving us an hour of your time and for your wisdom. We appreciate your sharing your thoughts with us. This is Bob Zadek saying so long for now. I’ll be back next Sunday. Hope to speak to you then. Have a nice Sunday.