Conservatism and Climate Change

For those of us who really care about climate change, here’s a question. Why? Why do we want to stop the surface temperature of the earth from warming, the icebergs from melting, sea levels from rising, polar bears from dying, and coral reefs from shrinking? The answer may be less obvious, and less virtuous, than we think.

The earth’s climate has shifted countless times over billions of years in a variety of extreme directions, with a dizzying array of consequences for life on the planet. True, current climate change will negatively affect a multitude of animal and plant life, but it will also positively affect other animal and plant life more suited to the changing global conditions.

Humanity will survive, and the natural world will adapt and reach a new equilibrium. So why do we want to stop these changes? Is it guilt from being the cause? Perhaps it is because the costs are more visible than the benefits. But should we feel guilty? Plant life previously changed our entire atmosphere, introducing large amounts of oxygen for the first time. No doubt some species suffered. Animals flourished. Are plants to blame for those changes?

While guilt may be part of it, I submit that we care most about climate change’s negative impacts on humanity. We mostly like current temperatures, rainfall patterns, sea levels, and plant and animal distributions. We have well-established human patterns (both globally and locally) that depend on a degree of environmental certainty. Our cities are built near water, our crops are sewn where they grow best, and we are dependent on the predictability of a variety of natural cycles. Changing our habits and infrastructure would be incredibly expensive, wildly inconvenient, and would impose a heavy toll on human lives.

This leads me to believe that we are motivated to slow climate change mostly by conservative and selfish impulses. We want things to remain the same, and we don’t want to deal with adapting to change. My point is that stopping climate change is not a moral cause, nor is it an environmental cause, and it need not be in order to feel passionate about it. It is a cause predicated upon the continuity of our physical, cultural, economic, and political preferences. And that is alright.

When it comes to climate change, those of us who want to take action now are the true conservatives. (Note that political conservatives use the exact same argument of preserving opportunity for future generations when they discuss deficit control.) And approaching the issue with that attitude will be incredibly important in marshaling public opinion to inspire our leaders to take action. We must point out that the benefits of stopping climate change outweigh the costs.

Opponents of action raise valid, if shortsighted, points. Slowing and stopping climate change will have short-term consequences. It won’t all be green jobs and windmills overnight. People will lose jobs. Economic growth will slow. Some Western Virginia coal mining towns will become ghost towns.

But we know that the consequences of inaction are far worse than the consequences of action. And we know that once we start changing our ways, eventually the drive of new innovation and human ingenuity will yield a civilization able to sustain itself and live within its means. And the best way we can communicate that is not by talking about polar bears and coral reefs, but by being honest with ourselves and others, being selfish, and speaking the language of conservatism when we talk about climate change.