On the Road Again
April 6th, 2009 by Nick SaintI’m heading off to the Old World today, so - barring another flurry of activity from Frederick - posting will be light to non-existent for the next day or so of travel. In the meantime, would someone please explain why this nonsense from Ryan Avent has been so widely cited as an interesting and challenging piece of insight:
That is to say, confronted by a problem [global warming] demanding solutions inimical to libertarian beliefs, libertarians were faced with the choice of reneging on their beliefs or turning their back on science. Tellingly, they chose the latter. One might think that’s a rather drastic decision, given the role scientific endeavors have played in delivering the material prosperity so dear to the hearts of the libertarian world, and one would be right.
A belief system that cannot grapple with the fundamental reality of a situation is, quite simply, not a belief system worth having. If I were a part of a movement that demanded I not get out of the way of oncoming cars, and that challenged the conclusion of the fields of physics and biology that an impact between the car and my person would leave my person badly damaged, I would begin to suspect that this movement was maybe full of crazy people with very bad ideas. I suspect most people, and perhaps nearly all people would arrive at this conclusion. And if that movement couldn’t come up with a better way to approach the problem of the oncoming car, well, it would eventually find itself abandoned, destroyed by the insistent encroachment of reality.
Global warming is serious business, but in terms of general political theory it is neither new nor particularly interesting. The effect of carbon emissions on the earth’s climate is simply one big, bad negative externality, and no serious political theory could fail to allow for externalities. It is true, in my opinion, that many people calling themselves libertarians have either used some pretty shakey reasoning to deny that externalities can present a case for government intervention, or lied about the science, or both. But the idea that global warming poses an ‘existential threat’ to any political theory is not just wrong, it’s absurd.
April 6th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
[...] from Akhbar: In the meantime, would someone please explain why this nonsense from Ryan Avent has been so [...]