Patrick McIlheran's column "Consider the humans on earth, too" is linked to at WisOpinion and I have just had the misfortune of reading it. There's nothing like it when someone takes the fringe view and portrays it as mainstream. He does this by saying that those who wish to see a cleaner environment have more sympathy for the ecosphere than human beings. Does anyone else see the irony in someone from the most solipsistic country on the planet asking for a Humans Day?
An interest in moving away from internal combustion engines isn't motivated by sympathy for moles and moles of air particles having to congregate with nasty particulate matter; it's about things such as people's health being put into danger which forces the state to issue air quality alerts.
McIlheran pleads for us to see the "human costs". What does he think is going to happen when petroleum becomes scarcer and scarcer? No human costs will be incurred as China, India, Europe, and the US of A compete for dwindling resources? I guess states have never warred over natural resources before in his universe.
And his argument about the economic consequences? The first thing that sprang to mind was John Calhoun and his ilk. "We can't get rid of the peculiar institution! Think about the South's economy!" He says:
What's disturbing is the blithe assertion that the economy will adapt.
What?! Will the move away from fossil fuels make the Invisible Hand of the market disappear in a big green poof of regulation? Surely McIlerhan doesn't have that low an opinion of American entrepreneurs. When wood was replaced by coal did various entrepreneurs just throw in the towel or did we have an industrial revolution? Come on, Mr. McIlheran, give our captains of industry a little credit. Little things like World War II and the Holocaust never stopped IBM, Bush's grandpappy, and others from reaping millions. Besides, making a transition does not mean that the changes must be completed overnight nor that the government and our tax dollars can't help foster the process and make it as smooth as possible.
Putting aside the issue of global warming completely for a moment, there are still very good and very human reasons to transition away from dead dinosaurs: our economy and our lifestyles depend on oil and most of it is underneath the Middle East. Operation Iraqi Liberation won't be the last such venture we undertake that results in the loss of human lives. Jared Diamond can probably tell us a few things about what happens to societies that let their environs go to the dogs. We can see it happening now in Darfur.
Conservatives want the working class to just deal with it as our economy moves from manufacturing to service so if we move from non-renewable to renewable energy sources, McIlheran and his ilk can just deal with it. It's a big shit sandwich and we're all going to have to take a bite.
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