Stewed

The Week's William Falk uses the common metaphor of the frog in the slowly warming pot of water to describe America's reaction to anthropogenic climate change. "My fellow frogs," he asks, "have you noticed that the water in this pot is getting awfully warm?"

I think that's not really the right question. But it is a pithy one, and that makes it perfect for closing an editorial. But the problem isn't that people don't really have an idea of what's going on. Rather, the problem is twofold. Fold one is a deep lack of social trust in the United States. Once the whole concept of anthropogenic climate change became partisan, one may as well have set the status quo in concrete, because it isn't going anywhere soon. Fold two is the price tag, and who's going to pay it. The climate may be a matter of pay me now, or pay me later, but to someone who's convinced that they're too broke to part with a dime of what they have, any amount at any time is simply too much. And given that the United States is a reasonably representative government, without a pretty good-sized constituency willing to push for payment, electoral politics will always be an obstacle.

And so I suspect that the messaging, and the tactics, need to change. Large scale whaling isn't a thing of the past because of activism or editorializing. Rather, something better came along, namely petroleum products and vegetable oils. And if people really want the majority of the accessible oil that's in the ground to stay there, then something better is going to have to come along. Granted, the lack of social trust I spoke to earlier is going to be something of a barrier in that regard, but even die-hard partisans tend to find a way to come around to the new thing when the alternative is a lower standard of living. Which is, in the end, what this is all about. Right now, the green energy transition doesn't promise people a better standard of living than what they understand they have right now. And so they keep turning up the heat.