Essay by Eric Worrall
Swedish Economist John Gustavsson explaining his vision of Conservative climate action, though he avoids the obvious question.
A Conservative Approach to Climate Change
There are practical alternatives to forcing people to give up their way of life.John Gustavsson
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Instead, climate change needs conservative solutions. Modern environmentalism is all too willing to toss aside people’s traditions, habits, and lifestyles for the “greater good.”
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Fortunately there are options—backed by science and already in use in some places—that allow us to combat climate change without asking anyone to eat bugs, go vegan, or stop flying.
First, there’s geoengineering. This term refers to a set of technologies that artificially change the environment by, for example, lowering temperatures or creating rain. One of the best-known examples is cloud seeding, a technology to create artificial rain clouds and prevent droughts. It is already being used in the United Arab Emirates.
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Solar radiation management is another class of geoengineering technologies aimed at directly reducing global temperatures. The most famous and also most maligned method is the use of stratospheric aerosols. These aerosols cool the earth in a manner similar to a volcanic eruption: …
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Secondly, there is carbon capture, which is technically a subset of geoengineering. Carbon capture takes many forms, including planting more trees to bind more carbon, but tree planting clearly won’t be enough, especially as we are bound to have to cut down more trees in the future to replace more environmentally harmful building materials and fuel sources. …
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Third, we have genetically modified organisms (GMOs).This is another technology vilified for no good reason. Nuclear power, stratospheric aerosols, carbon capture, and GMOs: None of them have been proven to be dangerous, all of them have huge (and in the case of nuclear and GMOs, proven) potential to stop or mitigate the impact of climate change, …
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Finally, we need a harm reduction approach. If we’re going to ask people to make lifestyle changes, it’s better to steer them away from the worst options toward the less bad ones—rather than pursuing unattainable perfection.
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John Gustavsson describes himself as a Never Trump conservative on his twitter profile. The anti-Trump position is unsurprising, most European “conservatives” would be considered moderate Democrats in the USA, if such people still exist.
The obvious question Gustavsson fails to ask is, is any of this necessary? There is zero evidence rising CO2 is causing harm.
Having said that, I’m not totally against all forms of “climate action” – so long as it doesn’t cost me anything. For example, I would be completely fine with greens embracing nuclear power, providing my power bills and taxes don’t go up. I could imagine one day driving an EV, providing range goes up, and the cost, recharge time and risk of spontaneous combustion goes down.
Gustavsson needs to do a little more research on some of his other ideas.
