Lomborg: The Climate-Industrial Complex

An important op-ed in the WSJ today from Bjorn Lomborg, a European social scientist despised by many (unfortunately) for his sobriety on climate change policy. He cleverly sees a broad parallel between current impetus on climate change and the “military-industrial complex” that arose during the Cold War. As President Eisenhower famously warned, that relationship created a “disastrous potential of misplaced power,” and required an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” to keep it in check. In Lomborg’s piece, you’ll see many of the concerns we’ve raised regarding the momentum behind climate change policy, with some supporting anecdotes:

• Political agency risk  
• Profiteering and rent seeking
• Enron as the poster child of “regulatory business”

Lomborg also cites research that questions the all to frequent “green collar jobs” mantra. As we’ve pointed out, the important question is what the net effect on employment is (green collar jobs created less other collar jobs lost). He concludes, ”[T]he partnership among self-interested businesses, grandstanding politicians and alarmist campaigners is an unholy alliance.” 

Of course, Lomborg is probably well aware that his arguments will do little to sway true believers on either side of the issue. In fact, it’s likely to have the opposite effect, as research into political beliefs demonstrates:

…when partisans face threatening information, not only are they likely to “reason” to emotionally biased conclusions, but we can trace their neural footprints as they do it.

When confronted with potentially troubling political information, a network of neurons becomes active that produces distress…

The brain registers the conflict between data and desire and begins to search for ways to turn off the spigot of unpleasant emotion…

Not only did the brain manage to shut down distress through faulty reasoning, but it did so quickly… The neural circuits charged with regulation of emotional states seemed to recruit beliefs that eliminated the distress and conflict partisans had experienced when they confronted unpleasant realities. And this all seemed to happen with little involvement of the neural circuits normally involved in reasoning.

…Once partisans had found a way to reason to false conclusions, not only did neural circuits involved in negative emotions turn off, but circuits involved in positive emotions turned on. The partisan brain didn’t seem satisfied in just feeling better. It worked overtime to feel good, activating reward circuits that give partisans a jolt of positive reinforcement for their biased reasoning.

Here’s a challenge to climate skeptics reading (and writing!) this post – try to avoid the partisan rationalization trap! Is climate change worth worrying about? You bet. In fact, what we like about Lomborg is his centrism and sobriety. Yes, he’s a reviled scourge of climate change proponents, and a comforting presence to skeptics and deniers. But if the latter read him more carefully, he would probably be loved by no one – which makes him all the more compelling, in our view.

URLs:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124286145192740987.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/2007/08/the_political_brain_by_drew_westen.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY