Or so it seems judging by the behavior of the radically green religious. Richard Tol is a fairly mainstream English environmental economist who has made the mistake of accurately and reasonably estimating both the damage and costs of preventing AGW which shows much of today's AGW policy to be objectively insane. The Gaians hate him for blaspheming their God.
We recently replaced our audio system with a Bluetooth one. When my daughter asked how it worked, the best I could offer was “it’s magic”. For most of us, it does not matter that we do not know how our smartphone works. We know what it is supposed to do. We know when it does not work. We know how to read online reviews. We rely on experts, but we know how to tell a reliable one from a charlatan.
Not so in environmental policy. Experts make predictions of the future that are hard to verify. Indeed, public policy advice is full of self-defeating prophesies. Bad things will happen if we don’t change our ways. We often act on such information, and thus deny ourselves the opportunity to check whether the prediction was accurate. We trust the expert, take her word as gospel.
The Church held sway over what is right and wrong for long after the Enlightenment, but it has been losing terrain. Others have stepped in to fill the moral vacuum. The environmental movement is one. There sure are environmental problems that should be solved, but some environmental organizations take it one step further. On offer are guidance how to live your life, a tribe to belong to, a feeling of superiority over outsiders, and even a looming Armageddon, lest we atone for our sins, in the shape of climate change.
Environmental scientists are cast in the role of priests, the trust in their narrow expertise extended to other areas of fact and value. Most scientists don’t like that. Some quite enjoy it. The concept of planetary boundaries seems to be designed to make environmental scientists the final arbiters in politics, much like the Pope was once in Europe and the Guardian Council is in Iran.
Religion brings with it unbelievers, apostates, and radicals. The debate on climate policy has long been polarized. Asking an utterly sensible question – which of the many options is the best course of action – is met with howls of derision from both sides. Some protest the idea of taking climate change at all serious. Others are convinced that the maximum action is not enough.
Polarization is not conducive to sound policy. In Europe, the alarmed have the upper hand, climate policy is hardly scrutinized, and special interest groups are gorging on subsidies and rents. Anyone who questions this is put on par with those who deny the Holocaust. The consensus police patrol the media to isolate, ridicule and smear anyone who dares to raise a question. The Royal Observatory and the London School of Economics employ people, Ken Rice and Bob Ward, whose day job it is, or so it seems, to attack others for their climate heresy.
In particular read the examples he links to. At some point liberals need to stop being "good liberals" and reject the radical hatred and propaganda in their midst.
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