Any Port in a Storm

Deranged ersatz theologean Michael Novak has a truly inspired argument about why the US shouldn't take the lead in tackling global warming even though we're the ones using the lion's share of the energy:

A reader wrote to Jonah the other day that Americans constitute 5 % of the world's population but use 25% of the world's energy. Another way to look at it is to ask, What is energy? It used to be the backs of humans and animals. Then it was water wheels and wind mills. Surely, America today does not use a large proportion of the world's horse power, oxen power, and other old-fashioned sources of energy. Today, when we say "energy," we usually mean gasoline for the combustion engine, nuclear power, electricity, the use of natural gas, modern sources like that. The United States pioneered in virtually every source of what in the modern world counts as energy. You might say we invented nearly 100 % of it, and have already shared about 75% of it with others. Not as good as we might yet do (as China and India become the world's largest users of modern energy), but pretty darn good, don't you think?

Seriously. People publish articles this guy writes. The 25 percent calculation is off-base because it doesn't count oxen?

It's interesting how money impacts political ideas. One doubts that any of these various rightwingers were actually humming along and then got bribed by energy companies to come up with the outlandish conservative arguments you here on this score. Rather, the money's just sort of out there ready to flow to individuals who make outlandish arguments and to publications and institutions that associate themselves with such people and such arguments. Under the circumstances, the human mind proves remarkably supple and creative. Next thing you know, the Bangladeshis are all in our debt for generously allowing them to burn gasoline so who cares if they wind up drowning when the glaciers melt.

Comments

I imagine that there's a variety of ways that hoors and money get together.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | February 12, 2007 9:21 AM

I'd also be pretty curious about the claim that we invented and/or pioneered "nearlly 100%" of modern energy techniques. That sounds suspicsciouly like something he just pulled out of his ass with no justification at all.

Posted by Matt (a different one) | February 12, 2007 9:21 AM

cf. It's good to own the magazine.

Posted by otto | February 12, 2007 9:35 AM

Yes, the notion that the US pioneered the combustion engine is ridiculous, it was being developed concurrently is a number of nations. The diesel engine, for instance was developed in France and Germany.

Posted by GPS | February 12, 2007 9:37 AM

Never mind that most of that animal and person energy comes from an agricultural system that American policy has ensured requires lots and lots of oil inputs.

Posted by Josh | February 12, 2007 9:38 AM

Electrical battery - Volta (Italian), generator - Faraday (English); Steam engine - Savery (English), improved by Newcomen (English), Watt (Scots), applied to vehicles - Trevithick (English), Stephenson (Scots); Internal combustion engine: four stroke - Daimler (German), two stroke - Benz (German), Diesel - Diesel (Austrian).

I've seen a better argument that Al Gore invented the internet.

Posted by chris y | February 12, 2007 9:38 AM

I'd also be pretty curious about the claim that we invented and/or pioneered "nearlly 100%" of modern energy techniques.

Clearly, it's going to depend on how you count. The pioneering work in nuclear power was mostly done on American soil, with American research dollars, but largely by European emigrés. I have no idea who developed the current state of the art in nuclear power plants, but my guess would be that this was done in France or Japan where they use lots of nuclear power.

The refining of petroleum into gasoline is, I believe, a bona fide American invention. Pennsylvania used to be the center of the world's oil industry. Alternating Current electricity is also an American invension.

On the other hand, to this day the largest source of electricity generation is coal, which is British, right?

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | February 12, 2007 9:40 AM

There's something... original about Novak's argument here. It's notable that he doesn't actually deny that global warming is taking place, or that we're mostly responsible for it. But somehow... a gap has opened up between "responsible for it" and "ought to do something about it". That's actually innovative, morality-wise.

Posted by MattF | February 12, 2007 9:41 AM

Also, the idea that we don't need to do more because what we're already doing is "pretty darn good" doesn't seem exactly Biblical.

Posted by delicious pundit | February 12, 2007 9:44 AM

Do you trust Wikipedia? If so, coal has been in use since the Bronze Age and, as you might expect, the Chinese were in on the ground floor, but in America it was first used by the (fairly) recent Aztecs.

Posted by chris y | February 12, 2007 9:55 AM

Money is a factor for some of the right-wingers in this debate, but for many, the main sentiment is always "Responsibility is only for other people."

This sentiment pervades so much of the right-wing agenda: it's about punishing anyone and everyone else -- from immigrants to unwed mothers, from sexually active teenagers to foreigners who object to what the U.S. is doing to their countries -- while viciously fighting any suggestion that they should inconvenience themselves to improve the state of the world.

Over and over again, they refuse to contemplate any sort of change. Other people must pay, other people must adapt, other people must suffer, because the right-wingers can't conceive of accepting any obligation themselves. It's a common theme in everything they do...and no matter how bad things get, from Iraq to environmental disasters, they'll keep singing the same tune.

Posted by Jim Gardner | February 12, 2007 10:04 AM

Alternating Current electricity is also an American invension.

Invented by Tesla, who was in America, but was of course born in the Austrian Empire (Serbia or Croatia I believe).

Posted by right | February 12, 2007 10:07 AM

Actually, let's think about this. If I plow my field with a tractor, and my neighbor plows his field with an ox, why am I the only one using "energy"?

Also, when tallying up greenhouse gas emissions, we obviously count the greenhouse gasses emitted by my tractor. But do the calculations of emissions of greenhouse gasses include the greenhouse gasses emitted by my neighbor's ox?

Just curious.

Posted by Al | February 12, 2007 10:21 AM

Novak doesn't actually make an argument that we needn't do anything about it. His piece was argument-free.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | February 12, 2007 10:36 AM

Al, that's pretty humorous stuff. But surely you're smart enough to answer at least the first of your rhetorical questions.

Posted by Steve | February 12, 2007 10:41 AM

I really don't understand why third world countries aren't limited by kyoto. To make it fair, get them to sign something now that puts limits on them once they reach a per capita gdp comparable to the West, which should happen a little bit sooner thanks to kyoto's gdp growth reducing effects on the west.

Posted by pjgoober | February 12, 2007 10:42 AM

Nice post Matt. Has anyone written a good plan for creating a liberal think-tank-wonk-welfare-superstructure? It'd be interesting to read and we'll need a plan to get some money out of Soros or whoever to get it started.

Posted by Meh | February 12, 2007 10:58 AM

I was contemplating responding to Al's typically inane post (Al, the relevant energy is that which contributes towards global warming. Consider the citations provided here). While poking about idly for links, I came across an interesting factoid. How many horsepower is a horse, do you suppose? See here.

Posted by David Houghton | February 12, 2007 11:00 AM

Animals are a definite contributor to atmospheric methane. Methane currently has a radiative forcing of around .5W/m-2. There are, in fact, scientists working on additives to animal feed that will help our dumb chums chew their cud less biliously.

Al, being the good troll that he is, has to walk the cognitive dissonance rich field of blaming the cow and not blaming the coal plant for Global Warming. All without acknowledging that a) Global Warming is real and b) that men are the chief contributors to that. Such is the pitiful lot of the troll. I couldn't sleep if I had to spout such bilge as Al does.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | February 12, 2007 11:18 AM

Oxen -- remind me what its symbol is on the periodic table?

Posted by Bart Acocella | February 12, 2007 11:28 AM

Any such suggestion that the unequal consumption of natural resources, including the Earth's energy resources, is morally problematic raises deep questions of equality that might turn out to be more than most liberals really want to face.

How often have we seen noted soi-disant liberals comment that equality is not an important value for them, in a context that strongly implied they meant to reject every flavor of economic egalitarianism?

In the context, for instance, of a declaration in favor of a well-knit social safety net, but against any interference with capitalism beyond that aimed specially at the achievement of greater economic equality of any sort?

Against serious efforts toward equality of educational opportunity, for instance, if justified solely by the notion that unequal opportunity is unjust in itself? Or against efforts to lessen either the income gap between the best and worst paid or the wealth gap between the richest and the poorest, if undertaken solely for the reason that these gaps are unjust in themselves.

But if that is so, where is the basis for the complaint about resources? Whence the idea that such unequal benefit from the Earth's resources is wrong, if not the idea that benefits ought to be in some sense in some measure more equal? If not that economic inequality of some sort and beyond some degree - of whatever sorts and degress lead to that - is wrong?

Posted by Gaius Sempronius Gracchus | February 12, 2007 11:43 AM

To Gaius,

For most liberals the "basis for the complaint about resources" isn't egalitarian justice. It's about moral responsibility--that those who pollute the most are most obligated to mitigate pollution.

Presumably, if the current inequality in resource usage had no bearing on the level of world pollution, then for many liberals inequality per se would not be a problem.

Posted by Mark | February 12, 2007 11:58 AM

Good listing of other countries' contribution. I suspect you did far more research into this than Novak, even if it only took you 5 minutes on Google! Maybe you could post that to the original article's site? Nothing like showing up his lazy idiocy under his own article!

And there's his idea that the only energy that counts is the one we use most (oil), though of course we OWN very little of it. Coal, nuclear, wind, solar, steam-- these are in use everywhere else. But you know, because we never take the train, I guess, Trevithick actually inventing the first railroad train and thus revolutionizing transit -- in England-- doesn't count.

Posted by lister | February 12, 2007 12:06 PM

Mr Novak make important point. We foreigners are are insufficiently grateful for everything America does for us.

As great sage, Jonah Goldberg teaches:

"It's not like these greenhouse gasses don't have a context. The American economy sustains the planet, pulls millions out of poverty, keeps the sea channels open, develops most of the medical breakthroughs, provides most of the funding for international institutions (including the finger-waggers at the UN's environmental divisions), offers the best higher education to the world's leaders, and generally provides a blanket of security for much of the planet."

On behalf of the world, I'd like to apologise to the American people. I can also officially confirm that all important inventions - from wheel onwards - are yours and yours alone.

Posted by Ban Ki-moon - SG, United Nations | February 12, 2007 12:23 PM

I just find it unfathomably ridiculous if one thinks that 'cui bono' type reason is employed that this factor somehow is bad for the anti global warming types. Another episode in the human comedy.

Posted by j mct | February 12, 2007 1:04 PM

Aside from errors of fact, the aw-shucks diction is awful.
Or maybe it's an attempt at dialect humor?
"Purty good."

Posted by joel hanes | February 12, 2007 1:29 PM

This is the big point:

Rather, the money's just sort of out there ready to flow to individuals who make outlandish arguments and to publications and institutions that associate themselves with such people and such arguments.

It's a kind of weird Mandevillian inversion. No-one ever went hungry for espousing morally and intellectually atrocious right-wing ideas: wingnutterie always finds a patron, because fools and rogues hate solitude.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | February 12, 2007 1:43 PM

Al, being the good troll that he is, has to walk the cognitive dissonance rich field of blaming the cow and not blaming the coal plant for Global Warming. All without acknowledging that a) Global Warming is real and b) that men are the chief contributors to that.

"A" is definitely true, at least in the short term. It's likely true in the longer term, too, since it appears we're still (thank God) on the upward slope (temperature-wise) of an inter-glacial period.

But it has not been verified that human beings are the "chief" contributors to global warming, however. Solar activity has been the chief contributor to the earth's past warm-ups, and may be the "chief" culprit this time around, as well.

Posted by Heath | February 12, 2007 1:47 PM

Al, being the good troll that he is, has to walk the cognitive dissonance rich field of blaming the cow and not blaming the coal plant for Global Warming.

We probably have more cows than anyone else, as well.

Posted by Jose Padilla | February 12, 2007 2:48 PM

Aktually, is Rooshia which is inventing all modern technogy to use energy. Fourtunately for U.S., since inventor must pay for own and extranational negative externalities.

Posted by Footloose | February 12, 2007 2:50 PM

Re: right-wingers: Over and over again, they refuse to contemplate any sort of change.

That's kind of the textbook definition of "conservative," isn't it? They are just living up to their name ...

Posted by josephdietrich | February 12, 2007 3:18 PM

I think some foreigners might be using our baseball and teevee, too. We ought to at least charge them for this.

Posted by Alan in SF | February 12, 2007 6:51 PM

I'm frequently shocked at the shallowness of what well-regarded intellectuals say when they put their hand to blogging. Once I read Richard Posner write on a blog that the purpose of democracy is to give uneducated, inarticulate people the right to express their political opinions without having to justify them to people who actually know something about the issues. To give a left-wing example I've read some really lame arguments in Edward Said columns before he died. It was around that time that I started to realize that 95% of the well-known intellectuals in the world say and write their share of hare-brained things in casual conversation and blogs. Often much more hare-brained than your average-slob blog post.

Posted by Jeremiah J. | February 12, 2007 7:23 PM

Heath, there's been no increase in insolation since 1950. The "cosmic ray" gag is empty: the record is flat. So, quite simply, you're wrong and if you keep repeating your talking points, you're a doodoo head.

As for the glacial gag, grid willing, you're not that stupid.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | February 12, 2007 7:30 PM

I have found this nugget while checking on methane emissions of cow on the internet:

Each cow emits 200 to 400 quarts of methane gas per day, or 50 million metric tons per year.

Exercise: what is the mass of a quart of methane:

ca. 300 quarts per day make ca. 100,000 quarts per year, with the mass of 50,000,000 tons, so one quart has the mass of 500 tons.

Posted by piotr | February 13, 2007 3:27 AM

Deranged ersatz theologean Michael Novak

When I was a grad student at Stanford in the late 60's, I audited a popular course on religion given by Novak. It was off-the-wall liberal, in tune with the radical chic atmosphere then prevailing at Stanford. I thought him a fraud then. Now one finds him working the other side of the street.

Posted by bob h | February 13, 2007 7:12 AM

Why does using 25% of the world's energy directly imply creating 25% of the world's pollution? It's a proxy, sure, but not that good of one. China's coal plants are famously smoggy, whereas Japan relies on nuclear power. One clearly causes more global warming than the other.

Posted by gu | February 13, 2007 9:27 PM