Putting the "Conserve" Back Into "Conservative"

During my freshman year at BYU, a conservative friend of mine tried to explain to me why recycling, and caring for the environment in general, were scripturally unsound practices. He cited the LDS Doctrine and Covenants Section 59 verses 16 to 19, which, in a nutshell, indicate that the Lord provided all of the natural things on the earth “for benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart; yea, for food and raiment.” My friend’s attitude was that if the earth and all the things on it are for our benefit, why bother to protect the environment? He conveniently left out the next verse, which states, “for unto this end were they made to be used, with judgment, not to excess, neither by extortion.” The scripture is clear: we are to be wise and reasonable stewards of our natural resources. George Handley, a professor at BYU, outlined several fundamental principles of environmental stewardship in LDS belief, which I won’t go into here, but are worth reviewing. Unfortunately, far too many people who claim to be Christians have do not feel a duty to care for and protect the earth.

Kudos to Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney - And I Mean It!

On August 18, Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman Tweeted, "To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy." With that short statement, Mr. Huntsman proved himself one of the few reasonable figures in the Republican Party. While most of the Republican field has run away from previously stated positions affirming climate change (or simply continuing their nonsensical denial of the science) it was incredibly refreshing to hear this kind of language from Huntsman. In a previous post, I outlined the clear positions of several of the most important scientific organizations in the U.S., which showed that there is a scientific consensus on global warming- that it is happening and is largely being caused by human activity. If you have not read the statements of these organizations -- the consensus statements of actual climate scientists -- you are depriving yourself of essential primary source information about an issue that has been spun and distorted by the media and particularly by right-wing commentators. That Huntsman has stuck to his belief in climate change despite the strong global warming denialist crosswinds that have overtaken the GOP in the past couple of years shows immense intellectual honesty and fortitude.

Here's an example of a prominent Republican without such intellectual honesty.


Gingrich now claims he regrets appearing in that ad and has been walking back his older statements in order to appease a Republican base that believes that all of the world's climate scientists involved in a great hoax.

An Act with a Vision for the Future

Even prior to its enactment, there has been much heated opposition to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a.k.a. President Obama's economic stimulus plan. Opponents have tried to smear it as a bill laden with earmarks (which is not true) that wasted money on pointless projects. Opponents have also (correctly) pointed out that it is mostly paid with borrowed money (I'll come to that later). However, the Recovery Act has gone further than any prior piece of legislation in the past half century in revolutionizing antiquated areas of our economy. And it truly has kept the economy from the brink of depression.

Perhaps the keystone effort of the stimulus plan was its investment in a variety of projects that will make America more energy efficient and less dependent on carbon fuels (and the despotic regimes that supply us with them.) One of my key concerns in the 2008 Presidential Election was selecting a candidate who would make energy independence their priority. This act was a big step in the right direction for a green energy economy and the investments it makes in new technologies has the potential to create tens of millions of jobs.

The notion that private corporations are primarily interested in the short term (to satisfy shareholders) and do not invest nearly enough in research and development that would primarily provide benefits in the long run is a well-established economic idea. Some of the most important inventions of the past 100 years, that are the backbone of today's economy, have been supported by government-funded research. The cellular phone, computers, the Internet, and GPS are but a few of the most important inventions that have come about in large part due to research performed by U.S. taxpayer-funded scientists and engineers. Corporate America's fiercest foreign competition significantly benefits from foreign government-sponsored research and development. A good example of this is Airbus, which is a consortium of French, British, German, and Spanish aerospace companies, that have received very heavy investment from their respective governments. As a result of all of the R&D and other investment European taxpayers made into Airbus, that company has now surpassed Boeing as the world's largest supplier of commercial airliners and has provided an incredible amount of high tech jobs to those countries. Perhaps the most important idea I learned in studying economics is the fact that more than anything else, new technology drives economic growth. Many if not most of the jobs lost during the Great Recession are not coming back. The way to get America back on its feet is to develop the technologies that will be the backbone of the future economy. We have plenty of tough competition. Europe, China, and India all invest a significant amount of money in research and development in support of their key industries. If America wants to lead in and reap the benefits of the future global economy, we must ensure we invest money into today's research that will be tomorrow's must-have technology. I cannot think of a better use of my tax dollars.

So in returning to the Recovery Act, a recent TIME Magazine article gave an impressive summary of what types of energy investments the Recovery Act is making.

The investments extend all along the food chain. A brave new world of electric cars powered by coal plants could be dirtier than the oil-soaked status quo, so the stimulus includes an unheard-of $3.4 billion for clean-coal projects aiming to sequester or reuse carbon. There are also lucrative loan guarantees for constructing the first American nuclear plants in three decades. And after the credit crunch froze financing for green energy, stimulus cash has fueled a comeback, putting the U.S. on track to exceed Obama's goal of doubling renewable power by 2012. The wind industry added a record 10,000 megawatts in 2009. The stimulus is also supporting the nation's largest photovoltaic solar plant, in Florida, and what will be the world's two largest solar thermal plants, in Arizona and California, plus thousands of solar installations on homes and buildings.

The stimulus is helping scores of manufacturers of wind turbines and solar products expand as well, but today's grid can only handle so much wind and solar. A key problem is connecting remote wind farms to population centers, so there are billions of dollars for new transmission lines. Then there is the need to find storage capacity for when it isn't windy or sunny outside. The current grid is like a phone system without voice mail, a just-in-time network where power is wasted if it doesn't reach a user the moment it's generated. That's why the Recovery Act is funding dozens of smart-grid approaches.

The Recovery Act's clean-energy push is designed not only to reduce our old economy dependence on fossil fuels that broil the planet, blacken the Gulf and strengthen foreign petro-thugs but also to avoid replacing it with a new economy that is just as dependent on foreign countries for technology and manufacturing. Last year, exactly two U.S. factories made advanced batteries for electric vehicles. The stimulus will create 30 new ones, expanding U.S. production capacity from 1% of the global market to 20%, supporting half a million plug-ins and hybrids. The idea is as old as land-grant colleges: to use tax dollars as an engine of innovation.

Recovery Act money was also used as follows:

- Tax cuts for 95% of working Americans (Federal taxes now are at the lowest rates they've been in over 50 years for middle class Americans, so please remind me what Tea Partiers are complaining about again?)
- Bailed out most state governments to avoid laying off hundreds of thousands of school teachers, police officers, fire fighters, and other state and local officials.
- Provided record amounts of unemployment benefits to record numbers of unemployed workers.
- Funded upgrades to roads, bridges (recall the Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapse), schools, airports (ever flown through JFK?), military bases (recall reports about the decrepit Fort Bragg barracks, among others).
- Computerized paper health care records system (to reduce redundant tests and errors caused by doctors with bad handwriting).
- Invested in public transportation, including high speed rails.

This act provided for a smart balance of near-term projects to help prevent the economy from suffering a complete and utter collapse while assisting those most vulnerable in the Great Recession (the unemployed) along with long-term investment that would lay the groundwork for our future economy. As Kristin Mayes, the Republican chair of Arizona's utility commission stated, "It will leverage a very different energy future... it really moves us toward a tipping point." As an older post pointed out, there are key economic indicators that indicate we have stepped back from the brink and are moving in the right direction.

Despite all of the carping by the Tea Party types about the federal deficit and its contribution from the Recovery Act, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has indicated that the Bush tax cuts are the single biggest contributor to the structural deficit. (Extending the Bush tax cuts would add $2.3 trillion to the 2018 debt. I really hate the term "Bush tax cut" because they really were not tax cuts, but tax deferrals as they were paid for with credit. Congress and former President Bush essentially extended America a loan that would need to be paid for by our children.) The next biggest contributor to the long-term deficit are the two current wars. While the Bush Administration initially estimated that the Iraq War's cost would be less than $100 billion, latest estimates are that it will be over $3 trillion. Has the Recovery Act contributed to the deficit? Of course it has. However, a concept that was taught to me by multiple economics professors at the not-at-all-liberal Brigham Young University was that truly the only time deficit spending by a government is warranted is in the case of a severe economic recession (which we were in), in order to stimulate the economy. These not-at-all-liberal BYU economics professors also supported a volume of economic data and research that indicates such stimulus spending helped the economy recover during the Great Depression.

So the next time a FOX News pundit laments how your tax dollars were completely wasted in the "stimulus act" and that it had no net affect, you'll know their argument is hogwash.

Climate Change is Happening

Last February, I experienced "snowmageddon" on the East Coast. I recall during that time reading a news article about some conservative politicians' gleeful mocking of former Vice President Al Gore and the concept of global warming; they claimed that the blizzards and record snowfalls were evidence that global warming does not exist. Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and his family built an igloo on the Washington Mall and placed in front of it a cardboard sign that read, "Al Gore's new home," and "honk if you [heart] global warming." Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina tweeted that day, "it's going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries 'uncle.'" However, ignorance must truly be bliss for these senators. As Think Progress pointed out, "scientists have been warning for decades that global warming would increase the severity of winter storms." These Republican senators' actions further demonstrate their myopia in their focus on a single weather event (or 2 weather events) and slightly colder than normal temperatures over a short period for a very small geographic area (compared to the entire planet).

The bottom line is that no single weather event, including a hot spell or a cold spell are evidence supporting or contradicting the theory of global warming. Global warming adherents would be making a similarly flawed argument if they indicated that the recent heat wave in the East Coast, by itself, was evidence of the existence of global warming.

However, scientists have just reported that the first six months of 2010 have been the warmest on record, and that 2010 is on track to become the hottest year since global average temperature records were kept. In seeking evidence for or against global warming, scientists look at trends, not single data points. They examine global temperatures, not just the weather in the U.S. (as ethnocentrists Inhofe and DeMint apparently enjoy doing). The science of greenhouse gases is very well established, especially with respect to carbon dioxide. There is no significant dissent within the relevant scientific community of carbon dioxide's property as a heat-trapping gas.

Since I am not a climate scientist, or any type of scientist, I kindly refer you to the official statements and consensus opinions of the most distinguished and relevant scientific bodies in America:

Most US climate scientists belong to the American Geophysical Union. Their statement indicates that "the Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and warming..." and that the warming is "best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century."

The American Meteorological Society's statement also affirms that global warming is occurring and that it is due to human activity.

The US National Academy of Science, which was established by Congress to provide scientific advice to Congress and is comprised of the most distinguished scientists in the country, also published a statement affirming the existence of climate change. It concludes that "emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels have ushered in a new epoch where human activities will largely determine the evolution of Earth's climate," and that "emissions reductions larger than about 80 [percent]... are required to approximately stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations for a century or so."

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has issued a number of statements, including this one, which indicates that,

The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide-- derived mostly from the human activities of fossil-fuel burning and deforestation... is higher than it has been for at least the past 650,000 years... Thousands of respected scientists at an array of institutions worldwide agree that major health and economic impacts are likely unless we act now to slow greenhouse gas emissions.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, a joint statement of 18 different American scientific societies, whose scientists are involved in research relevant to climate change and its effects, produced this consensus statement, that "observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver."

Virtually every relevant authoritative scientific organization in the country has demonstrated its consensus with the global climate science community that global warming is occurring, that it is due to human activity, and that if we do not curtail our greenhouse gas emissions, we will probably experience drastic changes in our environment with adverse impacts on human health and prosperity. The mainstream media, which generally seeks to capitalize on any controversy by inflating it in order to increase their ratings, gives climate skeptics ample opportunity to confuse the public by allowing them to make statements unsubstantiated by climate scientists. The result has been a confounded and divided public on the issue, with politicians using it as a political football rather than focusing on the facts.

For those who are interested in seeing some of the data with their own eyes, the following are links to measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature:

Carbon Dioxide Measurements (the ice core records are particularly interesting)

Global Temperature Data

FAQ on Global Warming by the National Climate Data Center

LDS Church Going Green

Lest one thinks being environmentally-conscious is only a "liberal" idea, the Church recently announced a pilot program where the roofs of new chapels are fitted with solar panels. In announcing the program, Bishop H. David Burton of the Presiding Bishopric stated, “for decades we have looked for innovative ways to use natural resources in our meetinghouses that reflect our commitment as wise stewards of God’s creations.” Furthermore, the Church has indicated their estimation that this program will save money in the long run, proving that being environmentally conscious is also in our economic interest. In addition to the solar panels, the new earth-friendly design includes, "high efficiency heating and cooling system that can interface with the solar power equipment, landscaping designs and plumbing fixtures that cut water use by more than 50 percent, and Low-E Solarban 70 windows that block 78 percent of the sun’s heat energy. "

I've always felt that being good stewards of the environment was a Christian duty, and particularly an LDS duty. I recall one particular conservative friend from BYU who would always point to Doctrine and Covenants Section 59, verses 18-20 as evidence that humans could do whatever they wanted to the earth and to support his belief that environmental protection laws were not appropriate. The funny thing is that verse 20 states that our use of the earth must be done "with judgment, not to excess, neither by extortion," a point my conservative friend conveniently glossed over.

In speaking about our stewardship over our planet, President Gordon B. Hinckley once stated, "This earth is [God's] creation. When we make it ugly, we offend Him."