La Nina Is a Prude

Most people think environmental issues are sexy. They bring to mind loafing trustafarians pitted against big-bellied oilmen , eco-socialists fighting heartless developers, the humble Lorax versus the callous forces of capitalism and greed.

Green issues are supposed to involve lots of drama, lots of politics, lots of ideology. And, indeed, there are some truly flashy environmental debates.

When a ski resort expands into a neighboring wilderness, or when ranchers use a pesticide that harms an endangered fish, expect a fierce showdown involving property rights, the role of government, and the relationship between humans and nature. Someone might even chain himself to a tree.

But there are other types of environmental issues that aren't sexy at all. So-called "primary" environmental matters involve treating the environment such that it can sustain life for everyone. And they are strictly non-political. How much mercury can we allow in our drinking water? What level of biodiversity is required to ensure a stable food supply?

In these cases, the only mystery is how to achieve certain obvious goals (for example, potable water for everyone) given the immediate facts of politics at hand. It's all less sexy than the Lerner Party Space.

Climate change, I contend, is very much one of these primary prudes. Sure, it gets people going (the Atlantic Ocean lapping up against Central Park, new hideous diseases let loose in the jungles of Paraguay), but deep down inside, it wants to be back in the lab, hunched over a computer model and eating Doritos from the bag, which is why climate change is blushing with all this recent attention.

With two new books, a recent cover story in Time, and a slew of recent television commercials, global warming (in Newsweek's words) is "the Topic du Jour." Is global warming happening? Are humans the cause? What will happen if climate change occurs? Scientists now have the answers to these questions. Now that the science is clear, there isn't that much more to say. There is nothing sexy here. There is no debate to have. Unless, of course, you're a member of the right-wing commentariat.

In the face of an emerging scientific consensus on climate change (the planet is cooking, we're cooking it, this is likely a bad thing), conservative pundits are working hard to politicize this fundamentally apolitical debate.

The "loose scientific consensus," they allege, is really nothing more than collectivist ideology dressed up as hard facts. As the world is in a panic to curtail emissions, the staff of the National Review is keeping its feet on the ground, staying critical, and keeping the sober global warming "debate" alive.

George Will, Robert Novak, Matthew Parris, and Charles Moore added a fresh round of this nonsense in recent weeks via op-eds still circulating the conservative blogosphere.

Of the scientific consensus, Moore wrote: "I often hear in what they say not the voice of science itself, but of the bad politics, thinly disguised by a white coat."

Novak said: "The dispute over whether the U.S. government should regulate emissions of greenhouse gases is at heart political. The scientists are divided, and [environmentalists] are using political tactics to try to prevail."

Yet this "issue" is only political because Novak and others are working hard to make it so. A "debate" about climate change is like a public fight about mercury pollution.

If scientists tell us we are harming the planet to everyone's likely detriment, the only question is how best to stop. There just isn't that much for journalists to say.

Yet, Novak might argue, if there really is some uncertainty within the scientific community, why is it only the right that is politicizing science?

I can't criticize conservatives by assuming the very scientific truth they dispute. The difference between right-wing and left-wing commentary on global warming is here: where left and center defer to the folks with the white lab coats, right-wingers go looking for a fight.

It, again, makes no more sense than debating mercury pollution. Perhaps Will and company should save their vitriol for arguments about whales. La Nina, it seems, keeps her shirt on.

The author is a Columbia College junior majoring in philosophy.