In his most recent column, Thomas Friedman marshals ideas from Ron Suskind, Dick Cheney and Cass Sunstein in order to call for action on climate change. By the end of his column, Friedman has reminded readers of decades of research showing that greenhouse gases make the planet warmer, with the "potential to unleash 'catastrophic' warming." Which risk should we take, he asks? Should we increase our energy efficiency and mitigation efforts? If we do that, he says, then even in the unlikely event that climate change does not become critical, "as a country we would be stronger, more innovative and more energy independent". Or should we risk not preparing? In that case, if climate change became a catastrophe, "life on this planet" would be "living hell."
Obviously, it seems, he's paying attention to science, and arguing for action on climate change. However, before we get to the crux of his argument in "Going Cheney on Climate", Friedman weaves his interpretation of ideas from not only Dick Cheney, but Ron Suskind, and Cass Sunstein. It's unclear why Friedman chose them -- perhaps he's using them to buoy his argument and convince the GOP or any remaining climate change deniers to support climate change action? Friedman habitually pulls a few (three, often) diverse things together to make a point. But by employing the ideas of Cheney, Suskind and Sunstein he muddles the facts of climate change. He also undermines what (I believe) is his intention to emphasize the imperative of action.
The "One Percent Doctrine" and Climate Change
Friedman refers to Ron Suskind's book "The One Percent Doctrine", titled after the following comment Dick Cheney made in 2001:
"If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response..."
Friedman appropriates Suskind/Cheney to implore us to treat climate change as if it were a threat as serious as Al Queda developing a nuclear weapon. But Suskind was actually extremely critical of Cheney and the "Cheney Doctrine". Why? Here's the rest of Cheney's comment:
"...It's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence...It's about our response""
Cheney defined a new world order and demanded action despite the evidence and analysis, as Suskind described:
"Justified or not, fact-based or not, 'our response' is what matters. As to 'evidence', the bar was set so low that the word itself almost didn't apply. If there was even a one percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction- and there has been a small probability of such an occurrence for some time -- the United States must now act as if it were a certainty. This was a mandate of extraordinary breadth..."
As Suskind wrote, Cheney set an incredibly low bar for completely turning around U.S. policy. Cheney's new doctrine meant extreme commitments from everyone, citizens, police, libraries, and at all levels of government -- the CIA, the Army, the NSA, the Treasury. The costs of this national commitment were stupendous. As Suskind wrote:
"all parties took a vow of sorts on Sept. 12...vowed to work each day and every night...They'd stop at nothing...Global accords on everything from greenhouse gases to international courts...now were seen as constraints...Such agreements were for lesser countries. They were to be shaken off...
Suskind criticized the Cheney Doctrine precisely because its framer willfully disregarded evidence about the negligible risks of Al Queda gaining nuclear capability. Cheney demanded a charge into war despite the evidence.
This is not the situation with climate change. Suskind's description of the Cheney Doctrine does not bolster what I take Friedman's argument to be. Unlike the incredibly weak to non-existent evidence that Al Queda would obtain and use nuclear arms, the evidence for climate change is incontrovertible. It is substantial despite the well funded, relentless opposition of climate change deniers. A cartoon in the Atlantic Constitution this week summarizes the folly of the deniers. The woman depicted in the cartoon, speaking sometime in the hellish future, says: "The North Pole melted. Polar bears are extinct. Asia's under water. Africa's a desert." The guy next to her responds: "Hey I never said the global warming hoax wasn't elaborate." But as Friedman seems to want to say, heeding these absurd protestations is to our detriment.
Yet Friedman obstructs his line of argument even further, because as Suskind noted, the Doctrine left no doubt about the administration's intention to not deal with climate change. According to Suskind the US took greenhouse gases off the negotiating table in deference to the pressing urgency of military action, military action that continues to this day.
Friends or Foes? Friedman's Folly
In addition to clouding his argument with Suskind and Cheney, Friedman pulls in Cass Sunstein, writing
"Sunstein wrote in his blog: 'According to the Precautionary Principle, it is appropriate to respond aggressively to low-probability, high-impact events -- such as climate change. Indeed, another vice president -- Al Gore -- can be understood to be arguing for a precautionary principle for climate change (though he believes that the chance of disaster is well over 1 percent)."
Again, Friedman misappropriates Cass Sunstein's arguments. Sunstein actually criticizes the Precautionary Principle, and by extension the Cheney Doctrine. According to Sunstein, the Precautionary Principle muddles and stalls appropriate action on climate change. This he spelled out in papers, articles, and books like Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle", and "Risk and Reason: Safety, Law, and the Environment", his 2002 book.
In his body of work, Sunstein uses social science research to show that individuals are susceptible to faulty conclusions based on irrational fear and errors in judgement like "availability heuristics". Sunstein argues that instead of the Precautionary Principle, the risks and benefits of action on suspected perils should be evaluated empirically. On global warming, he suggests incentives to motivate players to make choices to limit emissions. He suggests this as an alternative to regulation.
Take for instance, Sunstein's 2008 Boston Globe essay, Throwing Precaution to the Wind. He specifically used the example of Bush's Iraq War as a precautionary tale for dealing with global warming:
"The Bush administration justified the war on explicitly precautionary grounds - that even the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iraq was so threatening that it demanded action. Indeed, the idea of "preemptive war" articulated by President Bush is a kind of precautionary principle. The nation went to war on the chance that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But this precaution is imposing a heavy price and creating serious risks for the future."
Like Suskind, Sunstein is criticizing the Bush administration's flight to military action based on scanty evidence. Sunstein uses this to warn against regulation on climate change, saying that regulation can invoke unforeseen risks or even death. Banning DDT, he says here, and previously, caused deaths from malaria. Of course this argument is absolutely incorrect. Nevertheless Sunstein recruits it and others to warn people off applying the Precautionary Principle to climate change.
The "Cheney-Thing" on Climate - Something to Get Behind?
In the end, Friedman says:
"When I see a problem that has even a 1 percent probability of occurring and is "irreversible" and potentially "catastrophic," I buy insurance. That is what taking climate change seriously is all about.""
That seems reasonable until you pull in all the others. Cheney might use the one percent argument to go to war, but he did so to invoke fear in the American public in order to gain their support. Suskind did not support the Cheney Doctrine, because it wasn't based in evidence and fact. Sunstein also criticized the Cheney Doctrine, but in his case compared it unfavorably to the Precautionary Principle. Now Friedman incongruously corrals the whole mix to support: "doing the Cheney-thing on climate -- preparing for 1 percent." I'm not sure quite what to make of this kind of endorsement, but I'm very wary of it.
