Three statements of varying formality from the California Air Resources Board give clear perspective to the panel's Sept. 24 fiat on vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases. In a rule taking effect in 2009, CARB mandates vehicle emission cuts of 12% by 2012 and 30% by 2016.
The first self-revealing statement by the board came the day before the ruling. Announcing that it would consider the move the next day, CARB said, "Greenhouse gases have been proven to adversely affect the global climate."
Actually, greenhouse gases have been proven to warm the biosphere enough to make it inhabitable. They've been proven to be building up in the atmosphere in a process associated with industrialization. They've also been shown by proxies to have occurred at even greater atmospheric concentrations in much-earlier periods without leaving evidence of damage to the climate.
Popular fear
The CARB statement evokes popular fear that accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will amplify warming catastrophically. The notion is simplistic and, given everything else that happens with climate, probably wrong. Human activity isn't the only source of greenhouse gases, and the greenhouse effect isn't the only factor in warming. The climate makes complex adjustments that are little understood and so far impossible to predict. Science provides strong reasons to learn more about how the greenhouse gas-buildup might affect the climate and life. It provides no proof that the build-up poses a serious threat.
Climate alarmists, however, don't want to wait. Science might ultimately refute the existence of a threat. Hence the urgency of the alarmists' political agenda, echoed in CARB's second statement, from Chairman Alan Lloyd after release of the new regulation.
"We cannot afford to wait until all the evidence is in," he said, quoted by the Los Angeles Times. Assertions like that lace global-warming politics. They mean governments should impose costly regulation without knowing enough to have reasonable assurance that their manipulations would work. CARB can argue that its move, inevitably requiring tighter fuel-economy standards, will lower average emissions per vehicle-mile. But that won't lower emissions overall if total miles driven increase, which they might. And CARB lacks the scientific basis to argue that lowering greenhouse gas emissions, even if enough other authorities replicate its action to make a difference, will meaningfully influence global average temperature. Uncertainty about warming causes and offsets—which alarmists always brush aside—is still too high.
So why assert proof where none exists and urgency where none is necessary? CARB's third statement, also from Lloyd in an announcement about the new regulation, provides the answer.
"This landmark decision sets a course for California that is likely to be copied throughout the US and other countries," he said. "Because of its forward-thinking approach, the [CARB] has established itself as the world leader in setting motor vehicle pollution control standards."
CARB doesn't want to regulate only California and Californians. It wants to regulate the rest of the US and, indeed, the world. A strong lesson of history is that self-assured authorities with outsize urges to regulate need to be treated with great caution. This urge—manifest in Europe's infatuation with the Kyoto Treaty—is a powerful force in the global warming issue.
Voluntary efforts
It's a mistake to treat the build-up of greenhouse gases as a nonissue. It's a mistake, too, to think that because the build-up hasn't been proven to contribute much if anything to observed warming it has no warming role at all. For these reasons, voluntary efforts to moderate greenhouse gas emissions—as discussed in a 2-day conference last week in Washington, DC, by the Department of Energy and American Petroleum Institute—are worthwhile and important. For these reasons, too, aggressive study of climatic responses to the greenhouse gas buildup is essential.
What's known now about prospective warming, however, doesn't justify extreme measures such as CARB has imposed and the automobile industry has promised to challenge in court. Government actions should respond to facts rather than fear. Because CARB isn't just responding to fear but also contributing to it, other governments would be foolish to follow its lead. And the oil and gas industry, even those parts of it convinced of the need for immediate precautions, should be wary of regulation conducted this way.
