Please note that I do not subscribe to the panicked cries of human-induced, carbon-based global warming. But, just for fun, let’s assume that the cries are indeed true.
Ever since Mises exposed the negative effects of government interventions, politicians, bureaucrats, and most economists have attempted to refute those truths. A leading fallacy still driving debates and discussions is the one which implies that government can borrow goods from the future in order to satisfy its current demand. That simply cannot happen.
Government can purchase current goods based on the sale of bonds; a sale that will be reconciled at a later date in the form of wealth transfers from taxpayers to bondholders.[1] But, since we can only utilize current goods, and never future goods, our heirs can never produce the materials required today. They can suffer from the mess created by government projects, but never assist with the efforts.[2]
Oddly enough, the Greens have adopted a similar lie; a lie which states we can remove current carbon gases today with yet-to-be-planted, and hence future, trees.
Let’s consider the most visible Green: Al Gore. Being the concerned do-gooder and useful idiot of the enviro-utopians, Gore has adopted the so-called carbon-neutral lifestyle. In order to claim carbon neutrality, Gore offsets his daily carbon emissions by, among other things, paying to have trees planted.
That sounds worthwhile, at least until you consider that Gore produces tons of carbon gases on a yearly basis; gases that may be consumed by his newly-planted trees in a decade or so when, and only if, the saplings reach maturity. His carbon-offset strategy functions more like the spin surrounding government bonds than the implied real-time carbon scrubbers envisioned by his infected masses.
Even though Gore cries that we must act now — with every passing day another nail in our carbon coffin — his actions will not produce the immediate results he claims are required to save the planet.
Of course, the only way to satisfy the enviro-utopian agenda — and hence save the Earth — is for all of us to stop the production of man-made, carbon-based gases, right now, today, and lie down in the fields to await certain death. But, that solution is not Gore’s solution.
Gore is a statist looking for ways to centralize and increase the power of government. To him, playing the carbon-neutral game is simply a means to chain the world to the socialist policies of command and control. Of course, that would mean that the statists such as Gore are playing the enviro-utopians for fools, with the enviro-utopians being the useful idiots of the statist crowd.
Actually, it seems like both groups are playing each other in a race to either destroy civilization now, or socialize it into a slow death. The end is the same, with only the means being different - different time-horizons I assume.
notes:
[1] Of course, “will be reconciled” is a fallacy. Government debt is never truly paid as new bonds are issued to settle bonds reaching maturity. The end result is a continuous payment of interest; a wealth transfer from taxpayers to bondholders.
[2] Our heirs never actually pay for current government expenditures in a true sense. Current government expenditures are satisfied through the sale of bonds. The bondholder has paid for the expenditures in order to reap long-term interest transfers from taxpayers.
