The Emperor Has No Clothes

This article was featured in The Bulletin (Philadelphia-area newspaper) on 12/14/09. You can read the online version here or check out the print column each week.

In the popular 19th century tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” two weavers make an Emperor a suit they claim has magical powers. The suit, they say, is invisible only to those that are “incorrigibly stupid,” or unfit for the position of Emperor.

As his new “suit” is being crafted, the Emperor has a shocking revelation: He can’t see the thread. Worrying he will be exposed as too stupid or unfit for his post, however, the Emperor pretends to see the suit, and summarily puts it on.

When he eventually parades through town with his new outfit, the crowd shouts with feigned praise and awe, each subject hoping to avoid the shame of being the lone person unable to see the magnificent magical thread. Until, of course, a child too innocent to know the difference shouts out, “But he has nothing on!” The Emperor is exposed, the crowd vindicated.

Recent weeks have thrown the climate change debate back into the spotlight, and coming months may mark historic policy change for the U.S. and its international partners. The Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that greenhouse gasses will officially be considered a “dangerous pollutant,” and should be tightly regulated. The announcement came as world leaders convened in Copenhagen for a U.N. climate change summit, the focus of which is to gain international consensus on reduction of carbon emissions. Domestically, debate among U.S. politicians about the need for extremely controversial “cap-and-trade” legislation heated up as the bill moved through Congress.

The outcome of each of these disparate but converging events is the same: Increased regulation, taxation, and forced reduction of greenhouse emissions. Simply put, businesses will be required to either significantly reduce carbon emissions or pay the government in the form of carbon credits and fines for the difference.

What is exceedingly clear from these policy discussions is that such drastic change will place a heavy burden on U.S. businesses. It’s simple economics: When government forces environmental activism on industry, industry necessarily makes choices for environmental, not economic purposes, and profit falls.

Domestically, increased costs from carbon regulation will have a triple affect on the U.S. economy: 1. Companies will pass the costs through to consumers, resulting in a form of energy tax on U.S. citizens; 2. Many companies will be unable to sustain required technology investments and process changes, driving down profitability and creating job loss; 3. Companies will move overseas to developing nations that do not have such stringent regulations, again resulting in job loss.

For these reasons, industry leaders from across the country have opposed the forthcoming legislation. U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said recent regulatory proposals “could result in a top-down command-and-control regime that will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project,” and may “stifle our economic recovery.” The National Association of Manufacturers stated that the recent EPA proposal is “certain to come at a huge cost to the economy.” A recent Heritage Foundation analysis of the cap-and-trade bill projects it will cost the economy $161 billion in 2020, or $1,870 for a family of four.

At a time when the global economy is struggling to recover from near collapse, with U.S. unemployment at its highest levels in 26 years, it seems any directive that would significantly damage the economy should come with irrefutable, unquestionable, and undeniable force. It should require immediate action, with evidence so overwhelming that its negative effects are simply an afterthought.

With millions of Americans now questioning the American dream, struggling to pay mortgages and put food on the table, any policy that worsens their odds should be of utterly historic necessity. Right? Not exactly.

Earlier this year, over 700 scientists worldwide conferred to issue a statement saying they fundamentally disagree with the findings of the U.N. panel that are driving current policy discussions. Later, Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who had contributed to an earlier U.N. climate report, said man-made warming is “the worst scientific scandal in history.” Nobel Prize winner Ivar Giaever called global warming the “new religion,” based on faith rather than fact. A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton’s Will Happer, demanded the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled on the issue. Last week, MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen wrote, “Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre,” calling global warming science “the grossest of ‘bait and switch’ scams.”

In a final blow, the now infamous Climategate scandal at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit revealed that leading proponents of global warming activism have been manufacturing the scientific “consensus” they claimed, blacklisting dissenting scientists and journals, distorting peer review, and shunning Freedom of Information requests.

It seems climate change may have had its Emperor-With-No-Clothes moment.

So why are activists charging head on into a policy that will surely damage the economy? The story of the Emperor has a telling conclusion: “It seemed to him that they were right; but he thought within himself, ‘I must go through with the procession.’ And so he held himself a little higher, and the chamberlains held on tighter than ever, and carried the train which did not exist at all.”

-Matt Benchener is Supervisor of Newtown Township, and the Founder of TruPolitics.net