Insights

Cap and Trade and Hacking

Over the weekend it was reported that an adventurous hacker liberated 61 megabytes of emails and documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit in the U.K. This venerable institution was a key player in the United Nations IPCC global warming study that proved, ‘beyond a shadow of a doubt’, that humans were causing global warming.  It seems there has been some clandestine cover-up communications and quite possibly a scam of historical proportions is being run on the world of science and industry concerning the causes of global warming.

As anyone that does not live in a cave knows, the causes of what has supposedly been a measured increase in global temperatures is a hotly debated topic these days.  Green Energy has been shouted from every rooftop and entire political platforms have formed about how mankind (and womankind) should deal with this ‘problem’.  While the whole world suffers through a period of scarce jobs and exploding banks, the foundations of our capitalist system, the costs of the cap and trade cure for Mother Earth’s fever seem to be immense to say the least.

To this point we have used coal, oil and natural gas as our most cost efficient sources of energy.  These sources have also proven to be very good at generating pollution.  We should not be fooling ourselves at this stage in the game.  Humans are now addicted to their flat screen TV’s, iPods, smart phones, microwaves, air conditioners and countless other battery and socket driven comforts.  Energy powers all this and the growing population, most notably the growing middle class populations in India and China, hungers for more and more power.  Humans are selfish and pollute.  When I think of all this a quote from a sci-fi movie, ‘The Matrix’ always jumps into my head;

Agent Smith:  I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.

We pollute too much, recycle too little, and demand power.  I grew up hunting, fishing and camping and was lucky enough to enjoy the beauty Mother Nature has to offer.  I witnessed my fishing holes destroyed in the Adirondacks by acid rain through catching less and less fish each year (I catch and release).  I recycle and ride mass transportation to work each day, turn lights off when I leave a room, but I too am still guilty of owning an iPod, running the air conditioner at the slightest discomfort and buy take out food in those lousy plastic and foam containers.  I understand the need but have been raised to live as a modern day human being.  We all have.

In public and as groups of responsible citizens of the world, we all proclaim our desire to save the Earth.  Individually it can be a different story as there seems to be too long a distance between intention and practice.  Besides, there are more of us each and every day.  In straight words – we are all individually selfish.

So the big, hotly debated question is are we, human beings, causing the alleged rise in global temperatures or not?  I have been on the side of the skeptics thus far with a nagging feeling this all has something to do with the Sun.  Call me crazy.  I am no expert, but to find out that the ‘experts’ are involved in a massive cover up is disheartening to hear.  Get it right – the actions we take from this research are just too important and expensive to politicize or idealize.

I wish I knew for sure.  I wish someone knew for sure, so we could either change our behavior and shoulder the massive financial burden it would take, or redirect a larger proportion of the green energy research dollars to making our more cost efficient fossil fuels less caustic to the environment.  Right now, with the suffering of the unemployed and the state of the global economy, it is not exactly the ideal time to switch to very costly alternate sources of power if it is not needed.  Make no mistake, the cap and trade solutions promoted will cause a great deal of human suffering.  This suffering is not easily or directly measured.

Think of a poor family that now cannot buy as much food for themselves as the electricity bill just went up $150 a month.  Hybrid cars are a great idea but have you seen how much they cost?  As our technology evolves the costs will come down but, if the ‘dire need’ professed to exist is not so near, can we morally demand this generation or even the next to suffer needlessly?  What if we are not the cause as we merely are puny humans on a planet that changes?

Prosperity brings happiness and decreases suffering.  We call this the ‘human condition’.  They say money cannot buy you love, but it makes life for a struggling two job couple much easier when they have a few more hours to spend with their children each day.  Think of the costs to society if longer hours are worked by both parents and the kids do not get enough time and love to be brought up properly.  These children are more likely to then enter the world maladjusted and economically weigh on society in a very significant way.  Teenage pregnancy is just one example.  These minute costs magnify themselves immensely over time, generations and across populations.  These costs are possibly higher and harder to measure than the supposed costs of human caused global warming.

The release of the hacker obtained emails and documents now calls into dispute how much temperatures have actually risen and how good the science that connects human actions to this ‘alleged’ temperature increase is.  This release of information will dramatically change the global warming debate in the court of public opinion and between industry, politicians and nations.  The skeptics now have a blunt club to wield and industry will seize upon it to ward off the fees and taxes and costs cap and trade legislation will bring.

Getting to the bottom of this mess will be difficult.  What we do not need is any politician or cause blindly pushing their agenda forward and disregarding the facts. Responsibly, we need the research dollars into green energy to continue, but we also need to adequately fund ways to use our fossil fuels more cleanly.

Throw a politician or a profit driven group into anything and they will screw it up.  This is what we have done so far as witnessed by the hack information.  Most likely cap and trade legislation here in the United States will be delayed.  As a financial journalist, I would advise keeping an eye on the utility stocks and also watch the green/alternative energy stocks for a decline.  As a citizen of planet Earth I would advise more research dollars into cleaner fossil fuel technology and nuclear energy.  As a person I would hope the politicians and agenda carrying groups would wake up and do what is right.

This is too big to screw up.