I have some more observations from this New Yorker article about the brothers Koch and the immense, scary influence they have on the political system. A lot of stuff in here isn’t that surprising if you’re paying close attention—-the self-aggrandizing to distract from the immorality of libertarianism, the astroturfing, the racist history, the obscene amounts of money spent to manipulate the political system, the delusional rhetoric about global warming. But even I was surprised to read about the display at the Smithsonian.
The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, is a multimedia exploration of the theory that mankind evolved in response to climate change. At the main entrance, viewers are confronted with a giant graph charting the Earth’s temperature over the past ten million years, which notes that it is far cooler now than it was ten thousand years ago. Overhead, the text reads, “HUMANS EVOLVED IN RESPONSE TO A CHANGING WORLD.” The message, as amplified by the exhibit’s Web site, is that “key human adaptations evolved in response to environmental instability.” Only at the end of the exhibit, under the headline “OUR SURVIVAL CHALLENGE,” is it noted that levels of carbon dioxide are higher now than they have ever been, and that they are projected to increase dramatically in the next century. No cause is given for this development; no mention is made of any possible role played by fossil fuels. The exhibit makes it seem part of a natural continuum. The accompanying text says, “During the period in which humans evolved, Earth’s temperature and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere fluctuated together.” An interactive game in the exhibit suggests that humans will continue to adapt to climate change in the future. People may build “underground cities,” developing “short, compact bodies” or “curved spines,” so that “moving around in tight spaces will be no problem.”
This is part of an overarching strategy of replacing actual science with pseudo-science. What’s interesting to me is the “having it both ways” aspect of this—-the Koches fund all sorts of global warming denialism, but then also hedge their bets by suggesting that global warming isn’t so bad. This is far from the only example.
David Koch told New York that he was unconvinced that global warming has been caused by human activity. Even if it has been, he said, the heating of the planet will be beneficial, resulting in longer growing seasons in the Northern Hemisphere. “The Earth will be able to support enormously more people because far greater land area will be available to produce food,” he said.
This is, of course, pure nonsense. Growing food is about factors coming together, and heat is just one of them—-it’s also sunshine and fertility. Increasing desertification of some parts of the planet will not have a corresponding effect of giving northern climates more sunshine, even if they do get warmer in the aggregate. The overwhelming evidence shows that rising temperatures will likely lead to mass starvation. Also, there’s no certainty that humans will always adapt. We can, you know, die off. It happens. Ask the dinosaurs.
But what all this points to is a very serious problem for libertarianism, whether Christian or secular. As I noted earlier, libertarianism tends to spring up when you start to believe human beings exist to serve systems and institutions, and not vice versa. But our system of government was laid out explicitly on the grounds that institutions serve human beings—-basically, the founders were backed by a humanist philosophy. If you disagree, let me point you to the Declaration of Independence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,