A Holiday Carol

There is a surpassing strangeness to American politics this holiday season. By mid morning today, I imagine, a great many members of the Congress were chagrined and embarrassed, not by the news that Representative Randy Cunningham had pled guilty to accepting bribes and had resigned in disgrace, but at the stunning amount of money his vote turned out to be worth. Someone should start hawking T-shirts that say, "Randy Cunningham got $2.5 million, and all I got was a lousy golf vacation!" The sales figures might tell us just how many members of this Congress were virtual wage slaves to lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Last night, in Madison, I was debating Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute, at the Wisconsin Historical Society, on "Global Warming, Energy Policy & the Role of Government." Jerry and I agreed on a fair bit: The first way to fix energy policy is get rid of the subsidies; nuclear power has no free-market future because it is economically utterly unattractive without government bailouts; and those who gain from emitting carbon dioxide should compensate those who are being hurt.

Jerry began with a ringing libertarian endorsement of government's role in environmental policy generally. "It's the job of government to protect me, and to protect my property, and if your polluting is hurting me or my property, it's the job of government to protect me and stop you." But repeatedly during the evening he was reluctant to apply this simple test to the question of global warming. I kept asking him, "Isn't it the job of government, by your logic, to protect the people of Bangladesh from our pollution, which puts them at greater risk from higher sea level and stronger typhoons?"

Jerry kept falling back on the argument that people have been modifying the climate for millennia (true, but they have also been killing each other and stealing each other's property for millennia; that doesn't mean we take no action to stop it). Finally, at the end, he conceded that, in the case of a global commons like the climate, libertarian solutions just can't be applied, because you would never get those who are being hurt to agree to the damage that is, in his view, an unavoidable result of industrial civilization. "So you have to fall back on majority rule," Jerry conceded. I think he's right -- and that's why the Right is so fond of reading the science as saying global warming is either a fraud, or no big deal -- because if it's a real, big deal, as almost all scientists have concluded, the only solution is a governmental one.

Meanwhile, in California, Newt Gingrich has popped up as the latest advocate of "your inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of non-dependence on foreign oil sources." I just got, too late, the invitation to an October 25 event at the Beverly Hills Hotel, hosted by Newt. The theme of the evening: "How the Building Industry can play a great and important role in ...conserving our nation's energy and water resources for future generations." Sounds like the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt past is appearing to Newt, and taking him back to his youthful days as a moderate, environmental Republican.

And as further proof that change is in the wind: A week ago, Senate legislation that would call for the country to save 10 million barrels of oil a day, 50 percent of current demand by 2031, was introduced by moderate Democrats like Evan Bayh and Ken Salazar, and conservative Republicans like Sam Brownback and Lindsey Graham. Brownback said, "This is just good common sense. This is where the public wants us to go."

But only a few months ago many of these same Senators voted down a Democratic proposal to save 1 million barrels a day. The difference?

Brownback's version: "That was seen as a mandate. The new approach is based on incentives."

My version: There's nothing like gasoline at $3/gallon, a projected home-heating cost increase of 50 percent, and oil profits going over the moon to concentrate Congressional attention.

You choose -- why the new mood as we enter a weird period? Phases of the moon? Sudden awareness? Fear of losing elections?