Over at The Corner, Jonah Goldberg alleges that if global warming were an entirely natural phenomenon - as opposed to a man-made problem caused by greenhouse gases - then "the reluctance on the part of some on the right to fix the problem would evaporate." This is a grand claim, and it's worth noting that Goldberg doesn't explain his position. I can only guess that conservatives would be more willing to confront the inconvenient truth of global warming if it didn't involve curtailing economic growth or becoming less reliant on fossil fuels.
That said, I do find the second part of Goldberg's thought experiment more interesting. If global warming were entirely "natural," would environmentalists still be agitating for change? According to Goldberg, the answer is no: "The reluctance to 'tamper' with nature would cause at least some environmentalists to second-guess global warming science." What do you think?
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There certainly seems to be a meme going around that it's conservative to exploit nature to the limits of one's own ruthlessness - see Ann Coulter's crack about populating Earth until it's standing room only then going to Mars.
Whether this is a Christian Dominionist thang, or whether it's just the hardening of mythology over time, is not clear.
I think it depends highly on the form of disaster and the methods proposed to fix them.
I haven't heard a lot of environmentalists complain about efforts to produce controlled snowfalls to prevent catastrophic avalanches, shoring up mountainsides to prevbent landslides, or controlled forest burns to prevent the massive burnouts that occasionally occur; I would go so far as to say that environmentalists in general would oppose any catastrophic change that threatens the environment at large, whether that's a toxic waste dump or a gamma ray burst. Knowing what we know about the consequences of climate change, I could see environmentalists supporting the maintenance of existing CO2 levels, even if those changes woere completely natural.
Considering existing technology though, It's unsurprising that environmentalists focus on the relatively easy-to-solve issues of human actions modifying the environment, than developing a massive radiation shield capable of defending the earth from the slim chance of a gamma ray bust hitting us dead on. ;)
Part of the problem though is that it's kind of a nonsense thought experiment. For one, it assumes that the scientific consensus is still out on whether Global warming is anthropogenic, and then proposes a mythical scenario to pose a gotcha question at environmentalists. He may as well be saying "Well, what if endangered fire-breathing dragons were causing global warming? And we could only kill those dragons with nuclear weapons!? THEN what would those environmentalists do?"