Thus we often find today otherwise distinguished scientists speaking in vacuous and irrefutable platitudes when they enter the political arena. Consider the statement made a few days ago by the president’s senior advisor on science and technology (and former Harvard professor), John Holdren: “Weather practically everywhere is being caused by climate change.” Any student who wrote that on a lab report would certainly fail Professor Holdren’s Environmental Science 101. But a statement capable of passing that class would certainly fail Progressive Politics 101: “There is some evidence to suggest that the high incidence of drought in recent years may be linked to the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that results from human fossil fuel consumption.” That may or may not be true, but it’s honest science–and politics.
Hamilton’s example in Federalist 31 on the subject of taxation suggests that the best defense against political unreason is to return to first principles. In ennobling political discourse through a steady reference to the science of politics, we might limit the damage done to the public good when politics devolves into simple hand-to-hand combat between self-interested parties.
What makes the current discussion of climate change so troubling is that politics has corrupted the practice of science instead of science improving the practice of politics. As things stand, we have been handcuffed economically by a politics that employs science for political purposes and handcuffed intellectually by a science willing to be made the servant of politics. We need more statesmen aspiring to master Hamilton’s science of politics and fewer scientists aspiring to master the Progressive’s politics of science.
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