Government funded enviro-fun

In the classic Jurrasic Park scene, Dr. Alan Grant is slouching in a jeep when his eyes fixate with sudden intent past the camera and his hand slowly claws away his sunglasses, followed by a glorious crescendo and a panorama of real live dinosaurs.

I had Dr. Grant’s reaction last week as I caught my own glimpse of evolution’s latest turn. Christopher Hitchens jokes that the anthropocentric cartoon strip of evolutionary progression is “a fish gasping on the shore in the first frame, hunched and prognathous figures in the succeeding ones, and then, by slow degrees, and erect man in a suit waving his umbrella and shouting ‘Taxi!’” But that’s an incomplete mural. For yesterday I witnessed (prepare to remove your shades) the Envirocab, for which the truly evolved homo-moderno beckons.

My first wonder was whether the Envirocab was some conservative think tank’s way of mocking environmentalism, like the term “enviro-jihad” that we coined at The Founder’s Porch. But I soon accepted that this was as gravely serious as any lefty innovation. Arlington County in Virgina pledges its citizens’ money to keep the Envirocab competitive with regular taxis. People ride in it, boasting between sips of Starbucks (Red) latte that due to the hybrid engine and a carbon offset scheme, they reduce their “carbon footprint,” whatever meaning that term has.

Envirocab admits it is not profitable: “A clean source company has a hard time making a profit because making clean energy is more expensive than making dirty energy.” Then again, it’s not so hard to make a profit when the government takes money from working citizens – many who would walk before they would consider paying for the luxury of a cab – and submits it to the “clean” envirocabbies.

In these times of government-guided evolution, one must clench tightly his sense of proportion, lest it scamper away in a cloud of clean Envirocab exhaust. Let’s say old fashioned Awad's Taxi Service emits “dirty” carbon dioxide. By taking Awad’s money and giving it to his competition – the collusion of envirocabbies – you have forced Awad to layoff young Abdel who immigrated from Pakistan because he thought America was the land of the free. And for what?

Freeman Dyson – who I’d describe as an English Einstein for his brilliant physics contributions, his childlike awe of nature, and his ability to spot the “relative” danger of threats to humanity – puts it bluntly: “By restricting CO2 you make life more expensive and hurt the poor.” Is CO2 a pollutant? “Most of the evolution of life occurred on a planet substantially warmer than it is now…and substantially richer in carbon dioxide.” Last year, he notes, Greenlanders rejoiced because it was warm enough to grow cabbage.

Dyson is a humanist and rejects the notion of apologizing for being human. Unemployment is a more urgent problem than carbon emissions, for example. And if atmospheric carbon dioxide does become problematic, he suggests genetically engineering trees to absorb more carbon than normal trees. There is no green utopia: “life is always changing,” he says, and we must make it work for us.

With Dyson’s sense of proportion, the lavishness of the Envirocab is as clear as its emissions. Even if government did not supply its profits, Envirocab patrons would still be distracting resources from Awad’s cheap service, raising fares for everyone (that’s just how a free market works and I wouldn’t want it any other way, but let not the enviro-jihadists deny their complicity in this pernicious waste).

Next time I have a Dr. Grant reaction to an evolutionary marvel, I hope it will be to Dyson’s trees rather than Arlington’s next enviro-contraption. But I’m not holding my polar bear-killing breath.