The Patriot Post® · The Politics of Fear

When we lived in rural England, my wife Peggy and I enjoyed attending local farm-country events. A favorite was the sheep-herding competitions.

Visualize the scene: a hundred or so sheep milling about aimlessly in a large green pasture, while at the far end stands a farmer with his border collie. The farmer whistles once, and the cute little dog turns manic, streaking across the field, barking and snarling, and in no time has the terrified sheep packed into a tight circle. Then, responding to more whistle orders from the farmer, the dog moves the whole flock this way, then that way, and ultimately out through a gate in the far side. And not one sheep dares to tiptoe out of line. Amazing.

In that tranquil field, the yapping dog is not actually going to hurt any of the sheep — there’s no need. As long as they’re afraid, they’ll do as they’re told.

Sound vaguely familiar? It turns out that fear is a very effective device to motivate other creatures — sheep or people — to do what their leaders want. And at the risk of sounding partisan, I’ll suggest that America’s political progressives have honed scare tactics into a fine art, every bit as effective as those used by English sheep farmers.

It’s nothing new. Forty years ago, liberals convinced Americans that nuclear power was far too dangerous for commercial use in the U.S. They promoted a grim specter of devastating accidents and toxic wastes; they opposed every new plant; and they played a large role in derailing what was then a fast-growing and promising part of our nation’s energy future.

It worked. Today, the U.S. nuclear power future is all but dead, with most plants on their last legs and few replacements in sight. Worse, public fear of nuclear was planted so successfully that it persists today, despite a half-century of safe and clean U.S. nuclear operations. Paradoxically, the progressive left is now frantically pushing for emission-free electricity generation but can’t bring itself to reverse its stance on nuclear — the option that offers our best shot by far at achieving that goal.

As with the anti-nuclear power movement of the 1980s, today’s elevation of climate change to “existential crisis” status is driven by computer-generated worst-case scenarios that evoke plenty of angst but very little perspective.

Last week, the UN Inter-government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a 4000-page report, nicely timed to coincide with the current extreme heat and fires in the U.S. northwest. Based on the near-hysterical media coverage, one might think the new report is a revelation of startling new information confirming our worst fears.

It’s not. Climate change is a combination of natural cyclic changes and the composite environmental impact of over seven billion inhabitants of an ever-more industrialized world. The IPCC report sharpens the numerical predictions and confirms what we already knew — that global warming is ongoing, significant, and irreversible, but that its ultimate severity can be limited somewhat with aggressive reductions in releases of greenhouse gases, primarily CO₂.

But the real takeaway here is the “somewhat” part. In reality, nothing that the climate warriors propose doing can undo the climate modification that’s already taken place and that will continue, at some rate, into the foreseeable future. Politicians tend to forget that point when they use extreme weather as justification for hugely expensive and disruptive green new deals.

Yes, the predicted effects of climate change are frightening. But whether by improved measures for prevention and containment of forest fires or engineered barriers to protect against rising seas (as Holland has done for centuries) or other innovative steps, mankind’s best way to address climate change is to find ways to adapt to it, not pretend that we can prevent it.

Unwarranted or exaggerated fears infect our reaction to other issues as well. Right now, we’re all spooked by the COVID resurgence here at home. But there’s no cause for panic or retreat — hospitalizations and deaths are significantly lower than previous peaks, and vaccination is working. We just need to stay calm and stay on track.

Contrived, overblown public anxiety inevitably leads to bad choices with harmful consequences. Worse, it can divert our attention from other potentially more serious threats, including some that our elected leaders prefer to downplay. One that comes immediately to mind is our diminishing U.S. defense capability in the face of an increasingly aggressive, nuclear-armed China.

To deal with the challenges of the day, we must be constructively skeptical, poke through the hyperbole, and trust our common sense. And no more sheepish fear of the scary dog.