The General Assembly has established a Global Climate Change Commission to study “issues related to global warming” and make policy recommendations to the legislature. Unfortunately, the commission is dominated by left-of-center environmental advocacy groups and their allies with few of its members having significant expertise in the areas the commission is supposed to study.
Legislation that established the commission mandates analysis of seven general issues. Two of these examine the relationship between greenhouse gases and global warming and four relate to the economic impact of climate change and any policies the commission recommends. The legislation also calls for a review of actions taken by the federal government.
Much of what the commission is supposed to investigate involves sophisticated economic analysis. The legislation specifically calls for an “in-depth examination” of the costs and benefits of any “action taken by the State on individuals, households, business operations, agricultural operations” and “other economic institutions.”
This would require sophisticated economic cost-benefit analysis and advanced research capabilities in an extensive range of economic specialties. Yet, there are no economists on the commission, let alone economists with expertise in any of the relevant areas. This is equivalent to there being a commission to examine the best ways to treat cancer without an oncologist or even a physician.
The two other areas of substance for the commission relate to the causes of global warming and the extent to which reductions in greenhouse gas emissions can be expected to affect the climate. Obviously, both of these require expertise in climate-related sciences. Of the 32 commission members, 18 to be appointed by the legislative leadership, only one, the state climatologist of North Carolina, Dr. Sethu Raman, has a specialty in climate-related sciences. It also appears that his appointment was an afterthought. In the original legislation, passed overwhelmingly by the House and Senate, there were no climate scientists on the commission. Amazingly, the state climatologist was not included on the state’s special commission on climate change until the final compromise version of the bill was passed on the last day of the legislative session. Clearly, a climatologist should be the highest priority position for such a commission, and the first person chosen, not the last.
So who were the high-priority choices for North Carolina’s global warming commission? While the commission has no economists and only one climate scientist, from the beginning there have been representatives from four left-of-center environmental pressure groups—Environmental Defense, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, the North Carolina Coastal Federation, and the North Carolina Conservation Council. All of these groups hold alarmist positions on global warming and advocate extensive regulation of private decision-making to combat the threat that they claim climate change poses.
The commission also includes others who have close ties to these groups or hold extreme positions on global-warming policy. For example, Dr. William Schlesinger, dean of Duke University’s School of Environment and Earth Sciences, is a member of the Regional Board of Environmental Defense. Progress Energy, represented on the commission, has donated tens of thousands of dollars to the North Carolina Coastal Federation.
Others appointed to the commission have taken strong advocacy positions. Dr. Douglas Crawford-Brown, director of UNC’s Carolina Environmental Program, has advocated for a 60 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. This is dramatically greater than reductions required by the U.N. Kyoto Protocol, which according to U.S. energy Information Agency, would cost the national economy about 4 percent of GDP annually and North Carolina well over 50,000 jobs. Duke Power’s president, also on the commission, has publicly called for a new “carbon tax” to combat global warming. Others on the commission represent the narrow interests of particular industries. Their role is not to provide detached scientific or economic analysis.
Given the makeup of the Global Climate Change Commission, there is no reason to expect either objectivity or informed analysis in the final report. Indeed, a cynic might suspect that the commission was chosen with a preordained result in mind.
Dr. Roy Cordato is vice president for research and resident scholar of the John Locke Foundation.