Someone Buy This Man a Shovel

The most important thing I learned in 10th grade honors U.S. history wasn't the Marbury v. Madison Supreme Court ruling or the causes of the Civil War. It was the importance of always carrying a reliable bullshit shovel.

I will never forget the image of my teacher, the laconic, popular Mr. Chemerka, stopping the girl who would go on to become my graduating class's valedictorian in the middle of a long, vague, rambling attempt to answer a question that had caught her flat-footed. "Hold on a second," Mr. C interjected, "let me just get my bullshit shovel out." And, to much good-natured laughter (including from the future valedictorian), he pantomimed digging a hole with an imaginary spade.

And ever since, I've tried to apply the bullshit shovel test to every argument and opinion I run across, as a quick gauge of soundness and simple factual accuracy. Most of the time it works remarkably well, alerting me to certain statements and ideas that don't stand up to even cursory scrutiny. But when I read Tom Friedman's latest New York Times column today, I had a sea-captain-from-Jaws moment: "I think I'm going to need a bigger bullshit shovel."

In case you need a reminder, Tom Friedman writes a twice-weekly column for the Times lamenting the fact that he's not in charge of everything. He is obsessed with "green" technology, and he wishes the United States could be more like his idol, the People's Republic of China, so the federal government could impose his environmental vision on the country without little details like democratic governance getting in the way. When Obama was bailing out GM and Chrysler last year, Friedman wanted the money to come with strings, including a mandate that the companies converted all their models to hybrids, pronto. In 2008, he nearly wet himself when the Chinese put on a glamorous opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics, without bothering to wonder why the Chinese have such a hard time staging simple elections. (I had words for him on that occasion.)

(If you're starting to wonder why I even read the man's work, you have a fair point. It's sort of a ritualistic self-flagellation exercise, and probably indicative of some deep-seated sense of guilt I'm trying to exorcise. Maybe my friends and family need to stage an intervention.)

Today's column might just plumb a new low for Tom, something I would have considered physically impossible since whenever I last read him. Concerned that a bipartisan Senate plan to impose prices on carbon-based forms of energy could fall apart because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would rather pass a bill pandering to Hispanic voters in his home state of Nevada, Friedman frets that America will lose out to China in the race to claim "the next great global industry ... energy technology."

If you're confused, here's the CliffsNotes explanation:

China already builds a lot of renewable energy equipment, such as solar panels, wind turbines and electric motors for hybrid cars: stuff that's in high demand in places like Europe, where renewable energy production is mandated by government and encouraged through heavy subsidies. Friedman wants American companies to build all that cool stuff, but right now they generally don't, because the U.S. government doesn't punish conventional sources of energy like oil and coal and because renewable energy isn't cost-effective without some sort of carbon tax or cap-and-trade system to make fossil fuels more expensive. No climate bill in the Senate means no shiny new "green industry" in Detroit or Pittsburgh.

Now here's where the bullshit shovel is so desperately needed. Observe that Friedman first declares that renewable energy technology is "the next great global industry." And then observe that he says America needs to handicap conventional, carbon-based energy in order "to start really shifting the economy to clean-power innovations." In other words, wind and solar are the next big money-making business proposition, the trend that's going to revitalize American industry and create American jobs, so we're missing out if we don't get on board. But first we need to make renewables the next big money-making business proposition.

This is setting the proverbial cart so far in front of the horse it's not even funny. Here's a little nugget from all those economics classes Tom Friedman apparently never took: if there's a big, money-making opportunity out there, capitalists will pounce on it, in all their greedy, self-interested glory. They don't wait around for a green light from the government. But that only works if the business opportunity in question makes sense and adheres to the laws of physics. Creating artificial demand for wind turbines by suppressing cheaper alternatives like coal is akin to creating more jobs in the ditch-digging business by outlawing bulldozers, or boosting the glass industry by throwing rocks through windows.

None of which is to say that some form of carbon-limiting scheme doesn't make sense. I have some major reservations about the current state of climate change science, but if in fact global warming is a serious threat, I'm all in favor of reducing greenhouse gas emissions through some sort of government-imposed system. That will almost certainly include switching from cheap, economical fuels to expensive power generated by wind and solar.

But to hear the Tom Friedmans of the world proclaim that making this costly transition will actually make money is laughable, or it would be if it wasn't so intellectually insulting. Chinese solar panel factories aren't booming because the Chinese economy is "going green." On the contrary, China is now the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, and 80 percent of the electricity powering China's industrial revolution comes from ... coal. (The U.S. generates about 45 percent of its power from coal, if you were wondering.)

China builds lots of wind turbines and solar panels because the cost of production in Chinese factories is much lower than in the U.S. or Europe. China builds lots of batteries for hybrid cars because it has a near monopoly on the "rare earth" elements needed to build them, and is willing to permit the tremendous environmental devastation involved in rare-earth mining (devastation that has shuttered almost all U.S. rare-earth mines). China recently surpassed the U.S. as the largest auto market in the world, and it's the fastest-growing market for big, gas-guzzling luxury cars from companies like BMW. In short, China is "green" in the same sense that Ben Affleck is a perennial Oscar contender.