You Ought to Have a Look is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science posted by Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. (“Chip”) Knappenberger.  While this section will feature all of the areas of interest that we are emphasizing, the prominence of the climate issue is driving a tremendous amount of web traffic.  Here we post a few of the best in recent days, along with our color commentary.

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With the end of Convention season mercifully upon us, we thought we ought to have a look at what the party platforms have to say about energy and the environment, with an eye on climate change policies in particular.

We’ll start out with the Democratic Party Platform.

The Democrats are of the mind that human-caused climate change is one of the major problems facing the country/world today, describing it as “an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time.”

It’s unclear that the voters feel that way… although part of the Democrats strategy for this election seems to be to try to persuade them otherwise.

The Democratic platform is chock full of government actions that promise to initiate, broaden and extend the current set of rules, regulation, and orders seeking to reduce our emissions of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases), largely by way of lessening (on the way to eliminating) our reliance on fossil fuels as our primary source of energy production. This collection of promised federal actions is large both in scope and number and includes everything from pursuing a carbon tax

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Plenty of libertarians were wary of seeing former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld as the Libertarian Party’s nominee for vice president. Even those of us who haven’t had anything to do with the LP would like to see the party represented by, you know, libertarians. Weld, who seems like a nice man and was apparently a decent governor, is the living expositor of the difference between a libertarian and someone who’s “socially liberal and fiscally conservative.”

Case in point: this week’s ReasonTV interview, where Weld praises Justice Stephen Breyer and Judge Merrick Garland, who are the jurists most deferential to the government on everything, whether environmental regulation or civil liberties. Later in the same interview, he similarly compliments Republican senators like Mark Kirk and Susan Collins, who are among the least libertarian of the GOP caucus in terms of the size and scope of government and its imposition on the private sector and civil society.

My point isn’t to criticize the Weld selection as a matter of political strategy. Indeed, he seems to have brought a certain respectability to a party that is rarely taken seriously. And if that moves the national political debate in a more libertarian direction, bully.

But then look at the most recent news made by the man at the top of the LP ticket. Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, in an interview with (my friend) Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner, calls religious freedom “a black hole” and endorses a federal role in preventing “discrimination” in all its guises. More specifically, he’s okay with fining a wedding photographer for not working a gay wedding – a case from New Mexico where Cato and every libertarian I know supported the photgrapher – and forcing the Little Sisters of the Poor to pay for contraceptives (where again Cato and libertarians supported religious liberty). He also bizarrely compare Mormonism to religiously motivated shootings.

In other words, Johnson doesn’t just come off as anti-religion, but completely misses the distinction between public (meaning government) and private action that is at the heart of (classical) liberal or libertarian legal theory. That’s a shame: it makes him no different than progressives in that regard – or social conservatives, who miss the distinction in the other direction, restricting individual rights in addition to government powers.

And so, what we’re left with is a Libertarian Party ticket that’s positioning itself as “moderate” more than anything else. Again, that may well be a clever political ploy – though it makes the dubious bet that there are more #NeverHillary Democrats than #NeverTrump Republicans – but it’s not very encouraging for libertarians who want to “vote [their] conscience.”

Judging from my Facebook page, the internet is blowing up with arguments that, in November’s election, voters must cast their ballots for a major-party candidate even if they dislike that candidate, and they must not vote for a third-party candidate.

These arguments go like this:

Third-party voters say neither major-party presidential candidate is worthy of their vote. But in fact, [major-party candidate the writer supports] is not nearly as objectionable as [other major-party candidate]. If [other major-party candidate] wins, terrible things will happen, but if [major-party candidate the writer supports] wins, terrible things won’t happen. So stop selfishly thinking about a third-party candidate, and cast your ballot for [major-party candidate the writer supports]!

No doubt this argument is appealing to the writer and other major-party backers. But even if we grant the writers’ assertion about the virtues of their preferred candidate AND their belief that a third-party candidate can’t win the presidency, this argument literally is irrational and–worse–it deprives voting of perhaps its greatest virtue.

The Real Clear Politics “Battle for White House” electoral map currently shows only 13 states, plus one Maine congressional district, to be toss-ups in the presidential race. Six more are rated as “leaning” toward Democrat Hillary Clinton and six (plus a Nebraska congressional district) are leaning toward Republican Donald Trump. RCP categorizes the other 25 states and the District of Columbia as being “solidly” (or stronger) in either the Clinton or Trump columns.

For those latter 25 states plus D.C., a would-be third-party voter’s grudging ballot for a major-party candidate is literally meaningless in deciding the presidency. The state’s Electoral College electors will go to Clinton or Trump regardless of how that voter casts his or her ballot–and the voter certainly must know that. So if that person chose to forgo voting for a third-party candidate and instead voted for a major-party candidate anyway, that voter made an irrational decision.

What about the other 25 states? Yes, there is a possibility that a voter’s ballot could matter—but only if that voter’s state (or congressional district, in the states where electors are awarded by distict) popular vote is perfectly evenly divided +/– one vote , and the national electoral college is decided by that state’s (or district’s) Electoral College electors. (Notice the qualifier “only if,” which means there are still more conditions that need to be met in order for the one ballot to prove pivotal.) In this case, the probability that the voter’s ballot would be meaningful isn’t zero, but it practically is. So, if a person in these states chose to forgo voting for a third-party candidate and instead voted for a major-party candidate anyway, that voter made an irrational decision.

Does this mean that people shouldn’t vote for president? It does if their sole motivation is to cast the deciding ballot. Voting has costs in time and money (e.g., gas money, bus fare), and it is pointless to absorb those costs for no benefit.

But there is a sound reason to vote (for some people, at least): for the pleasure of expressing one’s political preference. If voting for one of the major-party candidates provides that pleasure, then the voter should do it. For some voters, third-party candidates provide that pleasure because third parties are strongly associated with specific political causes (e.g., liberty, the environment, federalism) that many people care about deeply. Expending time and money to enjoy that pleasure is as sensible as spending time and money for the pleasure of reading a good book, or watching a baseball game, or eating chocolate.

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