I’ve spent some time this past week near the Ilulissat Glacier, the world’s fastest moving ice stream, and quite likely the source of the iceberg that sank the Titanic. The Titanic, of course, made the mistake of charging full speed thru dangerous waters, and was unable to change course in time to avert disaster.
This week, following President Obama’s paradigm shifting address on climate change, we continue to see, in the disjointed and muffled responses from the GOP, evidence of a struggle in the wheelhouse. Given the anti-science momentum from 30 years of cultivating the looney fundamentalist, anti-science old-confederacy right wing, a sharp enough turn to avoid a below-the-waterline collision with reality seems unlikely. I posted Eli Lehrer’s recent Weekly Standard essay on saturday. Now we have another piece on the Washington Times website by Chris Ladd, which gives a revealing window into the tortured psyche of the conflicted, not yet quite reformed denier.
Climate change is an issue so uniquely suited to the needs of the dying global left that it feels too perfectly tailored to be a coincidence. We are being asked to accept that the accumulating exhaust of the Industrial Revolution is cranking up the planet’s thermostat, threatening to turn our blue marble brown unless we all decide to ride bikes and eat bugs.
Now, nobody likes a plate of witchety grubs more than I do, but I’m not aware that entomophagy has become a serious agenda item for scientists or climate change activists. Moreover, it seems to me that ignoring climate change is the course that will most likely lead to a bug’s life.
But never mind.
Republicans can’t be blamed for harboring skepticism, but we must realize that our strategy of blind blanket denial is developing into a political suicide pact.
“Republicans can’t be blamed” is a key phrase here. Keep your barf bags ready. We’re going to hear a lot of this.
“It’s not our fault. Scientists didn’t make the physics clear enough over the last 60 years.”
The National Academy of Science should have made this clear.
Oh. They did? Multiple times since 1979? Well, they should have their own talk radio show. That’s how I get my news.
Well, it’s Al Gore’s fault for being so damn snotty about it. How do you expect us to have a rational response to him? He’s overweight. Rush Limbaugh speaks to my values..what? … oh, never mind again.
Mr. Ladd finally takes the bull by the horns in the next paragraph.
The Earth’s climate is getting warmer and our carbon emissions are a factor in that heating. There is no credible scientific consensus that questions those two facts.
We must stop wheeling in crank “scientists” who deploy tactics borrowed from the tobacco industry to “debunk” the credible research on climate change.
Oh baby. That’s gotta sting. If you’re going to admit that you’ve been hornswoggled by the guys that sell cigarettes to children, I guess you’ve got to believe that the only alternative was a plate full of bugs.
Ladd goes on to another fall-back we’re going to see a lot. Yes it’s warming. Yes we’re doing it. but there’s so much uncertainty, maybe the solutions don’t have to be all that tough.
So how do we address policy questions like whether to implement a carbon tax? Conservatives will lose the credibility required to even participate in that and other policy debates if we continue to tolerate the absurd notion that climate change is a hoax.
Then, a telling admission of the Republican bind on issues of science and fact. A key part of their constituency just doesn’t believe in them. Science and fact, that is.
On a political level, Republicans must not confuse climate change with other science vs. belief issues. On this issue public opinion will eventually move in the direction of established facts regardless of how much distortion we generate.
We can give hedged answers on the age of the universe with little consequence.
so it’s basically ok to deny and fudge physics with the Fox News crowd, as long as it’s all just theoretical.
Denying the reality of evolution won’t cause anyone to lose their favorite beach house, or for that matter, their favorite island. Climate change, on the other hand, is becoming apparent enough to the average layman to affect their holiday plans. We cannot swim against this scientific tide much longer.
But swimming against the tide of reality has been what the GOP’s far right has done best for years – and it’s taken this country into some of the most disastrous waters in our history over the last decade – with no evidence of the capacity on their part to learn, or even acknowledge error. The science of climate change has been more than mature enough to drive policy since the early years of the Reagan administration, as the video below richly demonstrates. As science-acknowledging right wingers come out of the closet, let’s welcome them, but have no illusions as to the willfull distortion of and resistance to the mainstream body of science, that will be a part of every school children’s rueful history for the next 10,000 years.
This message is a perfect measure of what’s gone wrong with these people:
“It’s OK to deny science so long as it doesn’t cost us anything. There’s no connection whatsoever between the scientific conspiracy to undermine our faith by saying we’re descended from apes, and the ease with which big oil and their paid propagandists managed to bamboozle us about climate change! There’s no connection between believing in an evil conspiracy of biologists and geologists against the truth faith and believing in an evil conspiracy of climate scientists to make us into bug-eating socialists. The two are completely separate!!! (Repeat until you can say it with a straight face.)
You know the old saw that when you find yourself in a hole the first step is to stop digging. Unfortunately for the GOP, their fundamentalist and carbon-dollars sucking wing actually believes a lot of their crap. For the rest, the problem is how to address climate and keep the petro $$ coming in.
Hopefully the public will retire them. Their war on women hasn’t helped them either, and I think the Dems have finally realized the importance of the mid-term elections.
The GOP believe the opposite of the old wisdom. When you are found in a lie, keep lying, only louder and more extravagantly.
Entomophagy, serios enough for PLOS One
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0014445
Citation: Oonincx DGAB, van Itterbeeck J, Heetkamp MJW, van den Brand H, van Loon JJA, et al. (2010) An Exploration on Greenhouse Gas and Ammonia Production by Insect Species Suitable for Animal or Human Consumption. PLoS ONE 5(12): e14445. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0014445
Yes, but still a massive distortion to suggest that it is being advocated regularly by those concerned about climate disruption.
Our hearts tell us we are sinners who must pay for our sins. Let’s use our brains instead for this one.
“Republicans can’t be blamed for harboring skepticism, but we must realize that our strategy of blind blanket denial is developing into a political suicide pact.”
“When public opinion comes into line with the established science, our denialist position will cost us our opportunity to participate in shaping policy. We are setting ourselves up for a sudden, catastrophic political collapse which could spread beyond this single issue.”
“Categorical climate denial might be the single greatest threat to the long term future of the conservative movement.”
I believe the next republican presidential nominee will acknowledge climate reality. It will be a courageous change in policy, and he will lose in historic fashion.
They will never be able to walk this back.
http://climatecrocks.com/2011/05/27/gop-gov-chris-christie-i-am-running-for-president-in-2016-we-have-an-obligation-to-reduce-our-greenhouse-gas-emissions/
Oh, they’ll try. Count on it. That yarn they spin about personal responsibility is only for other people.
They’ll blame Obama for focusing on healthcare or Climategate or pull a Romney and claim they were with the EPA all along or believed the world was warming but there was still time and abortion, er, I mean the economy was a priority.
and a certain number of morons with short memories and blinkers will believe them.
Guys, I know I’m a radical, but climate change, as is all environmental damage, is an outgrowth of economic growth. Until our culture learns that simple fact, we’re doomed to increase environmental damage, and as growth is exponential, increase that damage exponentially.
Obama’s speech contains several essential untruths – the main one being “Remind folks there’s no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth.”
There IS a contradiction, categorically. It’s a myth, and a very dangerous one at that. You can’t maintain exponential growth infinitely in a finite sphere. Look around you – where is the environment and biosphere getting better? Will that change with continued economic growth? Will we just get rich and pay money to fix everything, when everything is increasingly expensive because we can’t get it for free from nature any more? Our economy is built from the ground up on extracting from nature. Most of that extraction involves destruction. Name one truly sustainable large-scale industry.
I’ll be the first to say Republicans are insane, because they are. But the environmental movement has bought into the idea that economic growth can walk hand-in-hand with environmental protection – and that is also insane.
The Republicans are right in knowing this instinctively. It’s why they stick their head in the ground on every single environmental issue. To them, money is more important than the environment, and it always will be. Any actions they may propose will always stick to that rule – and anything they have to propose will only make things worse for our species and the environment.
I know, I know. The public won’t accept stopping or reducing economic growth. That’s completely true. And I know, we have to work within the framework of our current political system. But we’re all on this spaceship together, and it’s heading right towards the sun.
OTOH economic growth reduces vulnerability to climate change. Who would be mad enough to give up on the former especially if convinced of the reality of the latter?
The problems will only increase exponentially with continued economic growth. “Reducing vulnerability” ends somewhere, voluntarily or involuntarily.
The only way we’ve reduced emissions to any meaningful degree is when our economies tanked.
It’s like this – we’re the hamster on the wheel. The hamster knows that if it stops, it’ll get flipped and flipped. It doesn’t want to stop. But it has to stop at some point. So, is the hamster ‘mad’ if it decides to slow down gradually? Or is it ‘mad’ if it decides to speed up?
That only works in a just way if there’s enough to go around.
In a world of scarcity, the disparity could very well lead to armed conflict which might solve our problems in a brutal way.
The world has become kinder and gentler in my lifetime but a few decades of real global deprivation would reverse all that.
When I see what a relatively small influx of immigrants has done to the tolerance of several enlightened European nations, I’m reminded that we are all just a few steps away from barbarism.
True growth – i.e. the kind of growth in nature with *no waste* is the only kind of growth we can tolerate. If we used 100% renewable energy and if we had *no* waste, then we can thrive as a part of life on this planet.
We have an extractive economy, and that is unsustainable. We need to jettison the extractive parts of our economy, and then we would have a sustainable economy. Growth and expansion are different things.
Neil
Neil, any form of growth grows until it can’t. What we’re seeing this century are the symptoms of growth.
Granted, most of that growth is based on the insane notion that we can continuously take and not give back. Most of our current lifestyle is based on the fruits of this notion. If we gave that up, we should be prepared for a very different type of lifestyle.
I’m in full favor of such – unashamedly so. I think we’d be much better off without SUVs and iPads and cubic zirconia and mounds and mounds of hot dogs and cheese. I don’t think it’s impossible that we could build a truly sustainable economy. But we won’t see it in our lifetimes, and humanity won’t change voluntarily. My only hope is that our species can learn from just how stupid it has been.
At some point our species won’t have a choice but to learn. The fact that you correctly use the term “species” is key here. Too many idiots in this world seem to think humans are somehow separate from nature and so are not bound to its laws. Too many idiots seem to think we live in an infinite world where we can continually take take take. Some go as far as to say that we are a pretty clever mob and so will just invent our way out of the mess, but in the end, even the universe is finite, and this is the key point. Like it or not, nature will bite back and like any ecosystem where something gets out of ‘balance’ the boom/bust rule will apply to the biggest consumer and it won’t be pretty.
Lots of consumable junk out there that is plain gluttony: things that offer just a few moments of pleasure, but serve no significant purpose otherwise:
Go down the toy aisle at CVS, Walgreen’s, etc. You might see a package whose backing is cardboard, and whose front is clear plastic molded to fit the contents – they being a ten inch long, plastic, fishing pole attached to a string whose second end is then attached to a small magnet that it may pick up included plastic fish with some sort of metal or magnets embedded in them.
There’s probably tens of thousands of those presently adding to the aesthetic clusterf**k that a low end retail outlet is comprised of. Their only purpose is to be sold; not to be utilized. The whole idea is to look attractive enough that a child wants it. Once its out of the package, the ‘bling’ is lost, and the child finds there is little fun in it within the first sixty seconds of play. Again it was never designed to be fun to play with. It was designed to be a unit to be sold solely based on that it is something new and shiny to a consumer who has no developed inhibitions and little ability in the art of abstraction, that they do not realize the scam, until they are actually trying to play with it.
It contributes zero meaning to the child’s life, emotionally, cognitively, sentimentally, etc. It does reinforce the idea of shopping solely for the sake of shopping, and thus a trivial consumer is born upon examination of the colorful package and its graphics. Incidentally, look through some of those online dating sites and you’ll find a significant number of folks list ‘shopping’ as one of their ‘favorite pass times’; and further, how many a time a person on my facebook has posted a two word status update: ‘Retail Therapy’.
But the list of useless crap out there is huge: does one really need a bumper sticker that says anything? Why would someone driving a low mpg SUV put a ‘I support the troops’ bumper sticker on their vehicle knowing full well the act of driving the thing around and consuming oil/gas results in the killing of troops? The only folks i know supporting the troops are the ones that live in the Amazon who decided not to go through the bronze age, etc. Though I suspect that if resources were not so finite, there would be less troops to supposedly support. I’ve got an idea for a new ‘Support the troops’ bumper sticker: It costs $100; the proceeds going toward putting up more wind an solar energy, and updating the grid.
Well, look – I’m in favor of renewable energy, although I think that term is misleading. No form of energy is truly renewable. On solar and wind, we’re outsourcing a bunch of our pollution. We don’t see it, and so we don’t think it exists, but check out the neodymium mining sites in China and the lithium mines in Chile.
These are the cold, hard facts that the environmental movement and the liberals need to accept. If we want energy at any level that we’re used to, environmental destruction is a given. And if we want to continue this insane pursuit of continuous economic growth, we have to accept that we will continue our escalation into destroying this planet’s capability to support us and other life forms.
Nevertheless, I am in favor of ‘renewable’ energy, because on the scale of pollutive effects, solar, wind, and hydro are far less damaging than coal, gas, and oil – and because I too don’t want to go back to living in a cave and eating bugs. I think we can all enjoy a comfortable life on this planet – but it’ll be a much more modest one, and one far less concerned with profit, if we want a civilization that is anywhere near sustainable.
We’ll destroy this place no matter what form of energy we use if we don’t start thinking, and really, really believing, that less is more. Included in this is the fact that we have to start thinking about reducing our economy and population. Unfortunately, this is the one solution we’ll never accept voluntarily.
The Democratic party has bought into the neo-liberal economic ideas that we can just solve all our problems with technology and continuing growth. Obama’s speech, although it includes many good things as well, absolutely drips with it. It’s a tragedy – and it’ll only ensure destruction.
The big problem that has been surprisingly ignored in the above conversation about growth is this – population. We can’t grow from 2 billion to 5 billion to 9 billion, as we’ve been trying to do, without severe environmental destruction. There have been a few courageous souls who have attempted to point this out, but not many and not often.
Suppose the sustainable population of the planet is 3 billion. ( I read one estimate in this range but I don’t remember the source) We’re at 5 billion + now and growing. It’s inconceivable that the human race will downsize voluntarily, so history tells us that we will downsize involuntarily, and likely overshoot by a billion or two. If the mass extinction event that precipitates this is bad enough, the survival of humanity could be in question.
In the light of these possibilities, how important is continuous economic growth? Yet what person in a position of power is courageous enough to advocate population control and limited economic growth, even if they were our only hope of species survival?
Wes, our problems are this equation = population x footprint. The OECD sees some reduction in population growth due largely to the fact that there is economic disincentive to have many children in an advanced economy. However, a person in an advanced economy has a far higher footprint than a person in a developing economy.
But, you’re right – population growth has to be examined, too.
People always harp on technology, when technology often exacerbates he problem. We have much higher populations because of two factors: 1) much improved medicine increases human longevity and reduces early mortality, and 2) advances in food production (although these are all highly extractive systems) due to advances in industrializing agriculture.
Extreme technophiles point to a time when humans can become immortal via medical and computer advances – and what then? And we are furiously experimenting with GMOs – the new technological front.
(I’m not pinning any personal desire on the course of technology. I think as long as humans exist, technological breakthroughs will persist. I think our dreams are often greater than reality – see ‘alchemy’ for an example – but technology is just a tool in the hands of a species of toolmakers.)
In Obama’s speech, he points to natural gas production as a breakthrough. Any examination of that industry points to the conclusion that it is just more of the same, and perhaps worse.
The great stock-in-trade of politicians is the white lie. They tell us what we want to hear, even when what we want to hear is patently wrong. Anyone courageous enough to tell people what they don’t want to hear wouldn’t have a long career as a politician.
I really liked this admission that their denial is just so much distortion:
“On this issue public opinion will eventually move in the direction of established facts regardless of how much distortion we generate.”
The GOP according to Mr. Ladd has to do some changes in its anti science thinking or the ‘left’ will not ‘die’ as he so eloquently points out. It is their last dying gasp from the era of the New Deal, the Fair Deal. The New Frontier, and the Great Society– all those ‘liberal’ ideals last had credibility in the 60s, going back to the 30s. What ideology has been in place the last 3 plus decades? An increasingly anti science, xenophobic, anti gay, women, ultra capitalist crony Robber Barons.
Now with the climate well into the Red Zone with C02 passing 400ppm and rising at a rate not seen in Geologic history- the GOP writers are becoming nervous. Ha! Even if we stopped the burning of all fossil fuels today, the rest of this century is going to bring a total turnover in out political and economic philosophy- from consumption and waste , and a narcissistic selfishness, to something far more sustainable and collective. The longer we wait to slow our emissions, the more the climate will exact a huge toll on our culture. The dreaded word ‘regulation’ becomes larger with each passing year.
The GOP is a party full of crooks, buffoons and charlatans trying to figure out how to game the system to see just how much crud they can get away with and I’m sick to the gills with their nonsense.