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Global warming deniers get their day in the hot, scorching, icecap-melting sun
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Secretary of State Clinton recently said, "Never waste a good crisis . . . Don't waste it when it can have a very positive impact on climate change and energy security," and it looks like some folks are taking her advice, only for the other side. Today a group of global warming deniers is gathering in New York to gin up press for the fabricated notion that there is substantial debate within the scientific community about climate change. The conference is being held by the free-market policy group the Heartland Institute and is co-sponsored by a long list of right wing, pro-business, and global warming skepticism front groups.
Apparently, they feel their big score is Czech president Václav Klaus who perceives conspiracies of scientists who "do not want to reveal their true plans and ambitions to stop economic development and return mankind several centuries back." Saw right through us, Klaus. That Al Gore, always pining for the old hunter-gatherer days.
Progress on combating global warming has always been most frustratingly thwarted by the made-up lack of consensus on the reality of the phenomenon. In a media culture that assumes equal validity to binary positions on any given issue, regardless of their substance, threatened interests can manufacture debate on an issue of existential importance to the species, all for their own short-term gain. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting expressed it well:
. . . superficial balance—telling "both" sides of the story—can actually be a form of informational bias. Despite the consistent assertions of the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that human activities have had a "discernible" influence on the global climate and that global warming is a serious problem that must be addressed immediately, "he said/she said" reporting has allowed a small group of global warming skeptics to have their views greatly amplified.
So while we may have reached a tipping point at which most Americans now believe that global waring is a real and serious threat, it is no guarantee that progress can now be made. The opportunity that presents itself in the form of the economic crisis, Americans' weariness of their subjugation to foreign oil, and the election of a popular left-leaning president is an important one. But the very crises that might be an opening to bold action for the forces of reality can be exploited both ways. This is exemplified in George Will's now-infamous and heartily-debunked column in which he gloated:
Because of today's economy, another law -- call it the Law of Clarifying Calamities -- is being (redundantly) confirmed. On graphs tracking public opinion, two lines are moving in tandem and inversely: The sharply rising line charts public concern about the economy, the plunging line follows concern about the environment. A recent Pew Research Center poll asked which of 20 issues should be the government's top priorities. Climate change ranked 20th.
Real calamities take our minds off hypothetical ones.
So while the restructuring of many of our economic systems affords an opportunity to take significant action on curbing the causes of global warming, the fact that our economic situation is an anxiety-producing crisis is a hole through which deniers can squeeze and make some headway. As it falls off people's radars, and people are more afraid for their jobs than their grandchildren's habitats, the will to act is diminished.
Interestingly, one of the purposes of the Heartland Institute's conference, as the New York Times' Andrew Revkin said on NPR today, is to "square up their own stories," to contend with the vast panoply of alternative explanations and theories that global warming deniers and skeptics have espoused, for fear of losing credibility. Two birds are killed with one stone: press attention and talking points refinement (of course, if they get their way, a lot more than two birds will wind up dead).
Happily, as Revkin reported, even those who normally might stand to gain from this kind of hootenanny are worried about looking foolish in their company. Former donor to the Heartland Institute, Exxon Mobil, is steering clear, citing concerns that the gathering "could divert attention from the important discussion about how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner." In other words, regardless of their ideology, companies risk too much of their own credibility when associating with folks like these.
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