“The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.”
—Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
—————-
In the late 18th century, Edward Gibbon fretted about getting into trouble for his blunt take on the early Christians. Short summary: their intolerance and stupidity unwittingly helped bring down Rome. In the above-quoted passage of his Decline and Fall, Gibbon tried to prepare the gentle reader for his coming exposé of early-church idiocy.
Like the great institutions of European Christianity, modern science has amassed tremendous power—and not always lived up to its founding creeds. Science needs a Gibbon—someone who appreciates its intellectual grandeur and potential, but who also can train a cold eye on the “inevitable mixture of error and corruption” that has accompanied its tenure since the Enlightenment.
That Gibbon is not Michael Specter, a New Yorker staff writer and author of the new book Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives. His book purports to defend science from its philistine critics—people who, in Specter’s view, reflexively deny the validity of the scientific process.
In his intro, Specter sets up the defining focus of the book. He contrasts the “rigorous and open-minded skepticism of science” with “the inflexible certainty of ideological commitment” (i.e., “denialism”). Already, we’re on thin intellectual ice; Specter evidently believes in a pure science, one that exists completely apart from ideology. In Gibbon’s phrasing, he’s defending a science as “she descended from Heaven [read: the Enlightenment], arrayed in her native purity.”
Menace to society? An organic farmer, with bounty. According to Denialism, organic farming threatens millions in Africa. According to the UN, not so much. But science doesn’t exist in an ideal state. Like the arts, it lives on its patrons—and their interests shape its contours. Here in the United States, public funding for universities and research has plummeted since the Reagan era. Into that void have stepped monied interests—corporations more inclined to finance the generation of proprietary knowledge than the sort of pure science Specter so values.
Does this factor automatically invalidate the scientific enterprise? Of course not. But anyone who takes on the topic of modern science has to account for it—or risk playing the fool. Specter blithely ignores the political economy of science as it is practiced. That oversight severely limits the value of his book.
But there’s another, even more glaring oversight at work here. In a book devoted to “denialism,” and “how irrational thinking hinders scientific progress, harms the planet, and threatens our lives,” there is almost no discussion of the most powerful and successful of all the denier cliques: those who insist human-induced climate change is a hoax.
So what do we find in these pages? We get a chapter defending the pharmaceutical industry against critics who question its wares—an industry with nearly $300 billion in sales in the U.S. alone, and fast-growing markets overseas. Specter’s defense aside, Big Pharma typically vies with “oil and mining” and “commercial banks” for the title of most profitable industry in the United States.
There’s a chapter decrying those who question the necessity of vaccinations—even as global child vaccine rates continue to rise. (Indeed, according to a recent report, the main factor holding vaccines back isn’t denialism, but rather their heightened cost.)
We get a chapter lambasting what Specter calls the “organic fetish”—even though organic food sales remain less than 5 percent of the U.S. market (as Specter acknowledges). But really, this chapter (more on which below) amounts to a ringing defense of genetically modified organisms—which can now be found in 75 percent+ of the offerings on supermarket shelves.
Another chapter blasts the herbal remedy and supplement market—substantial at $23 billion in sales per year (according to this report), but still a fraction of the pharma market’s size.
In other words, Specter mainly trains his sights on unsuccessful or marginally empowered “deniers,” such as those challenging the pharma behemoth or vaccines for children.
But what about the successful deniers—the ones who have managed to block any meaningful response to climate change from the federal government, and are even now fouling up the effort to pass an effective climate bill? These folks, part of a loosely concerted movement funded largely by the oil and coal industries, get barely a mention in Denialism; they certainly don’t rate a chapter.
The book’s index has no entry for “climate change.” The entry for “Global warming” cites just one page—a reference to genetically modified foods as a “solution” to global warming.
Does this mean that Specter thinks Monsanto’s critics—of whom I am one—pose more of threat to humanity than the likes of Sen. James Inhofe, who airs his views not in a blog but on the floor of the U.S. Senate? Monsanto has certainly shaken off its deniers; it now dominates the U.S. corn, soy, and cotton seed markets. The movement to mitigate climate change hasn’t been so lucky.
Specter’s failure to consider this most successful foray into denialism just astounds me. Did an author really just publish a book about “denialism”—and forget to address climate-change deniers? It’s like writing a book about the British invasion of the 1960s, and neglecting to mention the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
OK, so what’s in Specter’s chapter on organics and GMOs? Astonishingly, not very much science. Two major assumptions underlie it: organic agriculture delivers frightfully low yields, and GMO agriculture delivers reassuringly high yields. He doesn’t deliver data to back up either of those claims. Here are two studies, both of which came out in time for consideration in Denialism, that Specter really should have grappled with: 1) a 2009 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists showing that after decades of research, transgenic seeds have yet to deliver yield increases; and 2) a 2005 study in Bioscience (summary here) showing that yields of organically grown corn and soy match those of their conventional counterparts—with dramatically lower energy inputs.
Straddling his two wobbly, undefended givens about GMO and organic yields, Specter leaps to the conclusion that proponents of organic agriculture are dooming millions to starvation. Or as he puts it:
An organic universe sounds delightful, but it would consign millions in Africa and in much of Asia to malnutrition and death.
To hear Specter tell it, the only thing standing between the African continent and a future marked by widespread famine is a complete surrender to GMO technology. But in declaring that vision, he’s brazenly denying the conclusions of the largest and most comprehensive study on the future of agriculture in the global south, the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD).
Under the auspices of the United Nations, World Bank, WHO, and other institutions, the IAASTD gathered 400 scientists and development experts from dozens of nations to assess the very problems that concern Specter. A three-year project, it has been called the IPCC of agriculture. Its conclusion: agroecological practices—including the very organic-farming techniques Specter finds so frightful—are at least as important as biotechnology in terms of “feeding the world” in the decades to come.
The study [PDF] is at best lukewarm on GMOs. It openly doubts whether GMOs actually increase yields; and deplores the patent regime that now governs them. The IAASTD states:
In developing countries especially, instruments such as patents may drive up costs, restrict experimentation by the individual farmers or public researchers while also potentially undermining local practices that enhance food security and economic sustainability. In this regard, there is particular concern about present IPR instruments eventually inhibiting seed-saving, exchange, sale and access to proprietary materials necessary for the independent research community to conduct analyses and long term experimentation on impacts. Farmers face new liabilities: GM farmers may become liable for adventitious presence if it causes loss of market certification and income to neighboring organic farmers, and conventional farmers may become liable to GM seed producers if transgenes are detected in their crops.
The IAASTD turned out to be so unenthusiastic about GMOs, in fact, that Croplife International, the trade group for the globe’s dominant GMO/agrichemical purveyors, angrily pulled out of participation shortly before its release.
I’m not blasting Specter for refusing to agree with the IAASTD’s conclusions; but I do find it inexcusable that he failed to grapple with this vast scientific undertaking. In doing so, he lurches toward a kind of denialism of his own.
Generally, he might have more fully engaged the major literature on ag development in the global south. He glancingly refers to the FAO’s 2003-‘04 “State of Food and Agriculture” paper that gave tepid support for GMOs among poor farmers (while stressing that they’re “not a panacea”). Yet Specter ignores a more recent paper (this one from 2008, by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development) that’s directly relevant to the topic of his chapter: its on the potential of organic ag in Africa. The paper concludes:
Organic agriculture can increase agricultural productivity and can raise incomes with low-cost, locally available and appropriate technologies, without causing environmental damage. Furthermore, evidence shows that organic agriculture can build up natural resources, strengthen communities and improve human capacity, thus improving food security by addressing many different causal factors simultaneously ... Organic and near-organic agricultural methods and technologies are ideally suited for many poor, marginalized smallholder farmers in Africa, as they require minimal or no external inputs, use locally and naturally available materials to produce high-quality products, and encourage a whole systemic approach to farming that is more diverse and resistant to stress.
Again, no need to agree with every science-based report that praises organic ag. But to pretend such papers don’t exist is poor journalism. Judging from his organic chapter, Specter spent a lot of time trolling the aisles at Whole Foods, marvelling at the simplistic comments of the shoppers. Fine. I have no doubt that he heard silly, science-denying things there. But where is the push to find the intersections between organic and science—such at the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania, which has for years been running a test organic farm, complete with control farm? The results of its work, often in conjunction with USDA researchers, show that innovative organic techniques have at least as much promise for mitigating and surviving climate change as some patent-protected transgenic seed cooked up in a Monsanto lab.
Scientific output is messy and full of contradictions. And that brings me back to my broader critique of this book: that Specter defends an ideal, objective science that doesn’t exist in this world. There is no greater case study of the grubbiness of real-world science than the rise of Specter’s beloved GMOs.
(I’m still marveling at this statement, from the introduction: “I wonder, as the ice sheet in Greenland disappears, the seas rise, and our sense of planetary foreboding grows, will denialists consider the genetically engineered organisms that propel our cars and sustain our factories as a continuation of what [organic champion] Lord Melchett described as a war against nature?”)
GMOs are hardly a product of the kind of pure and objective science that Specter celebrates. Indeed, the few companies involved in GMO seed production have been accorded such extraordinary intellectual property power by the U.S. government that research scientists have risen up in rebellion.
In an article published in February of this year—maybe too late for consideration by Specter—The New York Times reported that 26 corn-insect specialists signed a letter to the EPA complaining that “no truly independent research [on GMOS] can be legally conducted on many critical questions” because the patent-holding companies have so much power over research. From the Times:
The problem, the scientists say, is that farmers and other buyers of genetically engineered seeds have to sign an agreement meant to ensure that growers honor company patent rights and environmental regulations. But the agreements also prohibit growing the crops for research purposes.
Shockingly, “The researchers ... withheld their names [from the EPA letter] because they feared being cut off from research by the companies.” Now there’s an example of scientists who are free to pursue the path of truth!
I’d also urge Specter to read a paper by Don Lotter, published early this year in the International Journal of the Sociology of Food and Agriculture. Lotter’s paper, provocatively titled “The Genetic Engineering of Food and The Failure of Science,” shows how the collapse of biology’s “central dogma”—the one-gene, one-trait thesis that fell apart with the mapping of the human genome—exposed GM plant breeding as a rather crude tool. He traces the rise of GMOs, convincingly arguing that political and economic power, not scientific rigor, have driven the technology’s ascent.
But political and economic power are precisely what elude Specter’s gaze. This great defender of science appears to be cursed with something that a love of science should have cured: naiveté. To be sure, the kind of know-nothing, reflexive anti-scienticism that Specter deplores certainly exists; and its adherents need a kick in the pants. Specter’s boot misses the target. Moreover, he sees deniers everywhere, except where they are actually powerful and effective: denying climate change.
Michael Pollan video on Democracy Now
Four stories that should have changed the media narrative ... but didn’t
The organic movement is a civic process, not a set of standards [corrected]
Comments
View as Flat
mememine69 Posted 10:12 pm
31 Oct 2009
Keep chanting “they say” like obedient Greenzis all you sheople want and get signs that says THE END IS NEAR and march yourselves right into history. The UN has allowed Carbon Trading to trump 3rd World Education, clean water and starvation rescue. Nice!?
Your globull warm mongering disco science is political garbage and you fools fell for it hook line and sinker with the glee you only see from rubber neckers at car accidents. The theory will be generally denounced soon. Why? You didn’t expect this no show of a climate crisis to happen to you and I to be sustainable for another quarter of a century now did you? Take some nice warm skirts to your wild little “fear the unknown” Climate Changer demonstration. Ta ta!
Al Gore is the Bernie Madoff of Climate Change.
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james_sch Posted 1:16 am
01 Nov 2009
That's a separate phenomenon from the issues he does address in the book where the deniers don't see any benefits, even in the short term, from their denial and it comes from some weird underlying revulsion towards technology/science. Anti-vaccination folks aren't keeping their kids from being protected from deadly diseases because they're too cheap to pay for the shots. They're doing it because some switch in their brains got flipped and suddenly they're cut off from reason.
Similarly creationists have no economic incentive to disbelieve the evidence for evolution or anti-GMO folks* to doubt the evidence that the food we've been eating for 15 years already is safe. It's a different motivation.
*Obviously your concerns about patents and corporate control of research are a separate issue. That's public policy, scientific experiments can't answer those questions one way or the other.
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Tom Philpott Posted 7:45 am
01 Nov 2009
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james_sch Posted 12:24 pm
01 Nov 2009
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Daniel Coffey Posted 3:15 pm
02 Nov 2009
In one response you refer to the rather hate-filled comment set forth fully below and say: "It's hard to see what they gain from their denialism."
My personal view of "denialism," practiced by various groups I refer to as "Naysayers," strongly benefits three groups: oil, coal, and Republicans. It extends the life of the first two and may form the basis for a resurgence of the latter. If political fortunes shift in 2010, we could be in for another long period of Republican obstructionist rule. This issue concerns me greatly when it comes to how environmentalists are depicted by the NaySayers (see "Not Evil, Just Wrong"), and that environmentalist are acting in ways which seem to contradict the notion that things are dire. For example, how do you square blocking renewable energy and transmission projects with grave climate change?
I think deniers gain time for coal and oil; time means money. And they can gain time with a wide variety of techniques, including stopping and delaying renewable energy projects, blocking legislation, imposing a wide range of environmental requirements on new energy projects, convincing people that there really is not climate change problem and therefore no need for spending money or reducing CO2 emissions.
Best regards,
Dan
THE TEXT OF THE RIDICULOUS COMMENT BY MEMEMINE69 IS BELOW:
"Hey, Global Doomers and Waraphobics, Keep chanting “they say” like obedient Greenzis all you sheople want and get signs that says THE END IS NEAR and march yourselves right into history. The UN has allowed Carbon Trading to trump 3rd World Education, clean water and starvation rescue. Nice!?
Your globull warm mongering disco science is political garbage and you fools fell for it hook line and sinker with the glee you only see from rubber neckers at car accidents. The theory will be generally denounced soon. Why? You didn’t expect this no show of a climate crisis to happen to you and I to be sustainable for another quarter of a century now did you? Take some nice warm skirts to your wild little “fear the unknown” Climate Changer demonstration. Ta ta! Al Gore is the Bernie Madoff of Climate Change."
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Chris Pratt Posted 5:45 am
01 Nov 2009
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gmosrdelicious Posted 1:58 pm
12 Nov 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 4:48 pm
12 Nov 2009
The truth is that with or without GMOs we produce enough food to feed everyone and yet as many as a billion don't get enough to eat and tens of millions starve. Why? Because they can't afford to pay for the food that has been produced.
When GMOs will put sufficient food dollars into the hands of the 3.5 billion people earning less than $2 per day, you let me know. Until then, don't BS with the nonsense that its about feeding people.
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gmosrdelicious Posted 5:29 pm
12 Nov 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 7:47 pm
12 Nov 2009
B) Local and sustainable agriculture is difficult to commodify as it defies the standardization required by the short term, profit interests of corporate capitalism. GMOs are by definition commodification as GMOs, by definition, create standards and represent the opposite of genetic diversity.
C) Food and hunger are social problems and you cannot solve social problems with technology. They require social solutions. We could feed everyone tomorrow if we, as a global society, decided food was a human right that took precedent over the narrow profit motives of global corporate capitalism.
Marginal lands also serve a purpose in nature. Growing GMOs in deserts does not put a single grain of food into a single bowl if the hungry still can't afford to feed themselves. Again, the solution is social and not technological.
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amazingdrx Posted 8:48 am
01 Nov 2009
Somebody slipped up somewhere, we surely could use the kind of war reporting Hersh did in the "New Yorker" on climate change and new energy economy stories.
A series from Elizabeth Kolbert on climate change from the "New Yorker" from 2005:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/04/25/050425fa_fact3
And the latest:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2009/10/05/091005taco_talk_kolbert
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amazingdrx Posted 9:13 am
01 Nov 2009
The "geo-engineering" the planet needs is a global switch to organic ag. Organic ag can be done on a similar industrial mechanized scale and at even greater energy efficiency and even greater productivity than chemical ag. All that carbon released by chemical ag from the 20 foot thick prairie soil that sodbusters first encountered over a century ago can be returned, reversing human caused GHG climate change in this century.
Feed the world and save the climate or keep importing fertilizer on tankers from Russia? So that our economy depends not only on imported energy, but also on imported fertilizer. Deny that dilemna Specter. Spooky!
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foodprovider Posted 10:01 pm
01 Nov 2009
Where do you come up with your 50% figures? That doesn't seem to jive with the EPA reports
http://epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/downloads09/ExecutiveSummary.pdf If my math is correct, Ag is responsible for 6% of the GHG emmisions. Look at pg ES-12.
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amazingdrx Posted 11:20 pm
01 Nov 2009
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2009/2/18/4097423.html
Speculation I'll admit, but arguably supportable. Hehey
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amazingdrx Posted 11:37 pm
01 Nov 2009
Organic fertilizer on the other hand builds the living soil ecosystem that traps and uses the nitrogen, preventing runoff.
And don't forget the fossil fuel used in ag, robotic organic ag powered by renewable energy wouldn't use all that diesel.
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foodprovider Posted 5:49 am
02 Nov 2009
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foodprovider Posted 8:21 am
02 Nov 2009
What about the huge amounts of methane that comes off our lanfills? I wonder what percentage that accounts for?
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gunthers Posted 7:22 pm
03 Nov 2009
Contribution of land-use emissions to global GHGs:
C02 23%
CH4 74%
N20 "very large", wiki cites 80%
It goes on:
"Furthermore, although land-use emissions make up only a small percentage of global CO2 emissions, they comprise a large part (45%) of CO2 emissions from developing countries, and an even larger percentage of their total CH4 (78%) and N2O (76%) emissions (Pepper et al.,1992). Hence, from a variety of perspectives, the contribution of land-use emissions to total emissions of GHGs is important[...]"
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_sr/?src=/climate/ipcc/emission/076.htm
So, with methane having 25 times the impact of CO2 as an GHG, land use is indeed a pretty big slice.
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Damien Posted 12:56 pm
01 Nov 2009
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Steven Earl Salmony Posted 3:20 pm
01 Nov 2009
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spaceshaper Posted 5:55 am
02 Nov 2009
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Steven Earl Salmony Posted 7:08 am
02 Nov 2009
Perhaps we can agree that the business-as-usual activities which have been adamantly advocated and relentlessly pursued during the past 8 long, dark years need not continue.
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Biodiversivist Posted 10:51 am
02 Nov 2009
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mcrosacci Posted 11:13 am
02 Nov 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 11:59 am
02 Nov 2009
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Chris@CarrotsandSticks Posted 8:13 am
03 Nov 2009
I think the under lying problem is that an objective cost benefit analysis of new technology is inherently murky. The reality is that technological innovation is sometimes 1 step forward, 2 steps back, or that the economic concerns in up being more important to the utility of new technologies. But that just doesn't translate to a good book cover and you end having to ignore legitimate research that says the reality innovation X didn't really move us forward.
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BenLeef Posted 1:00 pm
03 Nov 2009
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Anna Haynes Posted 8:06 pm
03 Nov 2009
"In 1991, Specter transferred to the [New York] Times, where from 1994 to 1998 he was based in Moscow. In 1995, he was appointed co-chief of the Times Moscow bureau, and while in Russia he covered the war in Chechnya, the 1996 Russian presidential elections, and the declining state of Russian health care among other stories. In 1998, he became a roving correspondent based in Rome"
He was previously wed to Alessandra Stanley, who was "co-chief of the paper's Moscow bureau...also Rome bureau chief...worked previously as a correspondent for Time magazine" and whose father was "Expert On Defense Policy and Strategies...held defense posts in the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon Administrations"
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mememine69 Posted 8:40 am
04 Nov 2009
Here you have promised a climate crisis (death) and you say we must “save the planet” (death). You promise catastrophic climate occurrences (death). You promise agricultural disruption (death). You can’t threaten us with anything worse than death now can you? You warmies have bet the house and farm and everything you stand for on this 23 year old theory that certainly should have started by now if it is powerful enough to cause “death”.
So, you can keep threatening my kids with death like climate cowards or you can admit that there is much to be skeptical about, uncertain and worthy of doubt after waiting 23 years. When politicians, consultants in lab coats, PR firms and corporate media ALL agree on one single issue that is not consensus. That is reason to be suspect, very sususpect, not obey and accept a certain death like conformist Greenzi sheople.
The next generation wont accept this promise of death so watch for the backlash very soon.
The theory is dead. Now is the time to protect, preserve and respect our planet, not save and rescue it with needless fear from a CO2 mistake.
Y2Kyoto.
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cyberfarer Posted 10:00 am
04 Nov 2009
The religion of denial is one that harkens back to the dark ages with tinges of fascism.
And how stupid must one be to reject science and claim a profit motive for sound scientific reasoning, while adopting the word of crackpots and cranks funded by the most profitable corporations and interests on the planet? It is almost beyond comprehensible. Almost until one makes note of the barely literate efforts at writing.
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Tom Philpott Posted 10:12 am
04 Nov 2009
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cyberfarer Posted 10:28 am
04 Nov 2009
I would like to add that a big reason the deniers are winning is because of the political splintering of those of us who recognize the future course. If we are to move beyond political irrelevancy and hope to have any real chance at influencing events and building a sustainable future, we'd better get over our political differences soon. Real soon.
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Daniel Coffey Posted 11:20 am
04 Nov 2009
Actions speak louder than words, and for someone like me who cares deeply for the environment, public health, and orderly civilization, it worries me that we are sweating the small stuff, dithering, and blocking renewable energy projects at every turn in order to preserve another environmental prize. We are spending years on projects that should take months.
That behavior does not comport consistently with the climate-emergency message, and the public contradiction is being recognized and also exploited by the Naysayer and deniers.
The scale of the task at hand does not allow us to deftly pick and choose between slight environmental preferences and hopes and dreams. This is not retail or land use decisions between architectural styles, this is transforming how we transport and energize our society. It's a bus bearing down on us and we better take action, quickly triage the problems, get after the big stuff, and deal with the details later.
If we don't, political fortunes will change - see last night's elections -, renewable energy projects will not get built, and the reign of coal and oil will continue.
The choices are stark. Do we have the courage of conviction to cut to the doing and put aside the differences which seem to dominate?
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Tom Philpott Posted 10:12 am
04 Nov 2009
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mcrosacci Posted 11:09 am
04 Nov 2009
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Billhook Posted 4:54 am
06 Nov 2009
A few days ago Stern (US lead negotiator in UNFCCC) while still refusing to name any offer at all of a cut in US GHG outputs, referred enquirers to the Congress bill's 4% cut by 2020 off the 1990 baseline.
This is after 20 years of negotiation, at a point when the science, the G77+China, and the United Kingdom, are calling for a 40% US cut.
That derailling of Copenhagen by Stern will further postpone the cutting of GHG outputs and will, entirely predictably, extend and intensify the famines that are coming as a result of drought across unprecedented areas, primarily in Africa and Asia.
After 20 years of talks, that have served the profits of western fossil corporations very well indeed, it is hard to see the function of "being reasonable. This is genocide by famine that we are discussing, and the perpetrators are in plain view.
Regards,
Billhook
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cyberfarer Posted 6:30 am
06 Nov 2009
When my father was a young man, he could drink from streams, eat fresh water fish, and cancer was hardly known. After all the cooperation, compromise, and balance, as my generation comes to a close, almost every waterway has been contaminated, fresh water fish contain toxins and heavy metals, and cancer, diabetes, and other environmental diseases are not only common place but present new consumer opportunities.
We are speaking of a span of 50 years. Imagine the next 50.
I think we've cooperated and compromised enough.
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Daniel Coffey Posted 9:58 am
06 Nov 2009
In nature, by the way, no one, no single species, gets it all their way. All of nature is one big pass-it-around, sharing compromise.
When you father was a child - just guessing here - was in the 40's in the US. Earth's population was a tad smaller and a lot of wars had yet to be fought. The deer population was significantly lower than it is today because people hunted them in highly unorganized way. And going into the wilderness was not nearly the draw it is today - but don't forget your 4-wheeler or ATV.
We're here, its now, there's no time machine, so what's to be done that doesn't cause more havoc, war, deprivation, and log-jams?
My suggestion is that we get control of ourselves, compromise, triage, build better ways to produce consumer demand for electricity and transpiration, and enhance habitat where we can. We have to do something - and I'm not a fan of war - constructive to change the status quo.
Dan
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cyberfarer Posted 1:08 pm
06 Nov 2009
We have saw fit to undermine, even destroy, the eco-system that we are entirely dependent upon. Not marginally dependent, nor somewhat dependent, nor even to a large degree dependent, but entirely dependent. If we believe our own press releases, we are the intelligent species. What sort of intelligence degrades its own life support? I would suggest an insane one.
You say, "all of nature is one big pass-it-around, sharing compromise," In fact, its not. Nature is a complex system of balances. What goes out must come in and vice-versa. The human exploitation of nature disregards that balance. What is removed is removed permanently or changed to such an extent it can't be returned and what goes in is often toxic and will last as contaminants for decades and, in some cases, thousands of years.
I see that we have two options before us. The least likely option is that we seek to exist within nature and we work to restore balance and develop smaller, sustainable societies. The more likely option is that we will continue down the current path and bring about another great extinction event including, very likely, our own species.
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Daniel Coffey Posted 2:24 pm
06 Nov 2009
And what do you propose we do, now that the principles are so clear?
Mind you, everyone else gets a vote, too.
Dan
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cyberfarer Posted 3:38 pm
06 Nov 2009
May I suggest the next time you're in your car stuck in traffic, look at all the other vehicles, but rather than seeing models and colors, see instead the strip mines, the displaced populations, the contaminated waters, the processing, the refining, the shipping, the emissions, the raw ecological cost and then think in terms of the raw ecological costs of replacing all those vehicles.
In Canada, despite all that we now know about the coming era of water scarcity, the neo-con government recently rewrote regulations to allow mining companies to use pristine fresh water lakes for dumps ( http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/06/16/condemned-lakes.html ).
The tar sands ( http://glendonrootsshoots.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/alberta-tar-sands-health-risks/ ), as you know, are strip mining Canada's boreal forests for oil.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg (pardon the fading pun).
My point is that no matter how much you and I get it, you and I, and Grist's entire readership, are just a tiny minority in a sea of people who don't really get it and have no interest in learning about it. We will not convince the Chinese and the Indians that they can't have our lifestyles. Not when we can't convince even ourselves: http://autos.yahoo.com/newcars/popular/allcars/thisweek.html
In fact, even among ourselves, those of us who do get it and want to do something, we are politically irrelevant as we lack any sort of political cohesion or common purpose as as such we lack the strength of a common voice.
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Daniel Coffey Posted 4:25 pm
06 Nov 2009
I must respectfully disagree. I spend a lot of time talking to people who want to do things. The biggest impediment seems to be that if it isn't exactly perfect according to some standard, than everyone throws up their hands and gives up.
Here's my thought: the worst thing that can happen is we don't succeed, we waste our lives trying, and it all goes to hell in a hand-basket. None of us get out alive anyway, so why not give it a swing!
Here's a suggestion. We could look around and say: hey, those guys have built 120,000 MW of wind power, and those guys are installing solar, and those guys are building a better way to cart people around! How do I help those guys do more of the same? Don't let the perfect undo the necessary! And, oh, by the way, the Chinese are going to build 100,000 to 150,000 MW of wind power in the next 9 years, and the Indians have a major wind power manufacturer, and ..., and ... There is a lot of good stuff going on. How do we do more of the same? There's a guy with a pluggable hybrid. How do we make some more?
One of the most amazing things I encounter in my research and column writing is the environmentalists who don't want to do anything unless its exactly what they want to do - no compromises, no experiments, no faith. For example, here in San Diego, we have a group of "solar on rooftop" adherents who are actively VIGOROUSLY blocking wind projects (1250 MW to start) in Mexico. Why, because it would reduce the demand for rooftop solar and require a transmission line across the border. How long a transmission line, you ask? Six tenths of a mile - 0.6 miles, consisting of 5 towers. The offset from the 1000+ MW of power would be about 4 billion pounds of CO2 a year!! But no, they want to block it so they can have solar on rooftops, a task which would take decades to accomplish to match the wind farm. Never mind that we need it all and a great deal more in order to meet a reasonable standard of living for people across the planet using non-carbon sources. (See CalTech Prof. Nathan Lewis: 10 terawatts of non-carbon by 2050)
When someone can explain that kind of obstructionist behavior by "environmentalists" then I will learn a thing or two. Until then, I see it as pigheaded foolishness wrapped in a lame excuse without much concern for humanity, environment, species or habitat, all of which I care a great deal about! Nothing in this world is perfect, but that is no reason to stop trying.
The notion that nothing good can or will be done is just wrong. In my lifetime I have seen more people adopt practical environmentalism as a way of doing things than might seem possible. I believe that people are basically trying to get through life, raise their kids, do the right thing, and survive as long as possible against all odds. We just happen to have a lot of stuff going on in the bedroom which then turns into more people, and the whole thing repeats itself. I can't explain this planet!
So I ask: why not support and encourage the real live people who are working every day trying to improve things instead of standing in their way, kibitzing at every turn, wasting their time with studies of things we already know? We know what we need to do; it won't be easy; it will require environmental trade-offs, but in the end, we stand a better chance of improving things if we build a better world than if we curse the current situation.
It's time to try doing things that make sense. Renewable energy makes sense - all of it. So do you go out and support a wind farm or a geothermal well or a commercial solar project? Have you rallied for the guys on that team lately?
It's not too late to support the people doing the right thing as much as we beat on the people who are doing things wrong. And, at the end of the day, you have something to show for it when you support people doing the right thing!
Enough said.
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cyberfarer Posted 5:24 pm
06 Nov 2009
One of the broad realities is the role of government in mobilizing for mass change as witnessed during and after WWII. It was after the war the US witnessed the largest ever social expenditure in promoting suburban development and road construction.
The difference is Pearl Harbor in acting as a catalyst in WWII. The threat was made crystal clear. Climate' Pearl Harbor was Katrina, but the political leadership did not and still does not exist.
In respect to that, I would suggest what you call environmental obstructionism is symptomatic of a cohesive environmental political movement and narrative.
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Daniel Coffey Posted 6:48 pm
06 Nov 2009
If you're looking for something hard to do, try making a perfect world. If you want something big and important which is a sure thing, I have no suggestions. If you want to complain that there is no proper will power in political leaders, my suggestion is to elect real people to office. Good luck on that because real people get eliminated early in favor of folks who blow in your ear, get ringing endorsements for business and environmental groups, and do the same old things they are always have.
Political leadership is only a small part of the solution. In a way, it's a way of shifting the hard work on to someone else - "let the political figures do it." Truth be told, they are not going to do the sensible thing, they are going to do the safe thing more often than not. Incidentally, safe is different for different political figures.
I simply think that we need to not worry about mobilizing the world and get down to not blocking the wind project or solar in desert project over one worry or another. Speculation has become our greatest enemy. We're going to make some mistakes. We've made some before.
By the way, I note that you had no comment about the environmentalist who are blocking wind projects in Mexico. Why? Are they immune because they cloak it environmentalism. What if a coal company did the same thing? Would someone say a little something critical then?
For as silly and simple as it seems, I'd rather move something positive and tangible forward than to block it.
Dan
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cyberfarer Posted 7:21 pm
06 Nov 2009
I have no interest in a perfect world. Just one that is not on the brink of systemic failure. One that I leave in better shape than the one I was born into.
You think I'm a fatalist but you have no faith in politics nor government when politics and government, as a purely human institution, is the only vehicle at our disposal to bring about the fundamental change required for that healthy if imperfect planet.
What we can do individually and as disparate groups can't compare with what we can do collectively with political will.
And I didn't ignore your comment on the New Mexico solar panel advocates. What I said was they are symptomatic of an unorganized and politically ineffectual green movement. But I will add they are also typical of disparate groups persuing uncoordinated and competing agendas.
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Daniel Coffey Posted 8:07 pm
06 Nov 2009
My experience with the political world is only modest, although I do write an political opinion column in San Diego and have worked with and endorsed a number of candidates and office holders. More often than not political power is the last way things get done. It always seems like politics is driving the process, but that's only because they get the news coverage for adopting what other people have already done.
Yes there are topics where this is not the case, but they are rare. Politicians just show up after the dust settles and the issues gel to make sure they are not on the wrong side of the cameras.
By the way, in what part of the country are you located? Canada?
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cyberfarer Posted 4:53 pm
12 Nov 2009
The problem with politics is that like local business and home made foods, people abandoned it for the promise of convenience and prosperity without work. People need to reclaim politics from the corporate and moneyed interests before politics will once more be of, for, and by the people. There is no such thing as a democracy that is not participatory any more than there is a free lunch (unless you're a congressman being lobbied).
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freethinker Posted 10:33 am
07 Nov 2009
You are a fabulous writer! Thank you.
I saw Specter interviewed on CNN and was appalled at what he was saying so I immediately googled to see if he had any critics. I'm relieved for your article. As a science educator, I know full well what you are talking about.
I know Grist is dedicated to environmental issues, but I have an even bigger concern with denialism. I didn't hear Specter mention the denial of evolution and geology that runs ramped in our society and I didn't see it highlighted in your article. Did Specter even include this denial in his book? Again, as a science educator, I'm constantly challenged by this ignorance. It is sad to see our youth utterly brainwashed and defiant towards learning about evolution and the actual age of the Earth.
I see the denial of evolution and geology as our number one threat as it, as I see it, is the original source of all other threats. We know the vast majority of people ignoring climate change are doing so because of a general rebellion against any science that challenges their religious beliefs. While there are some religious people that embrace environmental issues and treat the planet as a gift, the fundamentalists associate climate change "propaganda" as they call it with a "conspiracy" encouraged by the devil. And if not, their views on religion prevent them from thinking humans have to solve the problem. After all, Jesus is going to return and make them a whole new planet.
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Anna Haynes Posted 10:21 am
13 Nov 2009
http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0911/04/ec.01.html
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