Andy Revkin has an interesting post on Dot Earth about global warming and Holocaust analogies. On Oct. 22, climate scientist James Hansen testified before the utilities board in his home state of Iowa. He said, among 59 pages of other stuff, this:
If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains -- no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.
Hansen was subsequently scolded by Kraig Naasz, president of the National Mining Association, and Kenneth Jacobson, deputy national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Others, including Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer, back Hansen up.
Is the analogy "appropriate"? No doubt there will be a great deal more huffing and puffing on that question, which ultimately has no answer. To me it seems more fruitful to think carefully about what the analogy does and doesn't mean, and what's it's trying to do.
Why do we judge the Holocaust unique in history? It's not the sheer number of deaths -- there are episodes of human history in which more people died in a shorter period of time. Stalin and Mao killed more people. Wars and diseases have killed more. What gives the Holocaust its unique place in history is its origin in the deliberate intent of a single person and the chilling industrial efficiency with which that intent was carried out.
What's notable about global warming is that you get the industrial efficiency and the horrific result without the intent. You have, in effect, a holocaust with no evil. Coal miners are trying to feed their families. Utilities are trying to keep the lights on. Industries are trying to profit. Governments are trying to gain power and provide for citizens. All us developed world drivers are trying to get to and from work. Nobody intends to create a horror, but cumulatively, that's exactly what we are doing.
Human beings did not evolve to deal with situations like this. For millions of years we lived in small bands, and our nervous systems evolved to react to agents -- identifiable faces with identifiable intentions. The maximum conceivable effect of our actions would be on our tribe and neighboring tribes. That's why the Holocaust has burnt itself on our collective memory: it is a model of human action we are familiar with -- hatred of others, tribal violence -- industrialized and amplified beyond comprehension.
A holocaust with no agency behind it does not trigger our affective responses the same way. We can intellectually grasp that it's happening, but it's difficult to feel it the way we feel threats from identifiable Bad Guys. It doesn't trigger our amygdala, our fight or flight instinct.
That's unfortunate, because the biggest threats to humanity today, and for the foreseeable future, are cumulative and incremental, without deliberate agency but with the potential to generate unthinkable misery. With 9 billion people soon to swarm the globe, we are all "good Germans," standing by while horror unfolds, and we are all Jews, suffering the horror itself. We are all perpetrators, all victims.
We badly need to figure out how to grapple with such threats. We need to figure out how to apportion differential responsibility without ascribing evil intent. We need to figure out how to coordinate internationally. We need to come to terms with our place in the world, the threat we pose to ourselves and the rest of the biosphere.
Many folks believe that the first step in that process is feeling it in our gut. That's what Hansen's trying to do. Contra the mining lobbyist, he's not trying to say that coal miners are Nazis. He's trying to get us to feel the horror of a holocaust with no evil, just as we feel the horror of a holocaust carried out by a madman.
Is the analogy "appropriate"? Hell if I know. We are marching together in lockstep toward tragedy. I'll happily accept inappropriate analogies if they wake us up and change our course. If you don't think Hansen's attempts will work, don't scold him, propose a better way. Time grows short. The trains are already running.
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Comments
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SMLowry Posted 9:41 am
26 Nov 2007
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Ian Milliss Posted 9:49 am
26 Nov 2007
Ian Milliss
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danielbell Posted 10:03 am
26 Nov 2007
The Holocaust involved a genocide. We are most certainly heading towards genocide. But, as you say, the perpetrators and the victims are nearly one and the same. The term genocide being used to describe climate change is not new. The Stern report defines a 3 degree rise in temperatures as The Economics of Genocide.
One hundred fifty million environmental refugees. Third world peoples starving due to drought.
What does it matter how we talk about it? How will we deal with it in 30 years when knew full well that it would happen?
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GreenEngineer Posted 10:12 am
26 Nov 2007
Personally, I find this sentiment quite compelling -- enough to change careers, in fact. But I also realize that most people don't seem to get kicked in the emotions by what is ultimately an intellectual idea in the same way, and I worry that there is a net negative impact associated with exercising Godwin's Law.
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GRLCowan Posted 10:18 am
26 Nov 2007
They are a much less severe harm than those other railcars. So indeed, the analogy is inappropriate; stupidly, self-defeatingly so.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, hydrogen-to-boron convert
How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?
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Pangolin Posted 10:49 am
26 Nov 2007
The people of the northern hemisphere, north americans, europeans and the asians of Japan, Korea and China have caused this mess. Really when you look at the total amounts of fossil fuels burnt it was white, northern-europeans and their descendents in the U.S. and Canada. We burnt most of the oil and most of the coal.
The people who are most likely to die of climate related drought, floods and disease are africans, south american indigineous peoples, south asians and pacific islanders. They are the ones most likely to have thier coastal villages and farmland flooded out or to suffer prolonged droughts and famines.
We benefit, they die. It's just that simple.
Once the science is clear (now) it is our duty to cease to pollute the atmosphere if we know it might kill others removed from the source of pollution. This is the same situation as putting mercury into a stream that fed farmland and fisheries downstream. Once you know the hazard you have to stop. The length of the stream really doesn't matter.
When you look at the maps of how much land would be flooded on a mere 3-meter sea level rise it is clear that billions of people would be displaced. If you consider that droughts and flooding are already damaging farmland around the world it's possible that billions could find themselves without adequate food or drinking water.
Consider a thousand Bangledesh's. The assistance we are currently giving those people is a joke. I saw six people with one, gallon-bottle of water between them on the BBC. We hand out water but not water purification kits.
If climate change causes a major reduction in earth's carrying capacity people will have to die before the balance is restored. If the doomers are right, and events have them looking like moderates, then half the worlds population will be gone by 2100.
3 billion people dead. That's a little past Holocaust.
Put the Carbon Back
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Colin Wright Posted 11:14 am
26 Nov 2007
Nicely put. The "we" is presumably the environmental community, or, more generally, the American public. The truth is, as Americans, we bear the greater share of the responsibility because we are the biggest per capita emitters, presently and historically. We are now the only industrial country not to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol. We practically rule the world, invading countries and deposinging popular leaders (Mossadegh, Allende, Lumumba, etc.) when it suits us (our elites, that is).
Further, we have the resources that are not available to most in the developing world.
Even among the American public, the responsibility is not shared evenly. Poor kids in the ghetto obviously oughtn't to be blamed as much as the utility CEO who opens another coal plant. The future of the planet is really in our hands. We are the only ones who can pressure the U.S. government into enacting equitable solutions, instead of promoting further obstructionism.
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:44 pm
26 Nov 2007
There was warning, starting with the words of Hitler and the Nazis, their attitudes towards Jews (and East Europeans, gays, etc.). People didn't take the warnings seriously
The people who got squashed had little or no power, just as the poorest of the poor are likely to be worst affected by global warming...and all nonhuman species, which Hansen was actually directly referring to
Hannah Arendt wrote of the "banality of evil", particularly in reference to her treatment of Adolph Eichmann. There were thousands of Germans who were "just following orders". But there is a big difference:
The banality of our everyday behavior, including a good dose of corporate/national greed, in conjunction with the standard operations of the particular civilization we live in, is leading to catastrophe. Just as evolution has no intent, but "expresses" the operation of a biological system, so the complex system known as our civilization is to "blame" -- and it's very difficult to spread blame to most people in developed countries. There's no scary monster or national leader to focus on.
Insofar as there are a number of people who benefit from and knowingly encourage the continued warming of the planet, then there is a smaller set of "evil" people. But the problem here is much broader than that, because it will involve the participation of the vast majority of people in the construction of an entirely new civilization -- hopefully one that is further away from fascism than the present one.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:45 pm
26 Nov 2007
And the death of millions of humans due to drought, famine, storm, and disease all related to GHG climate change. That is alarming enough.
Without trampling on other's profound pain and sorrow.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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caniscandida Posted 4:45 pm
26 Nov 2007
So I would perhaps rewrite the end of the quoted passage somewhat thus: "no less marked for the destruction of living beings than if they were boxcars heading for crematoria, loaded with countless irreplaceable species."
Anyway, Hansen is plainly referring only to the destructive effects of two industrialized, institutionalized and hierarchically managed processes, in which railroad cars play a part. He is here not saying a thing about the knowledge or intentions of the respective managers, who load and send those trains.
Nevertheless, whether or not it was the fault of the blunder with "gruesome," the coal spokesman Kraig Naasz wrongfully accused Hansen of asserting a moral equivalence between coal miners and Nazis. And one of Andy Revkin's commenters went further, saying that according to Hansen, everyone who uses electricity is a Nazi.
It is hard to know what to do with the complaint of Kenneth Jacobson, that the Holocaust is the "supreme evil," and therefore nothing can ever be likened to it. How do we quantify evils, comparatively, so that we can be satisfied in crowning one of them as "supreme"?
Still worse is the tangled complaint of another of Revkin's commenters, that Hansen is saying that the killing of Jews is no worse than the killing of animals. So poor Jim gets accused of anti-semitism, from the perspective of speciesism!
The subject of the part intention plays in determining guilt is interesting, if not really necessary here. "Inadvertence" was introduced I think by Mr. Victor of Stanford University. The concept is important in ethics; and so we need to discuss it a bit further. Can a society that is heavily dependent on burning coal -- our society, for example -- truly be called "inadvertent," regarding the damage caused by those coal-related processes? Only if we resolved at once to put an end to the damage, once we discovered it. But we are not like that at all; we habitually engage in all kinds of destructive activities, with no intention of stopping them until we cannot get away with them anymore. That is most certainly NOT "inadvertence."
And that is why I would adjust the focus a bit on Jon Rynn's excellent comment about "the banality of evil." Unlike the German and other perpetrators of the Holocaust, we Americans, and others pursuing the "American" lifestyle, are not "just following orders." Nor is the banality of our particular evil only our adherence to a corporatist code of values. More radically, it really has to do with our age-old interpretation of "the American Dream" in purely materialist terms, and the attendant old American value of rugged individualism, selfish, thoughtless, and despising all constraint.
We wish to be good Americans; we wish to be successful Americans; and so we wish to do evil.
In the end, I agree entirely with Amazing's sad observation. What Hansen said is unobjectionable and appropriate; and for those with ears to hear, it is quite eloquent. But unfortunately, any reference to the Holocaust seems inevitably to call down upon the speaker false and unfair accusations, which, by design or not, distract everyone from the speaker's message. So as little as I like telling him this, in the future Jim Hansen should look before he leaps.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 12:32 am
27 Nov 2007
In behalf of many people in my not-so-great generation of leading elders, I want to humbly apologize to you for the many expressions of willful ignorance that are foisted upon you in our time by too many of today's leaders. It appears to me that at least one of the active exercises of The Willfully Ignorant among us is the use of clever rhetorical devices (e.g., half-truths, spinning, disinformation, political posing, appeals to fantasy by presenting the illusory as if it was real) deployed by manipulative, irresponsible people who are evidently bereft of a capacity for intellectual honesty.
My generation has been called the ME Generation. "What's in it for me" is what matters most to most of us. What is going to be left for young people after we have devoured the lion's share of Earth's scarce resources is something we intentionally ignore and do NOT talk about.
Be reminded of the words of a powerful political leader of my generation who was asked about the future. His words are still ringing in my ears: "We'll all be dead." Of course, no one questions his inadvertent statement. For once he was not posing. His words were true. He, I and our generation will be gone soon. That he has no vision for the future is pitiful.
What you see my generation doing --- and failing to do --- in our planetary home now and what is to become of your generation (much less generations to come) are apparently tabooed topics about which many too many leading elders among us are not willing to speak either openly or in an honest way.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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GRLCowan Posted 12:48 am
27 Nov 2007
A holocaust allusion is not a holocaust reference. I worried whether, in my first comment, I had fallen into the trap of not noticing that ... well, in fact, I had so fallen, but the wording I chose concealed this.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, hydrogen-to-boron convert
How shall cars gain nuclear cachet?
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amazingdrx Posted 12:55 am
27 Nov 2007
Bush says, "We do not torture". While torture is in fact ongoing. Then all the lying and parsing is used to redefine torture and coverup. Then laws are changed to make methods like water torture, that has been known to be torture since at least the inquisition.. untorture. When a justice department official had himself water tortured to decide wether it was torture and decided it is in fact torture, he was fired.
The administration (through their spokes-shills)first claimed, GHG climate change is unproven, then they claimed there is no proof that human activity is causing it. Then they said, even if it is caused by human activity, the US can't stop it alone. That would put our economy at a disadvantage, and India and China and other nations that do not care about climate change would simply increase GHG production to eclipse any savings we acomplished.
The similarity is that it is bureaucratic government/industry culture that is driving the devestation of the constitution (through official policies of state sponsored torture, kidnapping, and murder) and the GHG devestation of the climate.
The banality of evil, Gonzalez the drunk driving lawyer from Texas, risen up to be the decider on torture. That 24 year old Bush political operative, not even a college graduate, the decider on NASA climate science on GHG climate change. Bush the non-achiever the decider dediding over it all.
Not to repeat the "H" analogy Canis (falling into the gotcha trap of ..yes I'll say it again.. the neo-conservative, fundamentalist right), but check out the nature of other infamous corporate/government cabals. The Royal British East India Tea Company, Krup, Halliburton, the Exxon mob...they decide, and we the people (of many nations around the globe)pay, with our freedom, quality of life, and even our lives.
The difference is the sheer scale of devestation of GHG climate change, endless oil war (and war over nuclear proliferation), and the destruction of this very short (a 200 year blink of the eye on the face of human history)experiment with freedom represented by the uS constitution.
A former beacon of freedom for oppressed people everywhere, snuffed out by the banality of bureaucratic evil. All for the corporatist bottomline.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Michael Shellenberger Posted 1:17 am
27 Nov 2007
But with his comments about coal "death trains," NASA scientist James Hansen proved once again that this is a dreadful assumption to make.
Hansen was approvingly quoted by Joe Romm, former DOE official and blogger at the Center for American Progress, in an email, posted to Grist.org on July 26, 2007.
If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains -- no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria, loaded with uncountable irreplaceable species.
Happily, several Grist bloggers objected.
But Hansen apparently didn't listen to Grist bloggers. (I know it's hard to believe). Hansen kept on making Holocaust comparisons.
1.
Yesterday, the Times' Andy Revkin lowered the boom on Hansen, challenging Hansen's defense of the "death train" statement. Hansen said that his statements were not "scientifically invalid" -- as though scientific validity should be the only criterion upon which his statements should be evaluated.
Andy posted his letter to Hansen:
Your letter back to the coal rep says:
"There is nothing scientifically invalid about the above paragraph. If this paragraph makes you uncomfortable, well, perhaps it should."
As I said above, we live in a world where science is not the only thing that matters.
Indeed it's not, and bravo to Revkin for pioneering a kind of post-environmental journalism that takes the human environment (e.g., politics, language, and society) into account. And for standing up to a world-famous scientist like Hansen.
2.
Grist's David Roberts, in sad comparison, ends up pretending like he doesn't know Hansen's Holocaust analogy was outrageous:
Is the analogy "appropriate"? Hell if I know. We are marching together in lockstep toward tragedy. I'll happily accept inappropriate analogies if they wake us up and change our course.
Roberts poses as a tough-minded blogger, but he can't bring himself to offer an even tepid rebuke of Hansen. It's inconceivable that Roberts would have shrugged his shoulders had it been a Michael Crichton or a Sen. Inhofe who had mobilized the Holocaust (or the Nazis) to dramatize their concerns.
Perhaps the reason Roberts treads lightly here is that he has been fond of his own Holocaust comparisons. Last year he called for war crimes tribunals for global warming deniers.
When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg.
You'll note how all of the bleating about "free speech" goes out the door when True Believers like David Roberts get frustrated.
The moral of the story: comparisons between the Holocaust and global warming are asinine, and should not be made by anybody who claims to want serious political action to deal with it.
But beyond this moral, the story reveals why climate scientists should stick to the science. When Hansen panics and goes all "death train" on us, he destroys his credibility as a scientist. Every indication I've seen is that he's a very good -- and very courageous -- scientist on climate. But, like Romm from the DOE and CAP, he's a lousy political advocate.
3.
The motivation for the Holocaust comparisons by Hansen and Romm is panic. They're scared, and they want us to be scared with them. And, to be sure, there's much to fear: the amount of coal power that China alone will bring on-line by 2030 will be roughly five times the emissions that all of Kyoto would have reduced (had Kyoto worked, that is).
Message to Romm: fear is not an objective attribute of global warming. It is how you feel. As such, your politics need not rest so centrally upon it. Nor should you insist that we feel as you do.
Fear is a beautiful emotion. It can inspire reflection, and that reflection can result in wisdom. But for it to do so, fear needs to be balanced with security, optimism, and aspiration for it to be usefully politically. That's because fear and panic tend to paralyze rather than promote social change.
And we should take care when moralizing about global warming in general and coal in particular. We should feel grateful -- not only resentful -- toward coal. If it hadn't been for coal, we wouldn't be living the rich lives we live in the U.S. It was a step up from wood and dung. It helped build and then rebuild Europe. And it is creating prosperity in China and India.
Now we need to move away from coal as quickly as possible. For that to happen we need a new, aspirational and optimistic political discourse to replace the tragic one. And we need to invest in the technological innovation to make clean energy as cheap as coal. Clean energy investments should not be delayed as part of global warming legislation in Congress.
4.
The past is as much a plague as blessing. The examples it furnishes us with are always out of date. And yet we keep turning to it for guidance, for it is all we have to imagine and create new futures.
As we do so, let us acknowledge that global warming is not slavery, not Jim Crow, not the Holocaust. It is nothing less than humans becoming the meaning of the Earth. And for that becoming to unfold, we'll need a politics of human triumph, human ingenuity, and human greatness -- not more tragic tales of ecological collapse, human cruelty, and mass murder.
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justlou Posted 1:41 am
27 Nov 2007
Man must humble himself, not exalt himself as the "meaning of the earth". Big wild nature/small domestic man.
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:54 am
27 Nov 2007
They should definitely not just stick to science. So, maybe in the effort to become political they stumble here and there, it's a learning process, just like everybody else is doing. To say that Hansen is destroying his credibility by making a Holocaust comparison, even if it were a bad idea -- and it may or may not be, I think it still needs discussion (but not too much) -- is ridiculous, his statement has nothing to do with his science (by the way, Michael, the grist post you referenced doesn't include gristers lambasting Hansen, except for one sentence.).
Also, if you look at the Anti-Defamation League statement in Revkin's post, he claims Hansen is "trivializing" the Holocaust. His statement sounds like he just took out some boilerplate that gets trotted out every time somebody compares something to the Holocaust. I don't see how mass flooding and famine is trivializing the Holocaust.
Apparently, Hansen's critics are using this to try to slime him. Apparently, out of 59 pages of testimony, this one statement was blown out of proportion. As scientists become more involved in political discussions, we'll probably get some statements that hit the mark, and some that don't work so well. The sooner the process of politicization starts, the better.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:22 am
27 Nov 2007
When ronnie united the christian right with the Israeli right, when Kristol and friends turned into GOPers, the neo-conservative movement really took off. Any call for peace in the middle east was villified as disrespecting the suffering of the past. Military industrial strength "freedom" for all was the answer. let the cash, oil, and blood flow.
Even if invasion, occupation, and nation building was the eventual end on that garden path?
Corporate contracting, really corporate ownership of the process of governance, the real neocon plan was the huge, hidden subtext. Turning back all the government reform and regulation of the 20th century. Social security, the national highway and rail systems, national parks, all areas of government responsibility that the raygun revolution still wants to outsource to contractors.
They make history? The horror, the horror.
Look to the modern version of Shaekespeare, Larry David's comedy, to heal all this political exploitation of that "H"orror. Don't use the "N" word either, luckily Larry tackles both.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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David Roberts Posted 3:08 am
27 Nov 2007
As for Hansen, it's not my place to tell him what references to use, or what tone, much less to tell him to "stick to the science." I don't see how it's your place either. Politics these days has become one episode of faux-outrage after another, posturing disguised as umbrage, and I don't much feel like playing that game.
As for my war crimes comment of a couple years ago, I encourage readers to go read it, and the many follow-ups, themselves. Suffice to say I was not "calling for war crimes tribunals for [all] global warming deniers." I had a very small and specific set of people in mind, people paid to lie and mislead the public, and yeah, the comment was made in the heat of anger and was ill-advised, as I subsequently wrote. Your distorted framing of and rhetoric about it are lifted straight from Rush Limbaugh, which is ... odd.
Who knows, though. Maybe Rush is in the center with you and Lomborg. I can't claim to understand it any more.
grist.org
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caniscandida Posted 3:29 am
27 Nov 2007
All that Revkin really does, by way of challenging Hansen, is to question Hansen's appeal to science, in his defense against the complaint of Kraig Naasz, and not to notice that other considerations, such as language, matter as well.
But Hansen was right to say what he did, because Naasz attacked his credibility. After bizarrely referring to Hansen's "advocacy for global warming" -- surely he did not mean to say that! -- , Naasz protested the "invidious comparison with the suffering of millions." "Invidious" is just rhetoric and hot air; there is nothing "invidious" in what Hansen wrote. But the protest itself suggests strongly that Naasz does not get the point, made by Hansen, E.O. Wilson and many others, that global warming will have dreadful destructive consequences.
So, what exactly is the problem with "language"? One of Hansen's supporters in Revkin's blog quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson, on how being misunderstood is a common misfortune of the greatest and most respectable leaders and teachers, e.g. Socrates, Jesus and Galileo, so Hansen should be consoled to find himself in excellent company. But as a couple of us here have noted, Hansen would perhaps do well to avoid Holocaust analogies, no matter how appropriate, because he can expect to provoke misunderstanding thereby.
But Revkin himself is too cagy to be helpful. Does he disapprove of the Holocaust analogy, for the reason that it is a distraction? Or, does he disapprove of it, for the entirely different reason that he himself finds it offensive? It should be noted that he himself is not forthright about what he feels; he seems not even necessarily to be disapproving, but perhaps only curious about a brou-ha-ha.
He poses these five questions to Hansen:
<<
1) I assume you chose your language carefully. I see you've been quoted before describing coal trains as death trains. Were you concerned that Holocaust survivors and relatives of victims might take offense?
>>
The suggestion implicit in "choosing your language carefully" would seem to be: if Hansen caused offense, well, he must have meant to.
<<
2) Have you received complaints from any yet? Have you received support from any?
>>
It is interesting to ask those questions, with regard to modern Jewish history; but it is not clear that that consideration ought to have affected Hansen's writing. In fact, one grandson of three who died in the Holocaust, Peter Singer, has supported Hansen. And in general, how can we doubt that many other Jews will support him? Thank God!, there are countless Jews who have not applied the post-Holocaust battlecry "Never again!" simply to the creation and uncritical defense of a militaristic Jewish state, but have been outspoken and prominent assailants of genocides and ethnic cleansings wherever they happen and whomever they kill, such as the past one in Armenia, and the present one in Darfur. Such a one is the extremely thoughtful Hungarian Jew and US Congressman from CA, Tom Lantos. Can we doubt that many Jews would view the prospect of "ecocide" with appropriate horror?
<<
3) Do you think that this kind of metaphor is the only thing that can jog the public or officials to change?
>>
There is no evidence that Hansen does think that. Even so, in this case, the way he expressed himself is appropriate, and those of us with ears to hear understand him quite clearly. But we can all agree, perhaps, that this expression is unsuccessful if the purpose was to persuade.
<<
4) Some say that whatever you think about the dangers of global warming, this kind of language inevitably becomes the issue, distracts from the real questions, and could in fact further polarize or paralyze discourse. Is there any merit to their view?
>>
Sure.
<<
5) This is a quirky question, but necessary: Who is the victim of of the mass murder you framed in your testimony -- nature or people? Nature has endured many "natural" mass extinctions and stresses as conditions on Earth have changed, so it'll doubtless endure this human-caused assault in time. Is your concern about what we humans lose in a world with less biological diversity, or about the insult itself?
>>
If the question is so "necessary," why does Revkin ask it in so unclear, speciesist and anthropocentrist a manner? And is "insult" supposed to be a poetic metaphor?
But really, can anyone honestly accept the use of "nature" to mean "the world's community of living creatures"?
Hansen can answer this question himself, if he wishes. But surely no one has ever said that all "nature" will perish as a result of global warming. No one doubts that many species are likely to survive and flourish as a result of global warming, and so will some well-adapted or lucky members of other species. But just because we can expect there to be many survivors like that, does that mean that our concern over the destruction of countless living creatures is wrong-headed and misplaced?
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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danielbell Posted 4:12 am
27 Nov 2007
First, I appreciate your thoughtful criticisms and comments on Grist and Dot Earth. Now on to your comments,
2.
Your criticism of Roberts is accurate. I suspect he thinks the analogy is appropriate privately but declines to say whether it's okay publicly.
Free speech and freedom to act are not separate from responsibility. I have the freedom to say your book is worthless drivel without scientific basis. But if you can show that's not true then I may be responsible for libel. If I publicly claim global warming is not true, when it can be proved that I knew otherwise, do I have any responsibility for that speech?
3.
Without fear of what may happen, why should I experience optimism for what could happen?
I'm very optimistic for a new economic reality with greater income equality and lower health care costs. But that optimism is based on the political will to bring change about on a societal level. To summarize, we'll either create a more sustainable and equitable world or we'll be hosed.
Your comments on coal were very clear. But to be crystal, it's the energy we derived from coal and not the coal itself that we ought to praise.
4.
To come back to my earlier point, I also believe this is a time for "human triumph, human ingenuity, and human greatness." But motivation on the level that is needed won't come about until those human geniuses realize that the other option is "ecological collapse, human cruelty, and mass murder." They are yin and yang, inseparable.
Our country mobilized and united unlike any time before for WW2. It was a time of great opportunity and action. But would this country have engaged that many people without the implicit knowledge that failure meant a continent-wide stranglehold by the Nazis?
But I guess I just used a Nazi reference in response to your complaint about a Nazi reference. Allow me to pose you this one question:
If we know that unchecked climate change could bring about mass death on the scale of genocide, do we have a moral duty to speak and act against that possibility?
wiserearth.org/user/danielbell
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justlou Posted 4:14 am
27 Nov 2007
But what about the communities of species that coevolved over millions of years? What about keystone species that are critical to the health of every ecosystem?
What about weedy, invasive species that are already destroying native ecosystems around the planet?
The best analogy that could be made between the global catastrophe confronting us is that of the major extinction events that have visited the planet several times. "Holocaust" is not nearly big enough to describe it.
There is absolutely no was that we can continue on our path of substituting more and more technological services for the diminishing ecological and environmental services of planet earth. We are inverting the pyramid of life with man, the "meaning of earth", becoming the base via his technological prowess -- a true prescription for collapse on a global scale.
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David Roberts Posted 5:15 am
27 Nov 2007
Unchecked global warming will be like the Holocaust in some ways; it will be unlike the Holocaust in other ways; by examining the question, we might be able to learn something about ourselves and how we react to various challenges, how our moral and affective responses do and do not overlap. That line of inquiry is, in my opinion, vastly more interesting than giving the allusion some kind of blanket thumbs-up or thumbs-down.
grist.org
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caniscandida Posted 5:25 am
27 Nov 2007
And I join you in strongly disliking Michael Shellenberger's odd expression, "humans becoming the meaning of the earth."
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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lateforlife Posted 7:32 am
27 Nov 2007
Without intent? Everyone is just trying to do their job right? So were many of the Nazi soldiers during the Holocaust.
How many U.S soldiers are simply "doing their jobs"?
Warfare and corporate greed both awaken us to the dangers of man's loyalty to an income. If abused, many become victims. However, I think the battle to be fought is to convince others of the benefits and profitability of a green economy. Applying the same fear-mongering tactics of conservatives is hypocritical and unproductive. Let's take small steps forward, not backward.
I do appreciate the analogy however. I agree that we must do whatever is necessary to enforce the reality and severity of climate change. Climate change is not inevitable; it is the product of our choices. Nothing is void of intent. If this is something as a nation and world community that we care about, we must take 100 percent responsibility for our actions. We the consumer have the power to shift the balance. Unlike the Holocaust, we are imposing the burden on ourselves. We are being marketed toward and away from climate change, but not at gunpoint.
Question Everything
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elbarto Posted 8:02 am
27 Nov 2007
I think Hansens use of the Holocaust analogy is fair. It is one of the few metaphors that can describe the depths of animalistic savagery that humans will be forced into during global collapse.
Perhaps there is already evidence of climate change induced genocide. Jared Diamond postulates in his book "Collapse" that one of the underlying causes of the recent Rwandan genocide was increasing drought and population pressures leading to one ethnic group believing it was more deserving of dwindling food and water and subsequently removing half a million of competition by hacking them to death with machetes.
To take the analogy further, similar to the Jews of eastern Europe, it is little brown people in far off lands that will suffer while the west stands by denying, procrastinating.
Poor brown people in countries no one has heard of will consider killing their neighbors to grab some more land on which to scratch out their miserable existence for a few more years. Poor brown people will be exterminated in hundreds of thousands by increasing cycles of flood and drought that is if they are not swallowed by the incoming tide.
Rich white people will debate whether they should be driving electric or hydrogen powered luxury cars. Rich white people will debate whether eliminating coal will cause them to lose 1% of their multimillion dollar retirement fund.
If the global catastrophe plays out as seems increasingly likely, why should the people causing the damage not be held liable? It's not as if people like Hansen haven't been screaming the warnings...
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Michael Shellenberger Posted 9:06 am
27 Nov 2007
Roberts claims I "distorted" his words. Actually, all I did was quote them. Here they are again so that readers can make their own judgment:
When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg.
It should probably go without saying that the effect of Roberts' histrionics is not to frighten guys like John Christy, William Gray and Richard Lindzen. Rather, the effect is to enforce ideological orthodoxy among environmentalists and to give global warming deniers a new way to paint environmentalists as extremists, as Sen. Inhofe did with Roberts' blog posting last year.
1.
Imagine for a moment that one of those deniers had used a Nazi or Holocaust metaphor. Roberts would have denounced them up and down to anyone who would listen. (It is an argument to which Roberts doesn't even bother responding because he knows it's true).
Now exposed, Roberts wants to change the subject.
To me, the least interesting thing about Hansen's allusion to the Holocaust is whether you, I, Revkin, Shellenberger, whoever, "approves" of it. Approval or disapproval in this case is just posturing, displaying your peacock feathers, defining your tribal affiliations. It's boring.
Ah yes, all of this is a boring matter. That's why there are 64 comments about it at Andy Revkin's blog, and 25 comments about it here at Grist (which is about 10 times as many comments on Grist's other, apparently more exciting posts).
Roberts wants to have it both ways. He wants to be able to serve up apocalyptic red meat for his followers on Grist and then claim to the New York Times that the environmental movement is beyond all that apocalypse and sacrifice stuff. Just days ago he claimed on the Times blog that, "Many people (including me) have argued that the conventional environmental narrative of fear and guilt will never build a popular base of support for the fight against climate change. My sense, though, is that this has become conventional wisdom, if not common practice."
3.
It sometimes seems that at least half of what Roberts writes -- especially when exposed on the facts -- is unadulterated psychological projection. It is Roberts, not Revkin, who enforces orthodoxy and "tribal affiliations" among Gristians.
This goes way beyond comparing deniers to Nazis. Witness his name-calling against thinkers who happen to disagree with him on questions of coal, adaptation, and the need for massive federal clean energy investment.
And unable to back up his claim that I "distorted" his words, Roberts resorts to what he does whenever he trips over his peacock feathers, he calls people names (in this case, "Rush Limbaugh").
Roberts should seek to discipline his own language and thought before seeking to discipline others.
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David Roberts Posted 10:06 am
27 Nov 2007
I'll go through this stuff one more time, and then I'll cede the soapbox to you.
Here is the notorious Nuremberg post, so people can read it in full rather than your selective quoting thereof. As is clear in the context of the post, I was talking about a select group of people in what Monbiot calls the "denial industry" -- people who spent years getting paid to confuse the public about tobacco (thus being indirectly responsible for countless deaths) and now are getting paid to confuse people about climate change (again becoming indirectly responsible for countless deaths). In many cases they are the very same people. They lie, for money, and people die as a result. If that doesn't make you angry, you're a calmer guy than me. I got mad and expressed the desire that these people should be held accountable for the misery they've (knowingly) caused. "Nuremberg" was a dumb word to use, mainly because it distracted from the point. But nobody can read that whole post and reasonably draw the conclusion that I want to put anybody who disagrees with me about global warming on trial.
It "gave global warming deniers a new way to paint environmentalists as extremists," as you say. The "new way" was to selectively quote me and distort my meaning. Why you are doing the exact same thing, apparently for exactly the same reasons, is something I'll leave for readers to ponder.
As for this:Imagine for a moment that one of those deniers had used a Nazi or Holocaust metaphor. Roberts would have denounced them up and down to anyone who would listen. (It is an argument to which Roberts doesn't even bother responding because he knows it's true).I didn't respond to this "argument" (?) because it's silly. As it happens, deniers have made those metaphors, and I've confined myself to laughing at them. If I would denounce them, it would not be for using a Nazi analogy, it would be for using a bad analogy, a stupid analogy, drawing parallels where there are none. What's at issue here, for me anyway, is not whether an analogy contains the word "nazi" or "holocaust," but whether it reveals anything, or prompts self-reflection, or generates discussion.
Which brings us to:Ah yes, all of this is a boring matter. That's why there are 64 comments about it at Andy Revkin's blog, and 25 comments about it here at Grist (which is about 10 times as many comments on Grist's other, apparently more exciting posts).I didn't say the "matter" is boring. It's quite interesting -- that's why I wrote a long post about it. What's boring is whether you or I "approve." That's a piece of moral posturing from which nobody learns anything. If you want to "disapprove" of the analogy, proclaim "Hansen bad!", go ahead. I just don't find it interesting.
I don't think I offer much "apocalyptic red meat" to readers, though that's obviously a matter of individual judgment. I'm generally pretty down on the apocaphiliacs (see, e.g., posts on Lovelock). I divert from environmentalist orthodoxy on plenty of questions, but unlike you I don't view pissing off (and on) environmentalists as some kind of badge of courage, so I don't go on and on about it. As for the rest of the chest-beating, eh. I don't know why you want to get in a pissing match. We can agree to disagree. You can vocally condemn Hansen's metaphor, thereby signaling to the establishment how darn reasonable and "in the middle" you are. I shall refrain. OK?
grist.org
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racc Posted 11:55 am
27 Nov 2007
It would be much more productive to apologize and move on.
These days, people just wait for any opportunity to avoid the issue by jumping on the messenger.
Richard
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danielbell Posted 1:45 pm
27 Nov 2007
You were certainly selectively quoting Roberts. I was going to post a link to Roberts' original post but he's already done it. Its very clear that he is referring to the denial money machine. And not to excuse that language, but Roberts apologized and admitted it was a "comment was made in the heat of anger and was ill-advised." Yet you went on pouncing on that quote.
And as for Inhofe, he's so divorced from reality it won't matter what we say or don't say, we'll all still be 'full of crap.'
I haven't read your book (I have it on hold from the Berkeley library)so perhaps you delineate this point in the book, but in your earlier post you spoke about the need to focus on opportunity at the exclusion of the consequences.
I agree with you that opportunity motivates people, but you are exercising cognitive dissonance to think that they exist independently.
I hope you'll read and respond to my criticism of your first post. But let me re-post my salient point:
"This is a time for "human triumph, human ingenuity, and human greatness." But motivation on the level that is needed won't come about until those human geniuses realize that the other option is "ecological collapse, human cruelty, and mass murder." They are yin and yang, inseparable."
wiserearth.org/user/danielbell
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trock Posted 2:14 pm
27 Nov 2007
We had a governors race once in our state in which one of those running had such a wimpy campaign it was compared to running for student council.
How the hell do you think anybody can go up against industries that are hundreds of billions of dollars big. This ain't about throwing spitballs. If people don't get a visual about people dying, they may not ever get it.
What's so wrong about burning carbon for electricity, isn't `I call carbon dioxide life.' Somebody paints a picture about wind turbines and solar cells and Coal will say `can't we all just get along.' There is nothing driving reducing carbon dioxide except people, animals and the environment dying.
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:02 pm
27 Nov 2007
The Holocaust is documented history. It can be studied, archived, examined.
It happened.
Global Warming -- IPCC style -- is a projection. It hasn't happened yet. So, unless you're Tom Cruise fighting "future crime" as in Minority Report -- you can't go around accusing people of being this or that.
Can it be any simpler?
Yes, but then the Climate Deluders wouldn't have a job.
My Log
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 4:22 pm
27 Nov 2007
Are we actually communicating as if we are living in a modern day Tower of Babel? Is our spectacular failure to communicate about whatsoever is somehow real, and to share adequate understandings of the human condition and the planet we inhabit, in evidence here and now.
Perhaps the human community is indeed in a serious predicament, but only in part because of the objective circumstances of our distinctly human-driven situation. Our problems are further complicated by a failure to communicate about the potentially pernicious results derived from having recklessly grown a soon to become patently unsustainable, colossal global economy, one that we have artificially designed, conveniently constructed, and unrealistically expanded without regard for the requirements of biophysical reality.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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boltedwood Posted 4:44 pm
27 Nov 2007
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justlou Posted 8:39 pm
27 Nov 2007
Was some other form of "progress" not achievable in the absence of coal? Something much more sustainable, intelligent and progressive? Something that may not have thrown us on to such a trajectory that threatens the biosphere to such an extent as coal does?
There are alternate fates of civilizations. Our fate should not be ordained by what resource or energy source brought us to this crossroad.
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Michael Shellenberger Posted 1:10 am
28 Nov 2007
You begin your post accusing me of behaving unreasonably but then end it by claiming that I'm just "signaling to the establishment how darn reasonable" I am. You begin by suggesting somebody pissed in my breakfast cereal and end it by accusing me of wanting to get into a pissing match.
This is the double-talk that I've been pointing to. You claim that environmentalists have moved beyond fear mongering -- but then you engage in it. You claim that environmentalists understand they shouldn't counsel guilt and sacrifice -- but then you turn around and ridicule a pro-technology politics that rejects guilt. ("We can keep getting richer and to hell with feeling guilty about it.") You claim that everyone's in favor of big investments in clean energy -- but then suggest that "a massive push for public investment would likely be co-opted in ways that do more harm than good."
Some level of ambiguity, ambivalence, and outright confusion are perfectly understandable. Energy policy and political psychology are complex. Fossil fuels remain far cheaper and more available than clean alternatives - we need to both mitigate their impact and drive down the price of clean energy. We need some new regulations but we need major investment even more. Fear is a useful motivation, but we shouldn't leave people there.
We're dealing at a level of complexity that environmental strategists in the 1960s and 70s quite simply weren't dealing with. Protecting national parks, cleaning up rivers, and even phasing out ozone-depleting chemicals were relatively straightforward challenges compared to global warming.
Precisely because these issues are so complex I believe it is imperative that we have forums where productive debates can transpire. This goes way beyond not comparing our opponents to the Nazis.
What it means, I believe, is creating a space where people who care deeply about achieving serious action global warming can disagree - vehemently -- about everything from federal investment and regulation, to nuclear power and carbon capture, to adaptation and economic development, without being dismissed as a sell-out, a delayer, a Rush Limbaugh, or worse.
Global warming shuffles the deck on everything from wind farms to the role of government to globalization. In moments like this, it's sometimes helpful to widen our definition of what's reasonable to include what just a few years ago we might have thought unreasonable. The question is what kind of a forum does Grist want to provide?
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apsmith Posted 1:24 am
28 Nov 2007
I posted the following questions for Revkin on his blog, might as well add them in here.
The most recently released IPCC synthesis report includes the statement (p. 13 of SPM): "There is medium confidence that approximately 20-30% of species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average warming exceed 1.5-2.5C (relative to 1980-1999). As global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5C, model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe."
Do you have reason to doubt these risks? Why?
Assuming you accept the IPCC assessment of 40-70% extinctions under temperatures likely by 2100, do you have reason not to consider this extinction of millions of species of life on Earth to be one of the worst acts ever perpetrated by human beings on the planet? Why?
Since the scientific indicators of this scale of risk have been published, do you have reason to judge the continued increase in CO2 emissions to be innocent, negligent, or deliberate choices of humans to favor selfish interests over the life of most of the other species on the planet? If we are innocent from lack of knowledge, who is responsible for keeping this knowledge that scientists have uncovered from the bulk of the people?
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amazingdrx Posted 1:40 am
28 Nov 2007
Former talking points in this effort by the corpoRIGHT: Environmentalists are guilty of killing millions in the under developed world by opposing pesticides like DDT and GMO food.
Add this one in, we are dissrespecting past pain and suffering by comparing events like those that ocurred during WW 2 to GHG climate disaster. The corpoRIGHT paints us as alarmist and even racist with claims like that.
There's a positive motive for his emphasis.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 3:01 am
28 Nov 2007
Do you not think that elders like myself have a "duty to warn" our children of whatsoever we have knowledge as well as of the potentially profound implications derived from apparently unforeseen and clearly unwelcome scientific evidence?
Perhaps someone will kindly explain what foundation in human thought can be reasonably and sensibly chosen to justify the determination of a small minority of people with selfish interests to consciously eschew and willfully refuse to disclose the knowledge that God's gift of good science has provided to humanity for its benefit.
Sincerely,
Steve Salmony
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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David Roberts Posted 3:35 am
28 Nov 2007
Also, I didn't call you Rush Limbaugh. I pointed out that Rush, along with numerous other far-right commentators, selectively quoted a post of mine in order to distort my meaning and paint all greens as extremists. Then, yesterday, you selectively quoted the same post in order to distort my meaning and paint all greens as extremists. It's not that you are Rush, it's just that in this particular case you did exactly what he did, in the same way, for the same reason: to cast all greens as extremists. If you acknowledged your mistake, acknowledged that neither Hansen nor I "compared our opponents to Nazis," and made your perfectly legitimate point about the need for inspiration and hope without smearing strawmen, you could distance yourself from him more effectively.
grist.org
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ids Posted 5:58 am
28 Nov 2007
paraphrasing . . .'If king coal & deniers made a holocaust reference, DR would be incensed . . ."
Walking next to a passing coal death train, 1/4 mile from two spewing coal power plant, in the middle of a lower income class neighborhood, considering the science of oncoming speciecide, I get to thinking how deniers would make reference to the holocaust vis a vis enviros . . .
Certainly the enviro supported CAA 1990 amendments that skewed use to Western coal and upping CO2 levels can be referenced as part of the "banality of evil" . . . or the 2007 enviro's in my hometown (Illinois Sierra Club, etc) for applauding the operators, Midwest Generation, and IL EPA, for finally agreeing to look at cleaning (obviously not incl. C02) or closing the Chicago plants sometime between 2015-2018, as part of a holocaustic banality of evil . . . or the supporters of the Lieberman-Warner movement as included in the U.S. banality of evil . . . but I don't think any of that works for coal supporters.
Absent any idea how king coal can use the holocaust to justify its position, it seems clear Shellenberger for one is simply is using this conversation to piss on enviros. I find it a good conversation to have.
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 11:19 am
28 Nov 2007
Is there even a remote possibility that the seemingly endless and, perhaps, patently unsustainable expansion of the global economy, that is being orchestrated primarily for the benefit of a small minority of people in the predominant human culture, will overwhelm global biodiversity in these early years of Century XXI?
How do you expect biodiversity will be impacted by the predominant culture's reckless dissipation of Earth's limited resources and the degradation of its ecosystem services, as unbridled economic globalization is consciously extended over the surface of Earth in our time?
When can the current leviathan-like scale and fully anticipated growth rate of global human over consumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities be expected to massively and adversely impact global biodiversity?
What worries is this: the present scale and growth rate of human consumption, production and propagation activities are soon to become unsustainable on a relatively small, finite, noticeably frangible planet the size of Earth. Could these distinctly human activities somehow, inadvertently and unintentionally, precipitate the catastrophic extinction of biodiversity, the irreversible destruction of the environment and the unjustifiable depletion of a lion's share of planetary resources?
Thanks for your consideration and comments.
Sincerely,
Steve
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anselm13 Posted 1:55 pm
28 Nov 2007
I cannot comment on the history of this blog or anything anyone has done or said, but the analogy Dr. Hansen made was weak and in poor taste (And how we say things matters both for the speaker and those considering his arguments).
His subject matter is of vital importance. His analogy was unnecessary and inappropriate. Acknowledging as much might help everyone continue to focus on the pressing issues he raises. The response on his website is sort of a half-apology while still continuing to stand by his analogy. So anyway, to Michael Shellenberger I say amen.
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:07 pm
28 Nov 2007
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amazingdrx Posted 5:51 pm
28 Nov 2007
If your argumrnts are repeats of talking points that have been used over and over again by industry lobbyists and various spokespersons like Limbaugh, then those arguments need to be identified, a brief description given of why they are deceptive, then they ought to be dismissed.
The person making the same old fallacious talking point argument then needs to address the critique by adding some new aspect that makes it different or admit their mistake. If you can't admit, for instance, that clean coal is more expensive than renewables, unproven, and a very bad misuse of scarce financial and political capital, then you maybe stuck with the derogatory asociation with folks like Limbaugh. But you stick yourself with that by standing up against valid arguments with sophistry.
This is a serious crisis, not a debating team topic where we go over the same old deceptions over and over pretending they are valid in order to play nice and respect other view points. Nuclear power, clean coal, and fuel farming are just plain wrong as part of an energy policy. Sorry, but that is the case. Limbaugh and friends are wrong.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Michael Shellenberger Posted 2:54 am
29 Nov 2007
What I'm driving at is your constant disparagement of motives. If I criticize Nazi and Holocaust metaphors, it's not because I am profoundly worried about the way those statements help opponents of action on global warming. No, it's because I'm trying to appear reasonable to the establishment. If I criticize environmentalists for being overly regulation-centered, guilt-and-sacrifie oriented, and apocalyptic, it's not because I want to create a more expansive, positive, and effective politics. No, it's because I'm trying to draw attention to myself.
Your motives, by contrast, are pure as driven snow. You ruminate on global warming deniers, the Nazis, and comparisons to the Holocaust not because doing so draws attention to yourself and drives traffic to Grist. No, you're doing so for the simple fact that it's an important conversation to have.
I encourage you to find a way to disagree without disparaging the motives of your opponents. Everyone who is working on global warming is doing so because they care about a better world and future. In suggesting that's not the case you demean the conversation.
I am ready to move on and suspect you are too. I would suggest a global agreement.
I will never again mention in a public forum the statements made by you or Jim Hansen about Nazis and the Holocaust. And when criticizing environmentalists, I will make every effort to be as specific as possible about who I'm talking about.
In return, I ask that you stop attacking the motives of people who are obviously sincere in their commitment to overcoming global warming but who happen to disagree with you on how to do it.
Finally, I encourage you to remove from the Grist web site the paragraph you wrote about Nuremburg. Yes, people will still know you wrote it. But taking it down will signal to the wider world that it was the wrong comparison. Doing so will go a long way to helping all of us who care about these issues to advance an inspiring, positive, and effective politics to overcome global warming.
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 12:27 am
30 Nov 2007
If I may humbly make a suggestion, let us set aside, for a moment, all talk of holocaustal occurrences and focus our attention on how we are going to respond ably to the profound implications of the carefully and skillfully developed scientific evidence on climate change.
I suppose that the family of humanity has been given the great gift of good science from God. Now it is time for us to make use of this good science to assure a good enough future for our children and coming generations.
All of us can immediately agree, I am sure, that to ignore good science and relentlessly proceed much farther along the primrose path of rampant economic globalization, as we are doing now, could lead us to precipitate a colossal disaster, one that could result from the current huge scale and rapid growth rate of unbridled over consumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities of the human species. We can see that these endlessly growing, distinctly human activities could soon become patently unsustainable on a relatively small, finite, noticeably frangible planet the size of Earth.
Thanks for the great work both of you are doing.
Keep going.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 2:52 am
01 Dec 2007
I find it irresistible not to at least take a moment to wonder aloud what Galileo is doing tonight. My hope would be that the great man is resting in peace and that his head is NOT spinning in his grave. How, now, can Galileo possibly find peace when so many top-rank scientists -- who are NOT members of the IPCC -- refuse to speak out clearly regarding whatsoever they believe to be true about the distinctly human predicament presented to humanity in our time by certain unbridled "overgrowth" activities of the human species that loom ominously and threaten to engulf the planetary home God has blessed us to inhabit?
Where are more leaders like Al Gore who are willing to support the good science of climate change that is being presented in the solid scientific observations and consensually validated empirical data from Dr. James Hansen, Dr. R.K. Pachauri and the IPCC?
Perhaps there is something in the great work of Al Gore, Jim Hansen and the 2000 scientists in the IPCC that will give Galileo a moment of peace.
What would the world we inhabit be like if scientists like Galileo had adopted a code of silence or selectively mined data or manufactured controversy or passed along disinformation..... contriving only 'scientific' evidence which was politically convenient, religiously tolerated, economically expedient, and socially correct?
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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bill wolfe Posted 12:37 am
05 Dec 2007
Furthermore, the selective outrage over the politics of language is illustrative of an ideological bias.
I wonder who put Revkin up to writing that hit piece?
See Greenwald: "Nazis" and "Hitler" -- the Right's casual, trivializing political insults
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/10/01/nazi_in ...
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 6:08 am
06 Dec 2007
"If we cannot stop the building of more coal-fired power plants, those coal trains will be death trains"
The truth is, they already are death trains. Coal kills over 20,000 Americans each year. See Page 12 of;
http://www.cleartheair.org/dirtypower/docs/dirtyAir.pdf
That works out to about 50 deaths per year for each 1,000 MW coal plant.
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