The intelligentsia isn’t helping the public understand the urgency of the climate crisis 10

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1. 

   Easterbunny Posted 8:43 am
   15 Oct 2007

   exceptionalism = arroganceWhat most of these people seem to be demonstrating is that America is so smug in its belief that it is the greatest nation on earth, that it cannot possibly accept that there is any problem with sustainability. Joyce Carol Oates and Bernard Lewis come the closest to saying this explicitly, the rest merely demonstrate it in their attitudes.
   But between them, these people show very clearly why America appears to be the last nation on Earth to accept the urgency of the challenge of global waming.
   
   

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2. 

   RoySV Posted 9:25 am
   15 Oct 2007

   The Atlantic now styled as Intellectual MuseumThe 150 years issue is the last I receive on my canceled subscription. Just reading the magazine is a self hypnotic experience. Their prose style is excruciatingly slow and deliberate which must have been elegant a century ago. Now it just feels irrelevant, like they haven't noticed the internet, blogs, or even remote controls. I suppose it says something uncomplimentary about their envisioned/target audience. Sad really...
   Roy

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3. 

   Delay And Deny Posted 11:38 am
   15 Oct 2007

   In that case Ill go undergroundThe real intelligentsia has been hiding all through the "Global Warming" oppression.  
   Real thinking has been squashed by media "consensus" and true scientists have been forced to mouth the words of the IPCC.
   Luckily rising temperatures will result in cheap rents and a new Temperate Bohemianism is being born!
   Theres no need for argument
   
   Theres no argument at all
   -V. Morrison
   
   
   
   John Bailo
   
   
   Sutext:

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4. 

   amazingdrx Posted 12:38 am
   16 Oct 2007

   You don't eitherIf you really believe this..
   ".. Barack Obama's extraordinary climate plan..."
   ...then you don't get it either.
   Obama's plan is ridiculous pandering to oil, coal, auto, and nuclear interests.
   The unifying principle of so-called "opinion leaders" happens to be conventional wisdom (the ultimate oxymoron).  They become opinion leaders by subscribing to that conventional wisdom.  By anticipating and forming it.
   Facts need to enter the world view of the opinion leaders.  But that would put them at odds with the conventional wisdom spread by mass delusional media.  Quite a conundrum!  
   The main fact?  Distributed renewable energy generation and storage and conservation are ready to solve GHG/energy problems, oil war problems, and economic disaster right now.  
    
   
   http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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5. 

   factorten Posted 12:45 am
   16 Oct 2007

   Come on, Joe...you cant POSSIBLY believe that anthropogenic climate change/destabilization is the greatest challenge to the American idea.  There are reasons why curbing greenhouse gas emissions might be the greatest challenge our country has had to address (slavery? the Depression?), but seriously -- YOU know the climate science.  Which is more challenging to the American idea:  the ocean encroaching on Florida's coastline or the global pursuit of health, liberty, and freedom?
   I would recommend you read more widely.

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6. 

   Biodiversivist Posted 1:23 am
   16 Oct 2007

   Intelligentsia?Tim LaHaye: "America's uniqueness is based in the Christian consensus of the Founding Fathers ... America's founding was based more on biblical principles than any other nation's on Earth -- and that's the main reason this country has been more blessed by God than any other nation in history.
   
   
   
   In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

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7. 

   blueberrysushi Posted 2:23 am
   16 Oct 2007

   Resilience and surprise (a la Holling)The greatest threat will be global warming, sure, along with our increasingly rigid, globalized and mechanized economic system. As long as we rely on inefficient monoculture systems and, particularly, other countries producing our goods, we will be vulnerable to the least perturbation. Global warming will bring a flurry of such problems: plant associations change, wildfires increase, floods increase, and so on. We'll have more and more ecological "surprises" and we will be less and less capable of dealing with them.
   And so: outsourcing our work will leave us at the mercy of others, and since we have set ourselves on a course of paving/developing or creating monoculture plantations on our best croplands, we'll be left with a collapsed system, fluctuating wildly between different states of pseudo-equilibrium. The best herbicides, pesticides, technological efficiencies - these are nothing in the face of man-made nature run amok.

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8. 

   caniscandida Posted 6:38 am
   16 Oct 2007

   Well, it depends.Joseph,
   
   I am afraid I rather agree with FactorTen.  The "American idea," however we may define it (and, by the way, I would not define it as you do), is an intellectual and moral thing, and therefore is not capable of being directly affected by physical circumstances, even such unprecedentedly catastrophic ones as those that seem likely to be caused by global warming.
   That said, it would have been very desirable for a few of these thinkers to mention how Americans, and all who uphold what can be called "the American idea," are being tested now, and will continue to be tested for many decades to come, by the many different challenges presented by global warming.  Certainly there is room for something like that in the statements both by those who emphasize initiative, enterprise and ambition, and by those who emphasize cooperation, free discussion and problem-solving.
   (And, on something totally different: "Purgatory" is not equivalent to "Hell, only a little less intense."  Unlike Hell, which is a state of great pain whose occupants can only despair of ever being relieved, Purgatory is a most hopeful state, in which the sufferings are cleansing, and are guaranteed to prepare the suffering souls for Paradise, i.e. full union with God.  The doctrine of Purgatory is one of the most humane of all Catholic doctrines; and the Protestants did a major dumping-out of baby with bathwater when they rejected it.)
   BioD,
   
   Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek, has written thoughtfully and intelligently on the religiosity of the Founding Fathers, and on how Tim LaHaye and other evangelical Christians are seriously mistaken in their preposterous claim that the US is now and has always been a "Christian nation."  He goes about it rather more diplomatically than I would, though.
   One of the most curious statements was given by the conservative Catholic William F. Buckley, who praises the "doctrine of human equality."  Usually, of the two competing political and social values of the great Enlightenment revolutions, liberty and equality, the tendency of Americans has been to lean right and prefer liberty (i.e., we are rugged individualists who have the right to get as disgracefully rich as we want, and to hell with everybody else, those losers who obviously do not have the right stuff), while the tendency of the French has been to lean left and prefer equality (i.e., the state should guarantee all of us with a standardized reasonably secure and comfortable existence, no matter how we may or may not contribute to the common good).  So it is odd to find the arch-conservative Buckley praising equality so highly.
   On the other hand, his anti-Darwinian spin is disgraceful.  I thought he was a better Catholic than that.
   Among all those thinkers with some sort of religious credential, I was already disposed to preferring the liberal, African-American Cornel West.  And I am not displeased.  Then again, just about any reference to Socrates tends to cheer me up.
   Nancy Pelosi's statement strikes me as pretty silly and pandering.  And I wonder if RoySV's anti-Atlantic-Monthly comment is what she has in mind: Every ten years, we should throw out everything, and start again from scratch, letting the kids be in charge; that way, our civilization is guaranteed to be ever-relevant.
   
   Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

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9. 

   Nucbuddy Posted 4:57 pm
   24 Oct 2007

   Oxymorons are only used for epigrammatic effectAmazingdrx wrote: The unifying principle of so-called "opinion leaders" happens to be conventional wisdom (the ultimate oxymoron).
   Actually, that would not be an oxymoron.
   
   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron
   What distinguishes oxymorons from other paradoxes and contradictions is that they are used intentionally, for rhetorical effect, and the contradiction is only apparent, as the combination of terms provides a novel expression of some concept, such as "cruel to be kind".
   
   

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10. 

    Delay And Deny Posted 5:02 pm
    24 Oct 2007

    I realize the urgency
    
    Tomorrow I will drive my 1991 Pontiac Grand Prix to work and throw up a bunch of SO2 to block the sun's rays and reduce global warming - warming which is due to lack of low level cloud formation in response to reduced cosmic ray activity.
    Unless it's sunny in which case I'll ride my bike and not help global warming.
    
    John Bailo
    
    
    Sutext:

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