Comments biggie green has made
skepticism's next great game
Dave,
Good work, taking up the issue of adaptation vs. mitigation. Other environmental opinion leaders should follow your fervency, as well as your understanding that adaptation and mitigation strategies overlap, thus their proponents cannot rightly polarize themselves.
Some will try, of course. "There are efforts afoot on the corporatist wing of the right to persuade the public that global warming's effects won't be all that bad -- that cutting CO2 substantially would cause far worse effects." Such efforts are the future of climate skepticism. They have already a proven prototype: "dire," "drastic" and "draconian" reverberate constantly off of Kyoto's compartment in the echo chamber.
I'm a touch disappointed that your post above lacks any data to support immediate, strong mitigation (nor does your comment to Pielke's post, save for your imaginative +100,000:1 ratio of environmental refugees to arable land). Even thoughtless diatribes against Kyoto often reference the $400 billion and 5 million jobs that the Hot Air and Hyperbole Institute (HAHI) reckons the protocol would have cost our great and stubborn nation.
With reason enjoying a rare moment in the sun, thanks to Al Gore and the blessed-though-excessively-endowed finitude of human credulity, it is opportune for mitigation proponents to explain and repeat, repeat, repeat the statistical nuggets that could become conventional wisdom, e.g. insurers' need to nearly double their coffers in order to cover anticipated weather events. When the adaptation vs. mitigation issue inherits its place at the center of global-warming debate, likely presented in he-said, she-said style, mitigation proponents will need some familiar, journalist-friendly numbers on their side to counteract the HAHI's veiled support of the status quo.
I hope you stick with this issue. It needs vision.On Adaptation posted 3 years, 6 months ago 4 Responses
Credibility
Nathan is a good young writer with his heart in the right place. And so I hope that he will learn not to weaken his voice with such cheap and easy (not to mention false) assertions as this: "every person that national environmental groups ask for money is one more person who hasn't been asked to become active in a more meaningful way."
What does this pseudo-arithmetic suggest? It implies that all donation requests are counterproductive. It proposes that donation requests never lead to non-financial investment in a cause.
Likewise, I question Nathan's experience with humanity as he contends, "when people are asked to do more, to take action and express outrage commensurate with the problems we all see in our world, even the busiest respond enthusiastically." Many of my hard-working, high-earning friends, neighbors and co-workers prefer to deal with the world's problems in two ways: address them with tax-deductible donations, and escape them by committing their personal time to family and hobbies. Helpful or not, they defy Nathan's contention.
Finally, while examining why environmentalism may be dead (at least to a disillisioned public), Nathan should consider the success of well-financed industry groups in relentlessly demonizing and discrediting tree-huggers, luddites and cassandras since dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Alas, that tidbit is not as satisfying as the meat on which too many environmentalists feed: the flesh of their own.
Criticism can be constructive, though credibility is almost always a prerequisite. I agree with Nathan that canvassing, along with everything that national environmental groups do, deserves scrutiny in light of an apparently growing demand for civic engagement. But his facile vision leaves little cause to think that his eyes have much wisdom in them... yet.On Why green-group canvassing operations need an overhaul posted 3 years, 6 months ago 28 Responses
the hammer
You nailed the neo-greens' twin heads of Inspiration and Irritation -- hopefully bursting the latter before it eats its own.
By the way, "Alex Nicolai Steffen (now with more moniker!)": brutally funny. But don't think your ascension from Dave to David went unnoticed!On New Wired green issue goes a little overboard posted 3 years, 7 months ago 7 Responses