Climate-Change Denial as an O.J. Moment

Here's an interesting article by Bill McKibben that compares climate-change denial to the O.J. Simpson trial:

http://www.truthout.org/why-it%E2%80%99s-oj-moment-twenty-first-century57165

Why, when the evidence of global warming has never been stronger, do fewer Americans believe that it's happening? McKibben suggests that it's the mountain of evidence itself that helps the organized opposition, as they borrow tactics from O.J. Simpson's lawyers:

If anything, they were actually helped by the mountain of evidence. If a haystack gets big enough, the odds only increase that there will be a few needles hidden inside. ...

Similarly, the immense pile of evidence now proving the science of global warming beyond any reasonable doubt is in some ways a great boon for those who would like, for a variety of reasons, to deny that the biggest problem we've ever faced is actually a problem at all. If you have a three-page report, it won't be overwhelming and it's unlikely to have many mistakes. Three thousand pages (the length of the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)? That pretty much guarantees you'll get something wrong.

In both cases, they simply needed to get enough people with doubts. Note that, in the global warming debate, we're not talking about scientists here, and certainly not climatologists. There's an overwhelming consensus among the experts (i.e. the people who actually know what they're talking about) that climate change is real, that it's dangerous, and that it's caused by us human beings. But this tactic is not designed to convince scientists, but only the ignorant and gullible people who are still willing to believe the Republican Party about anything.

[Personally, I think it could be called the Fox News Tactic. Fox does this with just about everything. They've got an audience who'll believe almost anything, as long as Fox repeats it often enough. Most of their viewers get all, or almost all, of their news from Fox. And since they've cleverly positioned themselves as the Republican station, anyone who criticizes Fox News must be a liberal Democrat, and so can't be trusted by the party faithful. Well, these people tend to be faith-based, not evidence-based, anyway. And Fox News might be destroying America, but they're laughing all the way to the bank.]

So what should we do?

Let's look at Exxon Mobil, which each of the last three years has made more money than any company in the history of money. Its business model involves using the atmosphere as an open sewer for the carbon dioxide that is the inevitable byproduct of the fossil fuel it sells. And yet we let it do this for free. It doesn't pay a red cent for potentially wrecking our world.

Right now, there's a bill in the Congress -- cap-and-dividend, it's called -- that would charge Exxon for that right, and send a check to everyone in the country every month. Yes, the company would pass on the charge at the pump, but 80% of Americans (all except the top-income energy hogs) would still make money off the deal. That represents good science, because it starts to send a signal that we should park that SUV, but it's also good politics.

"Good politics" only if Democratic Congressmen are brave enough to go for it (Republicans certainly won't - they just want Barack Obama to fail, in everything) and we citizens are smart enough to see through the partisan lies. Personally, I'm doubtful. My opinion of the intelligence and the courage of my fellow citizens has been dropping steadily for decades now.

And I've got to say that I'm skeptical about all that "religious environmentalism" McKibben talks about. I certainly haven't seen any of it. But I do agree with this part:

The great irony is that the climate skeptics have prospered by insisting that their opponents are radicals. In fact, those who work to prevent global warming are deeply conservative, insistent that we should leave the world in something like the shape we found it. We want our kids to know the world we knew. Here's the definition of radical: doubling the carbon content of the atmosphere because you're not completely convinced it will be a disaster.

I've long thought that most of my political and economic positions are deeply conservative,... but in today's topsy-turvy world, my positions are somehow supposed to be extremely liberal. I certainly agree with McKibben about this. How is changing the very atmosphere of our planet, without knowing for certain that it won't cause problems, supposed to be "conservative"?

And for the record, here's my position on global warming: I'm no expert, and this does require expertise. As a layman, I can't hope to have the education, the background, or the information to fairly weigh all of the claims myself. But there are people who do have that knowledge, and they use the scientific method, which is the best way we've ever discovered of finding the truth. So I'm going with the overwhelming consensus of the experts. They could be wrong, but that's certainly not the smart bet.

And if they do turn out to be wrong, the evidence will soon tell them that, they'll change their minds, and as the consensus changes, so too will my opinion. Note that I'm not picking any particular scientist to believe, and certainly not any particular politician. That would be very foolish. My opinion is based, and will remain based, on the scientific consensus (which is, right now, overwhelmingly on the global warming side of the argument).