For all the Internet’s flaws–including its ability to keep people like myself inside the house, when they should be outside, tending to their spring gardens–I adore its ability to bring forward pure ideas.
Here’s a question that’s been bothering me for years. Why it is that so-called conservatives are resistant to the idea that humans could change the climate? We’ve changed the landscape of the planet, obviously. Is it so crazy to suggest that we could change the climate too?
(Rush Limbaugh was recorded bellowing on this subject, claiming that environmentalism was a religion, because he claimed–ironically–that "there is no evidence that we could destroy ecosystems." Well, now that that’s settled.)
I’ve been waiting for some brilliant writer to come along and explain this bizarre right-wing faith in our ineffectuality, but no such essay has yet appeared on the horizon.
But thanks to a discussion on TPM Cafe, the truth has finally come out. A commentator and concert violinist named Tom Wright explains:
I was going to say I didn’t understand the resistance to accepting we are affecting the climate, but there is an easy answer. I heard this sentiment from my conservative sparring partner (and business partner): "Some people just want it to be our fault, like we’re inherently evil or stupid." The converse is that he wants to believe humans are inherently good and smart so it can’t be our fault. For humans read "Americans." The same sentiment supports our foreign policy. It can’t be our fault, we’re the good guys.
It seems a little like wanting to be the chosen people but if we’re screwing the planet then we aren’t anointed by God, but just another animal pooping in its nest.
In a brief email discussion, Wright added another example of this right-wing myopia, from a commentator on the same site named Primob:
I am unconvinced that the people inhabiting the planet can have such a destructive impact on the Earth’s climate over such a short period of time. Such presumption borders on pathological arrogance.
Note that Primob assumes the worst; not just that we as a species are changing the climate, but that we are destroying it. In fact it’s not that black and white, as scientists like James Hansen continue to insist. It’s possible for us to change the climate, but not destroy life as we know it. If we can only open our minds to new possibilities, including the possibility that we are not heroes…
Kit Stolz 
Like your blog Kit.
I’m slightly unsatisfied with that discussion. The first part’s OK as far as it goes, but your explication of Primob’s comment leaves me hungry – it’s a yummy meal, but not enough.
I read that comment more like being scared of intellectual elitism – these folks are always scared of something and that ‘pathological arrogance’ is a phrase of certitude used to hide it. The overwhelming evidence doesn’t convince him – why?
Is it denial – look at his use of ‘doomsayers’. This is arrogance in itself – “I have decided the evidence is unconvincing” and those who conclude otherwise he’s gonna marginalize. This man certainly does not have a natural science education. 25 years of conservative think-tank political publishing has resulted in a segment of the population that react this way.
It’s a symptom.
But, recently I attended a conference in Seattle for decision-makers to work together to figger out where we are going to get water from in the future. Folks already know this is an issue, and the ignorant denialists are being ignored at this level, as the impetus for action is too great to wait for them to be satisified (which is likely never).
Now if we can do the same thing with land use…
Keep up the good work, sir.
Best,
D
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Dano! I love your comments, and especially the wonderfully ironic way you reference the future. (I’m not going to repeat it; I’d probably get it wrong.) How come you don’t have a blog yourself?
But for now, I take your point, and will continue to look for fuller examples of this kind of myopia. (I recall reading somewhere that Europeans think that Americans place far too much stress on heroes; surely someone must have written on that topic.)
In the meanwhile, thanks for checking in.
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I like your addition better, Kit: “Those who don’t share my myopia I shall marginalize”.
If we see the destruction of the Atlantic fisheries in such a short time, and the destruction of the rainforests in such a short time [consequences being the Phillippine landslide, BTW], and the Dust Bowl in such a short time and the…etc., why can’t we see the climate in the same lens?
Because we don’t want to. And also because we do not have sensory organs that allow us to apprehend phenomena at these scales, so we have to think about it, and thinking’s hard.
My schedule’s too erratic to have a blog.
:o)
Best,
D
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Thanks Dano. Your comment about the Philippines reminded me of a letter I saw in the LATimes last week that I meant to post but forgot:
KILL THE RAIN FOREST, CAUSE A MUDSLIDE
February 22, 2006
Re “Rescuers Hear Only Silence From Sea of Mud,” Feb. 19
The reporting of the mudslide disaster in the Philippines fails to address the causes of this catastrophe and seems to treat it as an act of God, thus absolving people of any responsibility. Failure to recognize and correct the human involvement in this tragedy will just lead to thousands more deaths in the future. In 2001, a team of scientists from Humboldt University of Berlin reported that forest cover on Leyte Island had decreased markedly since the late 1980s because of illegal logging with the support of government officials. Rain forests containing 500-year-old trees with roots penetrating the bedrock have been replaced by coconut plantations and very shallow roots. This is a recipe for a mudslide.
JAMES MARTIN
Claremont
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As I wrote on my blog in a different context, “There is a great West Coast science-fiction writer named John Varley whose future tales are set after superior aliens arrive on Earth to communicate with intelligent life. However, that category consists of whales and dolphins. Humans are regarded as ants, who are quickly forced into outer-space exile in underground shelters on the moon.”
For some reason, I find hope in that particular mythology.
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