A couple of weeks ago the National Review ran a cover story by Jason Steorts claiming that fears of melting ice at the poles were over-hyped. Following a line of argument laid out by the ExxonMobil-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute, Steorts quoted a study by a scientist named Curt Davis.

Davis, director of the Center for Geospatial Intelligence at the University of Missouri-Columbia, promptly called the CEI a bunch of liars, saying it was part of a "deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public."

Think  Progress then went to the scientist for a comment specifically on Steorts’ story, and Davis said that Steorts "misrepresented" his work, "did his math wrong," and failed to consider "significant ice loss on the coasts of Antarctica" when calculating the mass of ice at the South Pole.

Now, another National Review writer associated with CEI and the National Review writes another story that misleadingly quotes another scientist. For the far-right TCS (which also takes money from Exxon) Iain Murray wrote a story claiming that there was some question as to whether climate change was anthropogenic and vaguely extolling local measures to adapt to climate change, as opposed to national or international efforts to reduce emissions. All through the story he implied that those advocating reducing carbon emissions for the sake of the health of the planet somehow were standing in the way of "freedom," "resilience," and "creativity," all activities apparently despised by environmentalists. He quoted exactly one scientist, named Indur Goklany:

Indur Goklany, in a study for the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), examined the effects of tackling infectious diseases, hunger, water insecurity, sea level rise and threats to biodiversity now as opposed to attempting to mitigate climate change now. In all cases he found that tackling them now would have considerably more effect and be cheaper than tackling climate change.

But although it’s true that Goklany advocates adaptation over mitigation (perhaps because the National Center for Policy Analysis he works for is also funded in part by Exxon) he himself said in a comment on Monday at Prometheus that "[mitigation and adaptation] don’t have to be mutually exclusive."

Once again, the Exxon hacks are forced to mislead to make an argument against reducing carbon emissions, claiming that it’s either/or when it comes to healing the planet.

Yes, of course we need to prepare for the worst now, just as a doctor presented with a patient running a fever will do what he must to get that fever down. And yes, of course we must prevent the fever from getting much worse in months and years and decades to come. But first and foremost, we must act, which is what ExxonMobil has spent millions to stall, all for the sake of profit, over five billion in the first quarter alone.

Orion is a bimonthly out of New England passionately in love with our planet; show a little interest and they’ll send you a big gorgeous issue for free. Even when I disagree with one of its essayists, as I sometimes do, I can only respect the adventurousness of their writing, which takes nothing for granted.

So I wish I could link to a Q&A they have in this month’s issue on an activist named Van Jones, who works with Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland. (It’s off-line.) Jones speaks about what it means to be an activist, and, specifically, what he calls "the reverence movement." (His resume gives you some idea of his worth, but not enough: Let me quote some of the Orion interview with him.) If you want to know more, ask Orion for this month’s issue.

A reverence movement is, at the end of the day, taking corrective steps to further enhance the beauty of others and the beauty of yourself.

If you ask people what their actual experience of being on the left is, lots of people say, "Oh, we’re saving the world, blah, blah, blah. I say: "No, no, no, what’s your experience–like, Thursday?" They say: "Oh, it was horrible." It’s like the difference between using diesel versus solar as your energy source. Anger is a messy fuel that eventually causes more problems than it can solve.

Putting a generation of kids in a prison is like clear cutting a forest. We deeply believe we have a throwaway planet–throwaway species, resources, neighborhoods, nations, continents. Young people and adults in prison have been thrown away as well. Once they’re outside the circle of people who deserve dignity and respect, then they can be preyed upon. The prisoners can be worked–Angola in Louisiana is a classic example. Or by big corporations here in California: Microsoft, for some of their packaging; Victoria’s Secret and United Airlines, for their telemarketing orders…it’s all related. The polluters, the clearcutters, the incarcerators, they’re all enacting the same story: money is more important than life, and we have the technology or the guns to protect ourselves from any consequences of our heedlessness.

One thing I know from my own experience is that demonization and deification are the same process, two sides of the same coin, and if you set yourself up to be deified, then you can’t be mad when the other side demonizes you. The idea that either you’re this egomaniac who’s only out there for yourself or you’re this pure martyr with no personal ambitions or desires–both of those are false.

We have this whole David and Goliath syndrome. If you’re an activist, that has a positive side: you want to confront unjust authority, fight against long odds, hold out the possibility of miraculous outcomes. And that’s a good thing.

But there’s a shadow side to David and Goliath, which is that there’s got to be some big mean other. You’ve got to be the small underdog all the time and there’s got to be some confrontation between absolute good (you) and absolute evil (the other). If you’re an activist then you know what I’m talking about; you know what it’s like when you try to lead a meeting and somebody’s got to challenge you on every point. You know what it’s like when you get everyone riled up to attack the mayor, and the mayor doesn’t show up, and everybody attacks you. It’s part of the toxic stuff you’re playing with.

Also, you have to have enough respect to realize that Goliath has probably figured out the slingshot thing by now. So to continue to do the same thing over and over again, which is what we’ve been doing since the 60’s, keeps us from being creative. And it’s probably going to yield worse results over time.

The  other thing is, it could be that you’re just in the wrong book of the Bible altogether. It could be that it’s not really about David and Goliath; it’s really about Noah. The kinds of really serious challenges that are coming up will feel more like what happened down in New Orleans. it’s easy to say there’s an evil Goliath called George Bush who’s letting bad things happen to good people. But even if George Bush were to leave the planet, we’ve still got major, major climate destabilization to deal with. And so it could be that we need to figure out new ways to win–to be open to the possibility that sometimes we can win Goliath over to helping us build the ark.

Back in l968, the Golden Gate Bridge eliminated tolls on northbound traffic, and doubled the toll on southbound traffic. This brilliantly simple change greatly sped up traffic through the toll booths, but had no great effect on toll collection. Since then, it’s an idea that has been copied around the world.

For me, it’s a great example of how innovation can result in change for the better, without requiring new superstructure or new procedures. Good ideas can be found out there in the world, for those who take the trouble to listen and look for them. (If memory serves, the toll idea actually was given to the Golden Gate Bridge by an ordinary citizen…though I can’t find evidence of that on-line.) 

Here’s another such potential good idea to reduce carbon emissions, courtesy of economist Dean Baker at the new Harpers blog. It’s a very simple idea:

Currently, auto insurance is viewed as a fixed expense. People pay the same amount for their insurance no matter how much they drive. This means that when someone is comparing the cost of driving to work with the cost of carpooling or public transportation, they won’t factor in the cost of insurance, because they will pay the same whether they make any particular trip or not.

This would change if drivers paid for insurance by the mile. Taking rough numbers, the average person drives her car around 10,000 miles a year and pays a bit less than $1,000 each year for insurance. This means that the cost of insurance is approximately 10 cents per mile. If for each mile they drive drivers paid 10 cents for insurance, then on average they would pay the same amount for insurance as they do now—but they would have much more incentive to cut back their driving.

So, for instance, a driver who was considering carpooling to avoid a 40-mile roundtrip commute to work could save herself $4 a day (more than $800 a year) in insurance costs by carpooling under the pay-by-the-mile system. Many trips that make sense under the current insurance payment system would not make sense with a pay-by-the-mile system. It would discourage driving in the same way that a large gas tax would discourage driving, except that—on average—no one will pay more for insurance.

The only disadvantage I can see from this idea is that it would encourage lying about odometer readings. But this could be checked against odometer inspections, Baker points out, and some insurance companies and even some states already encourage this insurance-by-the-mile policy.

Gentlemen, start your odometers!

Regarding attempts to negotiate nuclear issues with Iran, on Friday the White House’s newly-appointed Press Secretary Tony Snow declared that "Iran cannot reject [a new proposal] it has not seen."

Nice try, Mr. Snow, but your boss has already rejected Al Gore’s presentation on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, by refusing to see it against the advice of his own senior environmental advisor.

We can only hope the religious fundamentalists in Iran are a little more open-minded than our President.