Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Krugman: Climate Denial is Depraved



NYT columnist and Nobel laureate economist, Paul Krugman, isn't pulling any punches. Climate change denialism among congressional Republicans and Trump's White House is depraved.

Wait, isn’t depravity too strong a term? Aren’t people allowed to disagree with conventional wisdom, even if that wisdom is supported by overwhelming scientific consensus? 
Yes, they are — as long as their arguments are made in good faith. But there are almost no good-faith climate-change deniers. And denying science for profit, political advantage or ego satisfaction is not O.K.; when failure to act on the science may have terrible consequences, denial is, as I said, depraved.

The best recent book I’ve read on all this is “The Madhouse Effect” by Michael E. Mann, a leading climate scientist, with cartoons by Tom Toles. As Mann explains, climate denial actually follows in the footsteps of earlier science denial, beginning with the long campaign by tobacco companies to confuse the public about the dangers of smoking. 
The shocking truth is that by the 1950s, these companies already knew that smoking caused lung cancer; but they spent large sums propping up the appearance that there was a real controversy about this link. In other words, they were aware that their product was killing people, but they tried to keep the public from understanding this fact so they could keep earning profits. That qualifies as depravity, doesn’t it?
In many ways, climate denialism resembles cancer denialism. Businesses with a financial interest in confusing the public — in this case, fossil-fuel companies — are prime movers. As far as I can tell, every one of the handful of well-known scientists who have expressed climate skepticism has received large sums of money from these companies or from dark money conduits like DonorsTrust — the same conduit, as it happens, that supported Matthew Whitaker, the new acting attorney general, before he joined the Trump administration.
But climate denial has sunk deeper political roots than cancer denial ever did. In practice, you can’t be a modern Republican in good standing unless you deny the reality of global warming, assert that it has natural causes or insist that nothing can be done about it without destroying the economy. You also have to either accept or acquiesce in wild claims that the overwhelming evidence for climate change is a hoax, that it has been fabricated by a vast global conspiracy of scientists
Why would anyone go along with such things? Money is still the main answer: Almost all prominent climate deniers are on the fossil-fuel take. However, ideology is also a factor: If you take environmental issues seriously, you are led to the need for government regulation of some kind, so rigid free-market ideologues don’t want to believe that environmental concerns are real (although apparently forcing consumers to subsidize coal is fine). 
Finally, I have the impression that there’s an element of tough-guy posturing involved — real men don’t use renewable energy, or something. 
And these motives matter. If important players opposed climate action out of good-faith disagreement with the science, that would be a shame but not a sin, calling for better efforts at persuasion. As it is, however, climate denial is rooted in greed, opportunism, and ego. And opposing action for those reasons is a sin. 
Indeed, it’s depravity, on a scale that makes cancer denial seem trivial. Smoking kills people, and tobacco companies that tried to confuse the public about that reality were being evil. But climate change isn’t just killing people; it may well kill civilization. Trying to confuse the public about that is evil on a whole different level. Don’t some of these people have children? 
And let’s be clear: While Donald Trump is a prime example of the depravity of climate denial, this is an issue on which his whole party went over to the dark side years ago. Republicans don’t just have bad ideas; at this point, they are, necessarily, bad people.

4 comments:

Lorne said...

It seems to me, Mound, that anyone aiding and abetting the climate-denial business is guilty of crimes against humanity. That's how depraved they are.

The Mound of Sound said...


There are some prominent legal minds, especially in Europe, who have reached the same conclusion, Lorne. Americans generally, many Canadians and especially our leadership see climate change impacts, to the extent they see them at all, in purely local terms. They refuse to draw the connection between their very high emissions and the death and suffering already spreading primarily, for now, through the poorest and most vulnerable nations.

Anonymous said...

It's Orwellian to claim that gouging the West with carbon taxes, while simultaneously exporting GHGEs to China, will do ANYTHING to reduce global GHGEs.

If your mind is incapable of parsing that simple logic, try checking out global GHGE growth:

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data#Trends

Looks exactly like global temperature growth:

https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/

Orwellian is as depraved as it gets.

Why are double-thinking neoliberals outraged over rising GHGEs while simultaneously supporting globalization GHGE-shell-games that are certain to institutionalize exponential GHGE growth?

Because they are getting paid. They get a percentage shipping factories out the door. They get a percentage in the carbon markets.

They don't care about the long run. They only care about the performance of their investment and retirement-savings portfolios in the here and now.

Like I said, Orwellian is as depraved as it gets.

Anonymous said...

What passes for right-wing populism is, as Trump himself admitted, just old-fashioned nationalism, aka fascism. One of the main fascist planks is keeping outsiders out, so their obsession with borders goes without saying.

But admitting man-made climate change would be to accept responsibility for the migrations they condemn. Climate-driven multi-year droughts are one of the big factors driving migrations to Europe and out of the Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador triangle. Denying climate change allows fascists to claim that refugees are arriving with evil intent and that military means are needed to keep them out. Admitting the truth would put the lie to all that.

Cap