The acrimony that masquerades as discussion about climate change touched new lows before a United Nations summit on the topic in New York.
In what MSNBC described as “by far the single largest environmental rally in history,” an estimated 310,000 activists from around the world clogged Manhattan on Sept. 21 to demand action on climate change and other liberal causes. The next day a smaller group, calling itself Flood Wall Street, marched in the financial district to protest fossil-energy investment. Its motto: Stop Capitalism. End the Climate Crisis.
The demonstrations attracted attention and testified not to climatological expertise but to the abilities of pressure groups to assemble opinionated people in large numbers. About the merits of an agenda demanding that everyone convert promptly to energy forms costlier than those now dominantly in use, the spectacles said nothing.
Hypocrisy was rampant. Most of the protestors traveled to and within New York in conveyances fueled by oil products, after all. And it would be largely the same folk—the jugglers, the sign-carriers with painted faces, the grown-ups in animal costumes—who would, if their climate demands were met, reconvene in but a few years to demand lower energy prices.
Worse than hypocritical was a Sept. 22 rant by Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google Inc., on a National Public Radio talk show. Schmidt reported his company’s withdrawal from the American Legislative Exchange Council (AMLEC), a group of state legislators dedicated to free markets, limited government, and federalism. AMLEC has expressed doubt about the need for urgent response to climate change.
“Everyone understands climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place,” Schmidt said. “And so we should not be aligned with such people. They’re just—they’re just literally lying.”
Statements like this—groundless, insulting, verging on intellectual bigotry—appear far too often in climate politics. They make grown-ups in animal costumes seem almost reasonable.
(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Sept. 26, 2014; author’s e-mail: [email protected])