Logicians call the infraction argumentum ad hominem. It's a response to an argument that addresses the person making the argument rather than the argument itself. It's usually fallacious. It's usually avoided here.
In the wicked polemics of climate change, ad hominem arguments occur regularly. Here's a recent example from a statement by Americans United for Change about lawsuits challenging the US Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan: "The only thing these lawsuits are succeeding in doing is making it clear to voters that Republicans will fight tooth and nail to keep the Koch brothers and Big Oil profits rolling in, but they have no plan to cut pollution or actually address climate change." The implication is that affiliation with demons of the political left-wealthy donors to conservative causes and an unpopular industry-invalidates opposition to what many consider to be a costly mistake and abuse of federal authority. The implication is laughable.
Influencing policy
Because arguments like this increasingly influence the formulation of US energy policy, the oil industry has excellent reason to resist them. Yet it shouldn't let distaste for ad hominem abuses keep it from examining motives driving the radicalization of energy.
Rajendra Pachauri, for example, was chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from 2002 until February this year. During his tenure, the IPCC's credibility fell into question after its reports made alarming errors that smacked of bias. An infamous example was the group's 2007 assertion of the "very high" likelihood that global warming would make Himalayan glaciers disappear by 2035. The scientific evidence of this howler, which the IPCC retracted, was found to be a statement by an advocacy group.
For this and other unfounded warnings of doom, Pachauri and the IPCC, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, received a stern critique after an independent investigation. Pachauri responded by insisting that "climate change is real," which of course it is. He remained in office until forced to resign by an allegation of sexual harassment from an employee at the Delhi research group he directed. Pachauri denied the claim.
IPCC continues to be viewed as the pinnacle of understanding about the science of climate change. And climate wasn't even Pachauri's first passion. He's vegetarian and thinks everyone else should be, too.
Bill McKibben, to take another example, is a college professor, prolific environmental writer, and activist who founded 350.org, which leads resistance to the Keystone XL pipeline border crossing. Among many other policy goals, McKibben wants to restrict hydrocarbon development enough to leave 80% of reserves in the ground.
Like Pachauri, McKibben has a transcendent motive: curbing economic growth. "In the world we grew up in," he writes in Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, "our most ingrained economic and political habit was growth; it's the reflex we're going to have to temper."
McKibben's rejection of growth on behalf of everyone accommodates higher purposes of a third intellectual leader of climate politics, Naomi Klein, an author and activist who came to prominence first for her writing against corporate globalization. In her latest book she argues that free-market capitalism is incompatible with responses to climate change.
Extreme positions
Pachauri, McKibben, and Klein are smart and no doubt sincere in their positions on issues. But those positions are extreme. They're usefully provocative, effectively amplified by well-organized activism. But they hardly represent thoughts or wishes of the mainstream humanity. Many if not most people eat meat, think growth is essential to a global economy anticipating population expansion, and consider capitalism, with all its imperfections, to be preferable to all known alternatives. Many if not most people like energy to be affordable and reliably available.
Climate activism and the energy policies it increasingly influences thus hitch to extreme causes of at least questionable palatability. Those links need attention from people who don't like to be told by others-smart or not-how to live.
