Existential Threat or a Manageable Condition?
Why our leaders ignore the scientific evidence on climate change.
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Global leaders recently convened in Glasgow for COP26, and though some of the commitments were grand we've been down this road before. Elected leaders commit, sign accords, and as has always been the case in the U.S., said accords never see ratification by Congress.
For years I have struggled to comprehend why getting comprehensive action from politicians on something as obvious as climate change is so difficult. Is it because they aren't reading the same scientific journals that I am? Or maybe they know something I don't, something that would point to facts that temperatures and sea levels aren't rising, glaciers aren't melting, weather isn't becoming more extreme.
These are just the obvious signs, and maybe I've fallen victim to confirmation bias, and that someone who I perceived as credible planted the seed in my head that the way we live as a species is to blame for these occurrences. After all, I'm not a scientist and maybe there are scientific reasons to not drastically change the way we live so as to assure the survival of our planet and species. Either way, a decision needed to be made: climate change is real and it's primarily caused by us humans, or it's a lie promoted to further some unknown agenda. I needed to know.
I began to read some of the rhetoric and thoughts of conservative GOP leaders who had taken a stance against aggressive action on climate change. I wanted to know what and where their evidence was coming from. What scientific books and journals were they reading, because maybe my affinity for publications like The New Yorker, The Guardian, or National Geographic was unintentionally leading me down the wrong path. In other words, I wanted to know what I didn't know.
I discovered several op-ed pieces, but as they all came from non-scientists I wasn't convinced by what I was reading. They weren’t presenting me with evidence they were presenting me with rhetoric, convincing arguments, yes, but were they substantiated by the facts? Again and again there was one particular name that kept appearing as the source and cause for ignoring what scientists were citing as an “existential threat,” Bjorn Lomborg.
He was first known on the international stage for his book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist” (2001), and more recently for “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.”
This was the source cited by (conservative) syndicated columnist Marc Thiessen, in his recent post where he challenged President Biden's declaration at Cop26 in Glasgow, that climate change is an “existential threat to human existence as we know it.” Thiessen declared, “No, it's not. Climate change is not a meteor hurtling toward Earth. It is a chronic, manageable condition that humanity can live with.”
Bjorn Lomborg Source:
Marc Thiessen Source: Washington Post.com
Wow! If ever there was a bold statement, this was it. He had my attention right up to the point where he cited his source. Again, Bjorn Lomborg.
It's in moments like these when we need to remind ourselves of the importance behind checking sources. Aside from the fact that Lomborg was accused by the international scientific community of “scientific dishonesty” for his aformmentioned 2001 book, or the fact that the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty concluded that he interpreted results beyond the conclusions of the authors he cited, there’s an even more critical reason for not holding as credible anything this man says when it comes to climate change: he's not a scientist. Both his MA and PhD are in political science.
Lomborg’s idea that “global warming is not the main threat,” is certainly intriguing, it's even something worth considering if, and only if, there exists scientific evidence to support it. He advocates for global resources to be devoted to combat AIDS, malnutrition, and malaria in developing nations. And without a doubt these are causes that deserve our attention, but certainly not at the expense of ignoring the existential threat occurring in real time on our planet.
Thiessen cherry picks from Lomborg’s comments to challenge a declaration by the World Health Organization that climate change will increase deaths from malnutrition, predicting 95,000 more deaths due to child malnutrition by 2030, claiming instead that more child deaths from malnutrition would be prevented by reducing global poverty, as though the choice before us were an either-or dilemma between addressing climate change or global poverty.
Whyfiles.org
Thiessen and Lomborg selectively omit that global poverty, like climate change, is a manufactured byproduct of our economies and social-constructs based on an ideology that free markets and globalization are the panacea to our woes. It's not, the evidence before us has never said so, the only thing that has said so is our market theory ideology.
I’m in no way suggesting that we haven't benefited immensely from the innovation and progress that has come from free and open markets and globalization. We most certainly have. And our collective progress has led to advances in medicine, technology, and infrastructure that have undoubtedly saved countless lives. This is a truth that should not be overlooked. But in the same way that we needed our elected leaders to push for oversight, transparency, and limitations in mining communities in generations past to protect things like our ground water, the health of exposed communities, and the environment in general, likewise we need our leaders to acknowledge the evidence of the existential threat bearing down on us like a meteor with climate change.
Meteor headed towards Earth Source: daily star.co.uk
The GOP often tries to frighten us into accepting the narrative that our economy, the very conveniences of our technologies and democratic freedoms would somehow be eviscerated by paying heed to the evidence before us and drastically altering how we live. Someone out there is formulating the argument that.
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