Climate Denial

Here's an email I wrote to Joe Nocera of the NY Times in response to his article about the Rockefeller family's attempts to push Exxon in a new direction. You can almost count on business writers to be antagonistic toward global warming, perhaps because their audience (wealthy corporate types) remain in denial about the science supporting climate change, and the liklihood of catastrophic damage likely to result from climate change. What a shame...

Dear Joe,

You write, "Expecting Exxon Mobil to move the world to an oil-free future is a little like expecting buggy-whip manufacturers to invent the automobile." This is a poor analogy. A better one would have been "expecting buggy manufacturers to begin making automobiles." Which is exactly what some buggy manufacturers did. Exxon doesn't just define itself as an oil and gas company. It also states as its mission, "To help meet the world’s growing energy needs...and explore emerging energy sources and technologies." By any definition or standard, Exxon is failing to adequately or meaningfully explore emerging energy sources and technologies. And to assume that the worlds growing energy needs can only be met by fossil fuels is foolhardy. Exxon should be reinvesting billions in solar nano-tech. It should be developing long-term strategies to address the growing global desire to shift away from fossil fuels. But it's not. Their main discipline, it would seem, is to make short term profits with little or no regard for the long-term direction of energy.
Also, to characterize climate change as something that might not cause much harm, or be cheap to fix, is misleading. Yes, those assertions are possible, but a stunning majority of scientists are giving them a very low probability. By any reasonable reading of the scientific literature, catastrophic consequences of climate change are a high probability. So please, stop writing about remote, pie-in-the-sky possibilities and start looking at the future in terms of likelihoods. That would qualify as a disciplined approach.

Sincerely,

- JT Compton
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The Gore Reminder

Al Gore was interviewed on a CNN Global Warming special today, and yet again, it proved to be a heartbreaking reminder of how different our nation and place in the world would be if George Bush had not been given the Presidency by the Supreme Court.

Critics love to mock Gore because he’s not a blustering redneck-wannabe like Bush, because he doesn’t strut and smirk and pretend to be a working-class good-ol’ boy. They make fun of his intellect and deride his claim—which proves to be accurate—that he had a hand in starting the Internet, painting him as an annoying know-it-all. But recent history has demonstrated that a know-nothing President like Bush can do immense and lasting damage to our treasury, reputation, environment and democracy.

How utterly sad that instead of the dignified, articulate Gore—as wise, learned and measured a politician as I have seen in my lifetime—we have a ridiculous, obtuse, rude, ignorant, narrow-minded, angry and defiant loser in George Bush.

Bush has done virtually nothing constructive as President—increased AIDS funding to Africa (with strings attached to curtail use of condoms!)—and has done a thousand things to weaken and degrade a broad array of institutions and communities here and abroad. Watching Bush is like watching a sick joke, a phony cowboy with a phony accent trying desperately to distance himself from his blue-blooded, patrician, wimpy Yale-cheerleader past.

A Gore Presidency would have completely avoided the historic mess in Iraq, would have likely got the job done in Afghanistan, would have jump-started bold and broad initiatives to combat Climate Change, would have done a significantly better job in New Orleans (not the least of which because he would have given the FEMA job to someone capable instead of an inept crony), would never have put two extremist-revisionist judges on the Supreme Court, would never have allowed Big Business to write energy policy and rape the land (like the hideous mountaintop mining that has ruined vast areas of land in the Virginias), would never have encouraged torture or secret prisons or indefinite detention, would never have allowed unlimited spying on citizens, would never have made gaffe after gaffe on the world stage, would never have become an embarrassing international icon of ridicule and hatred.

How sad that cynical, dark-hearted hate mongers, neo-cons and wimps-trying-to-be-tough-guys like Charles Krauthammer (whose pathetic smear of Gore was featured on the same CNN show) would rather have as President a fool like Bush than a sage like Gore. How sad that so many Americans would rather vote for a beer buddy than a scholar. They get what they pay for—a President with wet brain, and policies and staff to match.

- JT Compton
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