Tag Archives: global warming

Why Is Everyone Else So Stupid?

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This ran a while back on Splice Today.
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There is nothing quite so sad as a sad technocrat. The technocrats know what is best for all of us. They know how to bring that “best” about. They have charts and science and graphs—oh, the poignant, unlooked-at graphs! But though they know all, though they see all, though they can save the world, none will heed them. Though they cry out in the language of science, their wisdom is mocked and their efficiencies sneered at. The world, they know, will die, all because the fools would not listen!

It’s a familiar story, reiterated once again in this endless and wretchedly self-vaunting post by Ajit Varki and Danny Brower, experts who, together, have the proportionate prose style of a flaccid guppy.

But we are not here for the prose style, but for the insight and the wisdom. Varki and Brower have gotten up upon the soapbox to tell you that global warming is a real problem, and that those who do not treat it as such are deluded fools. The emotional climax of the piece comes when the authors reminisce about a 2007 conference they attended in which “some of the oldest and best-known American societies that focus on the value of knowledge” came together to insist that “in order for democracy to succeed, it must be based on real knowledge of the facts of the world around us.” The conference attendees even wrote books about it.  And yet, the authors lament, despite the clear directive from important knowledge societies, people still just kept on being people, believing in dietary supplements and natural cures and all that nonsense. “Why is it,” they wail, “that so many humans are attracted to these illogical doctrines?”

In answer, the two spout completely unproven theories about humans’ need for illusions in the face of mortality. They also promise that we can achieve a “complete recognition of reality,” but only if we are as knowledgeable and thoughtful as Richard Dawkins, who, they fail to mention, is kind of an ignorant xenophobic shithead.

Also worth noting is that, in the course of their discussion of climate change, they claim that as one effect of global warming, “it is plausible that we could… tip the planet into an ice age.” Which sounds like it can’t be true, and, in fact, appears to be untrue. If you’re going to lambast the rest of the world for not being as smart as you are, the least you could do, you’d think, would be to get the science right.

I understand why Varki and Brower are frustrated. Global warming and environmental degradation are real and dangerous problems, and we need to confront them. Our political institutions have been very reluctant to do this, and a not insubstantial minority of people has actively denied that anything is wrong. The obvious conclusion is that those people are dumb, and that our political institutions are ineffectual.

And you know what? People really are often dumb, and democratic politics is a grim slog against the rampant imbecility of the majority. I don’t deny that.

The problem is, when you say “people” are dumb, that’s not just that guy over there drooling. It’s everybody. Everybody is dumb in some ways, sometimes. If you’re not denying global warming, you’re seriously suggesting that human gullibility should be repealed because you attended some stupid conference. If you’re not burbling about the dangers of vaccinations, you’re burbling about the coming ice age.

Knowledge is great, vital and useful. Reason is a powerful tool, and can help us get out of nearly as many messes as it gets us into. But there’s nothing smart, or reasonable, about talking to your fellow citizens as if they’re idiots, and there’s nothing particularly reality-based about condescending to your fellow human beings as if you think you are gods. Varki and Brower want to convince their readers that global warming is a serious problem. But all they really manage to do is to show that technocracy can be a kind of idolatry, and that being impressed with your own overwhelming knowledge is a sure way to make yourself sound like a fool.

Wonk vs. Pol

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This was first published on Splice Today.
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Al Gore is a wonk—for a politician. But politicians aren’t real wonks. They’re doughy, be-suited wonk wannabes; plodding poseurs with pasteboard and tinsel craniums. When politician wonks go to the think tank locker rooms, the real wonks snicker and tape “Kick Me!” to the backs of their slide rules.

The documentary Cool It is the revenge of the real wonk—specifically of Bjorn Lomborg, author, statistician, environmentalist and native of Denmark, where they take their wonks seriously. Lomborg’s controversial thesis in Cool It (first floated in his 2001 book The Skeptical Environmentalist) is, essentially, that Gore and his ilk are full of hooey. Global warming will not cause the apocalypse in the foreseeable future, and the effort to frighten people into lowering carbon emissions is disingenuous and misguided.

Lomborg doesn’t deny that global warming is occurring and that it is a serious long-term problem. Instead, he notes that doomsday scenarios (20 ft. sea level rise! Devastating hurricanes once a week!) are overblown, and that the efforts to drastically reduce greenhouse gases through legislative caps are ineffectual. Instead, he argues we should funnel the massive amounts of money it would take to lower temperatures by a fraction of a degree over the course of a century into more productive ventures. He suggests, for example, developing renewable energy resources and fighting poverty, malaria, and other scourges in the developing world.

Cool It has more ambitions than merely setting the record straight on global warming, though. One of the talking heads that Cool It drops on the unsuspecting viewer notes with the slightly condescending chuckle of the large-brained that Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, was a “great piece of propaganda.” No doubt it was. So is this. Cool It uses, in fact, many of the same hagiographic tactics as its more famous predecessor. We see Bjorn biking healthily through Denmark, chatting earnestly with impoverished children in third world nations, and puncturing bloviating politicians with his rapier wit. We get porn-movie close-ups of his book as voiceovers speak sternly of its controversial and brave counter-intuitiveness. The movie even trots out Lomborg’s Alzheimer-afflicted mother for a few scenes—because nothing adds depth to a wonk’s character like a little family tragedy.

Bjorn may be a bouncing boy genius, but he’s not the only one. The movie has enough reverence for contrarians to spread its shining pixie dust all across the wonkosphere, breathlessly rushing from a plan to cool the world’s cities by painting them white to a plan to cool the earth by spraying particulate matter into the stratosphere by balloon to a plan to turn algae into fuel, and on and on. Economists will tell us what to invest in and researchers teleologically deliver the goods. “The solution is us!” one scientist proclaims. And by “us” he doesn’t mean you and me, child. He means the wonks.

The wonks always think the solution is them, of course. Leave it to wonks and they’ll reason and invent and statistic until our problems are all solved. Of course, one could argue that many of our problems were caused by wonks in the first place. World Bank economists are not generally hailed as saviors in the developing world; the technological miracle of massive irrigation projects has in many places intensified water crises; the massive population boom enabled by modernization in Africa pushed humans into forested areas where, it seems likely, they came in contact with the simian-born HIV virus. Advances can have unintended consequences. But so what? As one cantankerous bearded fellow notes, you may not trust the wonks, but you don’t have a better solution do you? Unless you do, he sneers, “Don’t stop me!”

As it happens, I don’t have any particular desire to stop Angry Bearded Guy. I agree with the film that politicians are largely useless. To the best I’ve been able to determine from doing a moderate amount of research on the topic over the years, global warming really is not an imminent millenarian threat. Lomborg’s suggestions—stop scaring people; stop calling for useless individual actions like replacing light bulbs, invest money wisely—all seem reasonable.

But I wish we could agree to those solutions without engaging in rampant wonkolatry. Because the fact is, wonks are as stupid, as duplicitous, and as self-impressed as the rest of us—a fact this movie inadvertently demonstrates quite clearly. The end isn’t nigh, but neither should we necessarily put our faith in the convenient development of timely techno miracles. And you know what you call a wonk who wants your trust? A politician.