Climate Notes: Searching the Globe over (PODCAST)

Welcome to "Climate Notes." I'm D.R. Tucker.

 

June 1 was a special anniversary for me. I did not get married on that day, nor did I have a child. I didn't graduate from high school or college on that day. It doesn't mark the day I met a girlfriend, or received a promotion, or bought a new car. In some ways, however, it's more important than that.

 

June 1 marked the third anniversary of the final time I read an op-ed by Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, after seventeen years of reading his material. The reason I decided to stop was because of a column in which he compared the doomsday proclamations of cult leader Harold Camping to the climate warnings of former Vice President Al Gore. (link)

 

I was horrified by the piece. Yes, I was aware that Jacoby, a libertarian-leaning conservative, was rather dismissive of climate science. However, I found the tone of this particular piece uniquely vicious, intensely contemptuous not only of progressives who were concerned about the climate crisis but also conservatives who accepted the abundant scientific evidence of the gathering storms.

 

The decision to stop reading Jacoby was not made lightly. As embarrassing as this is to acknowledge today, for many years I modeled my own punditry after Jacoby, and considered him one of the best writers in the United States. I felt that he had the perfect combination of policy analysis, pugnacious commentary, and sharp insight into the human spirit. For many years, I considered it a crime that his erstwhile Boston Globe colleague Eileen McNamara had a Pulitzer Prize and he didn't.

 

Thus, that June 1, 2011 column from Jacoby was the equivalent of a sharp slap across the face. It was as if someone you admired told you to go to hell, preferably as soon as possible.

 

I thought of writing a letter to the editor in response to Jacoby's column, but I failed to find the appropriate words to convey the anger I felt towards him for writing it. MIT's Kerry Emanuel came close, however. In a letter to the Globe published on June 5, 2011, Emanuel wrote:

 

"Jeff Jacoby offers us a false choice between panic and the denial of risk. He begins with a weak but grotesque attempt to link those who take climate risk seriously with street-corner charlatans heralding imminent apocalypse. Even more bizarrely, he ridicules Al Gore for warning of imminent disaster, right in the wake of an appalling run of weather disasters.

 

"Ignoring sober appraisals of risk, such as that just released by the National Academy of Sciences, Jacoby zeroes in on Newsweek’s hyperventilating rhetoric. Why not go after the National Enquirer?

 

"Then we are treated to yet another round of the 'climate is always changing,' rather like a murder defendant telling the jury that people are always dying.

 

"Assessing and dealing with climate risk in an environment of highly uncertain science and expensive options is challenging enough without having to entertain the flippancy of your columnist. There is no scientific basis for his certainty that we have nothing to worry about." (link)

 

I've heard complaints about some of the subsequent columns Jacoby has written about the climate crisis. In September 2011, the progressive site Blue Mass Group called out Jacoby for a follow-up denialist piece, noting:

 

"For years Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe has specialized in columns that seem designed to incite a torrent of letters to the editor, and this pattern is nowhere more striking than in his periodic columns denying global warming.  Perhaps such letters provide ‘evidence’ that Mr. Jacoby is contributing to public debate and therefore merits a platform for his ever-predictable screeds. What is less obvious is why the Globe feels compelled to print his attacks on science.

 

"Today’s column is a striking illustration of Jacoby’s method.  He begins by searching for his opponent here settling on Bill Clinton’s recent climate change [remarks]. Our former President remarked, 'We look like a joke, right? You can’t win the nomination of one of the major parties in the country if you admit that the scientists are right?' Jacoby then pulls out his favorite tactic of contacting one of the vanishingly small minority of scientists who reject the ever-increasing torrent of peer-reviewed scientific research outlining the details and mechanics of  global warming. Jacoby concludes with a circular argument, asserting, 'We’ll know that the science is settled when the battles have come to an end.' The problem here is that there is no real battle, only a manufactured reality, which Jacoby is taking part in creating, so that American Republicans can pass around emails glorifying denial to each other. It’s a remarkable strategy: so long as deniers continue to deny [human-caused] climate change they can claim that the  science is not settled. With this approach deniers can assert that the science is not settled indefinitely. Manufacture a false version of reality, and then use that manufactured reality to reject reality.

 

"Writing letters to the editor at this point may actually make the problem worse—Jacoby wants, after all, to create the illusion that he is taking part in a real debate.  However, the Globe’s stance in continuing to publish these columns raises further questions. Under the First Amendment, Jacoby is free to write what he wishes, but the Constitution does not require the Globe a platform for repeated attacks against science.

 

"Since the Globe is ready to publish columns that deny global warming, it’s worthwhile to wonder what else the Globe would feel fit to print ? Would the Globe publish columns denying that smoking causes cancer? Would the Globe publish columns defending slavery?  Why then, do they see fit to take part in stopping any effective response to global warming until it is too late to do anything except suffer the consequences?"(link)

 

This post generated an interesting response from one Blue Mass Group commenter who posted under the name "JConway":

 

"I think Jacoby is a far cry from [the late Boston talk radio host David] Brudnoy and the other right of center greats the Globe once had, he lacks the intelligence and the grace. But I do think it is important to remember that the Globe, in its journalistic pieces, always asserts that [human-caused] climate change is fact much in the same way one would with evolution. For it to publish an opinion piece, by a conservative, on its editorial page to me showcases a liberal bias of pigeonholing conservatives into the anti-science and anti-rational column to poke fun at. We can attack it there. But you would be hard pressed to argue that the Globe has an anti-science agenda and even harder pressed to argue that Jacoby’s opinions have an impact on anyone other than the people that already oppose climate change [legislation] due to idiocy or rational short term economic self-interest. Lastly as a free speech proponent I have a knee jerk opposition to anyone supporting the silencing of an opinion not matter how foolish the utterance."(link)

 

Two years later, another firestorm was generated by another Jacoby column that was seen as giving a middle finger to material facts. Once again, MIT's Kerry Emanuel wrote a terrific response:

 

"In his December 4 op-ed column 'Majority rules on climate science?' Jeff Jacoby describes climate science as polarized between 'true believers' (also known as 'alarmists') and 'skeptics' (also known as 'deniers'). The truth is that all scientists are, by nature, deeply skeptical, and are aware that all that science can do is produce a best estimate of the curve of probable outcomes. In this case, those outcomes range from benign to catastrophic.

 

"Climate risk is real. The evidence, from warming oceans to retreating glaciers to thinning arctic sea ice, is compelling. The general warming of the planet was predicted more than a century ago based on elementary physics, and the greenhouse gas content of our atmosphere is now higher than it has been in at least 3 million years.

 

"People with political mind-sets can always cherry-pick the evidence. Sure, the atmosphere since 1998 has not warmed as fast as models predicted, even as it rose faster than earlier predictions. The fact is, 97 percent of climate science professionals agree that we are putting our children at risk. Jacoby is right that science is not settled by majority vote, but developing policy based on 3 percent of the experts is foolish.

 

"In recognizing that the high side of the risk curve presents an existential threat to our descendants, we can take reasonable actions today to mitigate that risk. Or we can gamble that the outcome will be on the benign side of the curve. True conservatives don’t gamble with their children."(link)

 

In May of this year, Jacoby apparently took a shot at the fossil-fuel divestment movement. This piece also generated strong criticism; perhaps the best response came from the pen of Jamie Henn of 350.org:

 

"Jeff Jacoby misstates the goals of the fossil fuel divestment campaign in his latest column. He also ignores the threat that climate change poses to our economy, not to mention the planet. The goal of the divestment campaign has never been to directly affect the share prices of fossil fuel companies. Instead, divestment takes aim at the industry’s social license to operate its business as usual: wrecking the planet. When we weaken the social standing of the industry, it takes away its political power, which can open up space for meaningful climate action.

 

"It’s not just students saying we need to go fossil free. The World Bank, International Energy Agency, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and many others have concluded that we must keep roughly 80 percent of fossil fuel reserves underground to avoid catastrophic climate change. [Massachusetts] Governor [Deval] Patrick was right to call for a 'future free of fossil fuels' at [University of Massachusetts] Amherst’s graduation this month.

 

"Failing to go fossil free could have a devastating effect on our portfolios as well as the climate. Boston-based financier Jeremy Grantham, whose firm manages more than $100 billion in assets, is among those sounding the alarm about the carbon bubble — the trillions of dollars that are at risk because the stock market is overvaluing fossil fuels that must be left underground to avoid climate catastrophe. If that bubble bursts, it’s going to wipe out more than Harvard’s endowment.

 

"It’s high time we invested in climate solutions."

 

(link)

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I have observed that climate-change deniers usually hold other views that are eyebrow-raising, to say the least. Recently, Jacoby evidently wrote a piece denouncing advocates of marriage equality--presumably, that includes marriage-equality advocates who happen to be right-of-center in their political views. (link)

 

I don't quite get why those who profess to believe in equality under the law can reason that such equality shouldn't apply to couples of the same gender; likewise, I don't quite get why Jacoby, who thinks Al Gore's just making up all this global-warming stuff, never seemed to recognize other valid arguments for adjusting domestic energy policy, or putting a price on carbon emissions. After all, even if climate change *was* a hoax, there would still be compelling reasons to shift our energy policy away from fossil fuels.

 

The national-security/public-health imperative for changing our energy policy is every bit as compelling as the climate imperative. I mean, surely Jacoby remembers 9/11, right? So, surely he must remember that fifteen of the

nineteen terrorists who killed 3,000 people that day came from Saudi Arabia? Surely, he must remember that most of the world's oil reserves

are in counties that loathe the United States? If that isn't a compelling reason to shift towards alternative fuels, I don't quite know what is.

 

In addition, surely Jacoby doesn't

think coal mining, mountaintop removal and fracking are not without severe air-pollution risks, does he? These primitive energy-extraction

efforts clearly play a role in the escalation of health-care costs in this country.

 

Jacoby has always believed that Gore is full of hot air, and he will never change his mind on that score. In that June 1, 2011 piece, he effectively declared: If Al Gore is for something, I'm against it!

 

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Now, June marks another, far more prominent anniversary: the 40th anniversary of public school desegregation in Boston. The late Massachusetts Congresswoman Louise Day Hicks was a vehement critic of the use of busing to desegregate Boston schools, and her famous campaign slogan was: "You know where I stand."

 

That could be Jacoby's slogan with regard to his writings on climate. Of course, the problem is that what works for a politician does not and cannot work for a pundit.

 

I have been urged, on any number of occasions, to respond to Jacoby's post-2011 climate-denial pieces, to get up in his face rhetorically, to call him out in print, to lay a scientific smackdown on him. I have always declined, and I decline again now because, well, what would be the point, exactly? What would be gained? Who would be enlightened? Ask yourself: how many of the Globe's readers are really swayed by his scorn of science? I would submit to you that anybody who thinks Jeff Jacoby is right on climate is an intellectual lost cause anyway.

 

As you might have guessed, I am quite embarrassed by the fact that I once found Jacoby's work to be of intellectual merit. I wish I had never read the first piece he wrote for the Globe in February 1994, or any of the subsequent pieces. I wish that I had never viewed him as a political role model.

 

It's a painful history, one that cannot be undone. The only thing I can do is move beyond it, which is what I've tried to do for the past three years.

 

I realize now that although I once admired Jeff Jacoby, I don't really have anything in common with the man. I cannot relate to his vision of the world, just as I'm sure he cannot relate to mine.

 

I've enjoyed three years Jacoby-free, and I'd like to enjoy several more. I realize now that calling Jacoby "anti-science" or a "libertarian ideologue" is not the most appropriate thing you can say to him. I realize now that the most appropriate thing you can say to him, and to those who share his particular vision of the world...is goodbye.

 

Thank you for listening.