7/21/07
AN INCONVENIENT FOLLOWING
4 PAGES

I am seriously this close to being done with the whole Global Warming movement. I’m sure this will be an unpopular blog. Or who knows, maybe there is a quiet mob out there like me who will echo the sentiment. Who am I kidding though – most likely nobody but my MySpace contingent actually reads this crap anyway so why hold back? I should back up for a second and clarify that it’s not the Global Warming movement in and of itself that has inspired this latest of rants. Anyone who has read my essay “Is the Truth Really That Inconvenient?” knows that I haven’t closed off my ears to the debate entirely… or even a little. I simply have a lot of questions that nobody in the planet-hugger community seems willing or able to answer. Beyond that, I’m frankly suspicious that this whole movement, while it may have started out with good intentions, is being hijacked by disingenuous people more focused on money and power than actually fixing the problem. Where I really grind my axe these days is with two specific groups: A) Loudmouth global warming activists who are painfully (or willfully) ignorant of how global warming actually works; and B) Al Gore groupies. But it’s when you combine these two groups of earthy well wishers that I actually start to become afraid for the next few years.

Let’s start with Group A. All of us probably know at least one person in this group. I’ll set the scenario for you. See if you recognize it. You’re chatting amongst friends or shooting the breeze with somebody on IM when you make the mistake of making an offhand comment about the weather. The people of Group A don’t hesitate a beat before responding, “Well, that’s global warming for you.” It doesn’t matter what your comment is. It’s hot outside. Global warming. It’s cold outside. Global warming. It’s windy. It’s rainy. It’s dry. It’s muggy. Global warming… Okay, let me explain how global warming works. First of all, look at the first word: GLOBAL. You cannot gauge the plight of an entire planet by pointing to a weeklong heat wave in New England, nor is a freak cold snap in April indicative of glaciers melting and the impending ice age. In fact, if you have a week’s worth of unusually hot weather and then a week’s worth of unusually cold weather, as far as the GLOBAL temperature is concerned, nothing has changed. If January is five degrees warmer than usual and July is five degrees colder than usual, in the eyes of the overall climate, everything has balanced itself out. But the people in Group A either don’t understand that or are deliberately ignoring it so they can fuel their own activist fires. To listen to these people rant, you’d swear there was never any such thing as droughts, monsoons or hurricanes before the Industrial Revolution.

I’m going to say this just as clear as I can. Even if we take this “environmental crisis” at face value, the day-to-day effects of global warming are not dramatic enough to be noteworthy. Pointing to floods, tornadoes, heat waves or even glaciers collapsing in slow motion does nothing to prove your point. The things that lend credence to global warming aren’t sensational or visual at all. You know what they are? Numbers. Statistics. Data from all over the world painstakingly compiled into hugely boring tables and graphs that show the GLOBAL temperature rising by fractions of a degree. One quarter of a degree on a boring chart like that is far more damning than ten degrees on a bank thermometer. That is where the inconvenient truth really lies… even if it isn’t as compelling to look at. So please stop invoking global warming every time I decide to make small talk about the weather.

Okay, now for Group B. The Al Gore groupies. These people infuriate me more than Group A, who at least have the luxury of just being ignorant. The Gore groupies are different in that they really do seem to understand the causes behind global warming and are willing to condemn people, countries and corporations for all the damage they’re causing via their actions. Yet when it comes the actions of Al Gore, they turn a blind eye to that inconvenient bit of truth. In his movie, Gore urges everyone to make sacrifices to reduce energy consumption and lessen their carbon footprint on the planet. Yet when Gore’s own energy consumption habits were examined, it turned out that his house consumed nearly twenty times more electricity than the average American home. Twenty times! Add to that the fact that he flew around the country promoting his movie in a private jet and one has to wonder just how seriously Gore takes his own message. These aren’t groundbreaking revelations I’m making here. Pretty much every conservative radio show in the country has used this information against Gore over the last several months. But what continually strikes me as so odd is the way the Goreists consistently absolve their fearless leader of his conduct simply because he is the one getting the message out. “The private jet’s emissions are worth it if it means he can speak at more assemblies,” they urge. What other committed following would say that? If some Christian evangelist traveled the country preaching against, say, homosexuality and then it turned out he had been getting it on with male prostitutes after the show, would his followers say, “Well that’s okay because he’s out there spreading the right message”? Of course not! They would disavow themselves of him and his actions immediately.

The one argument I constantly hear being made in defense of Al Gore and his carbon footprint is that he “buys carbon credits” to offset his pollution. Essentially he pays a certain amount of money to companies with low carbon emissions, or to companies developing renewable energy technologies, or to organizations who do things like plant trees. Something to that effect. I’m exactly not sure how it all works, but the bottom line worth focusing on here is that Gore is validating his sins against the planet by paying money for them. Is it just me or does this all vaguely similar to the medieval Catholic doctrine of “Indulgences” where rich people could pay money to the church who would then give them (no joke) a “pre-emptive license to sin.” If a man knew he was going to have an affair, he would pay a certain amount of money to the diocese, and then his priest, rather than encouraging him to turn from his sinful ways, would simply absolve him of all future adulteries. The inherent hypocrisy wrapped up inside this doctrine was one of the primary triggers for Martin Luther’s grievances and the resulting Protestant Reformation. So why, just because Al Gore has more money than the rest of us, is he allowed to pollute at will? If he's supposed to be at the forefront of this movement, why doesn't he pay out that carbon credit money in addition to reducing his carbon footprint? (And just to be completely forthright here, it’s actually Paramount Pictures, the film’s distributor who pays those credits, not Gore himself.) And why oh why doesn’t Gore’s entourage at least acknowledge the inconsistencies between his doctrine and his daily life and demand that their leader hold himself to higher standard?

This blog has been a long time in coming. It’s been on the tip of my (fingertips?) for months now but without the time to actually sit down and hammer out my thoughts. Then I heard something, actually two things, that finally made me take the time to get this out there. The first thing I heard – which really was reason enough – was a speech made by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Live Earth concert on July 7 where he flat out accused people who don’t believe the warnings about global warming to be guilty of “treason.” Treason! As in being a traitor to the country, perhaps the utmost crime somebody can be convicted of. Sadly, Kennedy’s comment was merely the most visible example of a scary trend I see developing in this country, where any opinions on global warming other than the ones espoused by Al Gore and those like him are opinions that are, at best, not valid. And at worst, if Kennedy can be taken at his word, those opinions can apparently make a person subject to anything from censure to death. We’re not there yet. For the time being there are voices who are countering the “Al Gore’s Way or the Highway” mentality. People like Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck who, love ‘em or hate ‘em, do make valid defensible points on the opposing side. The danger could exist however, if and when someone like Al Gore, somebody with his single-minded committedness to global warming, gets into a position of real power and opens up a new round of neo-McCarthyism.

I know that last remark sounds like I’m just being sensationalistic for effect, but I am dead serious. I wouldn’t have believed it myself except for the fact that I was also listening to the audio book version of Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. The book is a memoir of sorts using Bryson’s childhood as a jumping off point for talking about America in the 1950’s. Bryson spends several minutes (pages?) in one chapter talking about America’s fear of Communism and how that fear was personified and ultimately manipulated by Senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy instigated a nationwide witch-hunt for anyone and everyone who might be perceived as collaborating with communists in any way. As Bryson explains, well respected scientists, businessmen, humanitarians and, of course, Hollywood artists were accused of being communists and couldn’t find work simply because they had once had a conversation with somebody who had once written a paper expressing what was narrowly interpreted as sympathy toward the communist party. Lives, careers and reputations were ruined for anyone who was even remotely suspected of advocating philosophies that strayed from the accepted American capitalist ideal.

As I listened to this recording I felt an eerie sense of foreboding over the similarities between then and now. As I said, we are not to that point yet, but the fact that somebody like Robert Kennedy can so openly and so easily accuse others of treason – not a light choice of words by any stretch of the imagination – simply for disagreeing with the most popular views on global warming… The signs are all there. McCarthy played on the country’s fears and people went right along with him, even as he made claim after increasingly ridiculous claim. The fears surrounding global warming are also building and are already being played upon. For the time being it seems to be mostly corporations who are reaping the benefits of those fears, with the sales of hybrid cars, fluorescent light bulbs and whatnot. But as the government changes hands over the next few years, who knows who might come into power and what ridiculous things might they get the country to agree to in the name of global warming? Al Gore claims we have ten years to change “or else.” If the threat is truly that dire, what will believers do to ensure that change? Surely shutting up dissenters à la Joseph McCarthy will be the first step. And then what? America’s fear of communism almost put us into all out nuclear war. What could our fear of global warming push us into?

As I’ve said all along (and I feel compelled to keep restating), I am not denying the claims of the global warming camp outright. But neither will I simply be pushed along by the rising current without asking what I feel are pertinent questions. Blindly agreeing with popular opinion doesn’t help any of us. In fact it could end up causing us to focus our efforts in exactly the wrong areas as projects and programs get green-lighted unchallenged, only to realize the mistake several years too late. At best we could end up wasting money. At worst we could end up taking measures that would alter whole eco-systems, something that, as humans, we’ve never had much success with. Better that we all take the time and ask these questions now. So show your dissent. Challenge others. Don’t let offhand, “Look what global warming is causing” comments go unchallenged. That’s how it starts, but eventually it could become, “Do you now or have you ever owned or operated an SUV?”

I, for my part, am showing my own personal dissent through typically passive-aggressive techniques. Blogs like this for one. And deliberately sarcastic mockery and oh-my-god-is-he-really-serious apathy for another. To that end, I need help designing a few bumper stickers. The prototype slogans are:

BURN MORE COAL! ...because penguins are EVIL!

GLOBAL WARMING: …because it’s too damn cold out there anyway.

STOP GLOBAL WARMING: Shut your big fat mouth.

And my personal favorite:

GLACIERS ARE MELTING! …so?

Anybody with graphic design abilities, feel free to collaborate.

(Feel free to comment, tell me how I'm wrong, how I'm right, and how I'm an idiot HERE)