Andrew Wetzler's Blog
Hey George Will, the 1970's wants your brain back
May 22, 2008
Posted by Andrew Wetzler in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , The Media and the Environment
I'm a big fan of George Will. He's easily one of the most entertaining and articulate pundits on ABC's This Week and he's a damn fine writer. Besides, my Dad loved the guy. Which is why it was so disappointing to read Will's column on the polar bear listing in today's Washington Post.
It's not just that Will recycles the same old tired arguments against listing the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, it's that he obviously has made no serious effort to engage the scientific evidence supporting polar bear protection. Instead, recalling that in the 1970's scientists were predicting another ice age, he falls back on some very poor logic: predictions about the climate were wrong thirty years ago so they must be wrong today. This despite what I would think is a pretty obvious point--our ability to use computers to perform complex modeling has increased quite a bit since the 1970s.
Then Will pivots, citing conservationists supposed "hostility to markets" and concludes:
Today's "green left" is the old "red left" revised. Marx, a short-term pessimist but a long-term optimist, prophesied deepening class conflict but thought that history's violent dialectic would culminate in a revolution that would usher in material abundance and such spontaneous cooperation that the state would wither away.
The green left preaches pessimism: Ineluctable scarcities (of energy, food, animal habitat, humans' living space) will require a perpetual regime of comprehensive rationing. The green left understands that the direct route to government control of almost everything is to stigmatize, as a planetary menace, something involved in almost everything -- carbon.
This is an old and ugly smear that, much like Will's logic about global warming, seems frozen in time. If it ever was, today's environmental movement is certainly not hostile to all markets. Indeed, when it comes to global warming most conservation groups support a market-based trading system for carbon. NRDC recently founded a Center for Market Innovation because we recognize the important role that markets have in solving our environmental problems. The truth is that the environmental movement is much more pragmatic than Will gives it credit for. Conservationists don't want control, we just want to solve problems. It's too bad that Will hasn't bothered to update his thinking recently.
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Comments
philippe — May 22 2008 07:27 PM
There is much more aggressivity in George Will's text than my reading of your post made me think although I had a hunch it could be much worse. It is. Environmentalists = people who want to prevent americans to drive SUVs or even have private cars to go as they please. George is an archconservative and being (sometimes?) witty on TV is not an "excuse". The Blairs also found GW to be very funny and "nice". His polar bear column is typical of the most stupid archconservative rethoric :(
Of course Americans don't need environmentalists (or polar bears) to abandon SUVs: the price of oil will be enough.
Earl Killian — May 23 2008 12:43 AM
You appear to have partially accepted the premise of George Will's argument when you write "Instead, recalling that in the 1970's scientists were predicting another ice age..." and then argue against the conclusions, but even this premise is false. Please see http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php item #7 where it explains that it was not scientists who were warning about cooling, but the popular press. In the 1970s there were only 7 scientific papers that talked about cooling vs. 42 that predicted warming, and the cooling was to happen if certain other things came true (that didn't).
George Will is simply repeating the seventh most frequent denier argument. It is sad that it needs to be debunked so often.
Andrew Wetzler — May 23 2008 07:20 AM
Earl, you're correct, of course. My point wasn't to endorse the "new ice age" argument--and I should have been more clear in the post about that--but rather to point out a logical fallacy in Will's thinking regardless of the accuracy the argument's underlying premise.
Earl Killian — May 23 2008 12:01 PM
Thank you for the clarification Andrew. I appreciated the other points you made. I will go a little farther than you and suggest that it is actually George Will who is hostile to markets. Every economics textbook in chapter 1 talks about "externalities" and then proceeds to ignore them for the rest of the text. One of the major points of those who want to address global warming is to put a market price on those externalities to address this classic failure of the market, and thereby harness the market's ability to help with the solution. Will's hostility indicates that laissez-faire is more important to him than having an efficient, accurate market system.
Bill Kerschner — May 23 2008 05:18 PM
I just heard an interview on the Christian Radio Talk Show Point Of View stating that recently two environmentalists flew with a pro-drill Senator over ANWAR and that one of the environmentalists, looking out over the immense vast emptiness of the landscape, turned to the other environmentalist, after shaking his head, and said" maybe we might want to rethink our total opposition to drilling here. Is this true? The interviewer said that the "footprint" on ANWAR would be almost imperceptible when flanked against this vast emptiness and that new extraction techniques make it even smaller now.
Ian Wilker — May 23 2008 09:10 PM
Bill,
Not that the Arctic Refuge has much to do with granting polar bears endangered-species protections, but the story you relate sure doesn't sound too plausible to me.
Watch this video and see if 'vast emptiness' holds water for you. That characterization of the refuge -- along with assertions about 'small footprints' and 'new extraction techniques' and the whole proposition that opening the Arctic will do anything at all for U.S. energy security -- is trotted out several times a year by the tireless pro-drilling lobby, and when push comes to shove the whole load is discredited, again and again. There are good reasons why attempts to open the refuge to oil exploration have been foiled, time after time. Opening the refuge would be about a profit windfall for Big Oil, and would do nothing for consumers at the gas pump, either short- or long-term.
jcasey — May 23 2008 11:56 PM
And you're a fan of Will? Really. He's been on this and similar trash for a while--cf, for instance, his invocation of the divine insight of Michael Crichton, science fiction writer, in support of his claim that global warming is a myth perpetrated by the left. But this really is only the beginning of his sins against rational discourse. Sure, he may sound pretty, and wear a bow tie, but beneath that, there isn't much.
Thanks, by the way, for the comment at my place. Sorry you were spam patrolled--I don't know what causes that.
Robert Adler — May 30 2008 02:58 AM
Some of the remarkable logic in George Will's piece on Polar Bears:
Listing Polar Bears as endangered is equivalent to the war in Iraq. Give me a break.
The government shouldn't act to try to shape the future. Then I suppose it also stop building roads, supporting education, or maintaining the armed forces.
The "green left" is like the old "red left." Decoding: if you want to breathe clean air, drink safe water, or have your kids grow up in a world that can still support Polar Bears--and people--you're a commie.
I would think Will would be tired of waving that tattered red flag, but apparently he still thinks it works.