…it will be economic pressures, not scientific findings, that largely determine what the world’s nations do, or don’t do, to limit the flow of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from fuel burning.
jfleck at inkstain
A few thoughts from John Fleck, a writer of journalism and other things, living in New Mexico
As Murray Gell-Mann discovered, Revkin has a blind spot on this subject, although oddly it’s a blind spot to which other journos seem to aspire. A consequence of too much Pielkeization?
But on the other hand it’s just a truism: When the bill for the damages gets high enough, people will start responding.
On the third hand, though, does that mean that we shouldn’t respond until then, or just that we won’t? But can’t we then say something about the role of journalism in what amounts to cheerleading the (perceived) inevitable? Did those Easter Island chiefs have priests whispering in their ears that no, we shouldn’t do anything about the problem because it’s just not in our nature to do it so continuing with the status quo is just fine and we can even feel good about it?
It seems at once both highly naive and cynical, which I guess makes it balanced, right?
Exactly why the response will fail, the cause and the effect are separated by too much time for economics to have any useful application. See Stephen Gardiner’s “The Perfect Moral Storm”, a point that journalists appear to be blind to