Tonight, on the Lehrer News Hour, Bjorn Lomberg was interviewed about climate change. Mr. Lomberg accepts climate change, but doesn’t buy the argument that we have to reverse it. He thinks we should also be trying to adapt to it. Of course, from a purely evolutionary viewpoint he is right. However, one argument he made was that it doesn’t serve the climate change issue well for those who argue its case to shout. It shows a lack of faith in a democracy, he argued, to believe that you have to shout in order to make yourself heard (or believed).
I disagree. You see, it wasn’t the climate change science that had power. Climate research doesn’t make $9 billion profits for single energy companies in one year. The President is not a former climate scientist. In fact, neither is his Vice President, or any member of his cabinet. The highest ranked climate scientist in the government is Dr. James Hansen, who was famously censored for his views on policy toward the climate change problem. If you want to be heard in the vast halls of power, you have to shout loud and, if possible, all at once, and pray to God that somebody at the other end hears the echo.
Maybe, if so may people opposing the idea of climate change weren’t in power or in control of the tone of the debate, the people with the facts on their side wouldn’t have to shout.
