29th Street Ballroom
Bryce's Contradictory Questionable Tough-Guy Views
RECEIVED Fri., Dec. 14, 2007
Dear Editor,
Robert Bryce, in the first sentence of his “If More CO2 Is Bad … Then What” article [News, Dec. 7], declares that he is an "agnostic" on the "science of global climate change." But a few words later, he states that he no longer cares about the science because he has grown weary of the acrimony of the debate.
OK, fair enough, but then he goes on to say that, for moral, technological, and political reasons, it is both right and inevitable that people in the poorer countries have access to cheap and abundant energy, like us. This nicely blends the concepts of "morality" and "inevitability" (if the politics play out as he imagines) and, in the process, ignores a pressing and genuine moral question: whether the poor will suffer the most from global warming.
In any case, global warming will indeed occur, he says, triumphantly, in his concluding sentence, having argued at some length in the interval between his first sentence and his last that global CO2 emissions are going to increase and that nothing can or should be done about it. It's going to get warmer; deal with it, he says.
Oops, but wait. Having argued with great vigor both the rightness and inescapability of increased Third World energy use, and having just concluded from that that it's gonna get hotter, Mr. Bryce suddenly remembers that he is an "agnostic" about the science … so he tacks on a very meager fig leaf to his apology for doing nothing … "regardless of the cause of that warming," even though he has just shown, to his own satisfaction if not that of his readers, that such warming is a certainty because of increased fossil-fuel burning.
It seems to me Bryce's position is not really one of agnosticism but one of trying to privilege tough-guy views to the effect that "there's nothing you can do about global warming, so suck it up and live with it," with a veneer of open-mindedness and objectivity implied, at least in liberal circles, by the word agnosticism.
Robert Bryce, in the first sentence of his “If More CO2 Is Bad … Then What” article [News, Dec. 7], declares that he is an "agnostic" on the "science of global climate change." But a few words later, he states that he no longer cares about the science because he has grown weary of the acrimony of the debate.
OK, fair enough, but then he goes on to say that, for moral, technological, and political reasons, it is both right and inevitable that people in the poorer countries have access to cheap and abundant energy, like us. This nicely blends the concepts of "morality" and "inevitability" (if the politics play out as he imagines) and, in the process, ignores a pressing and genuine moral question: whether the poor will suffer the most from global warming.
In any case, global warming will indeed occur, he says, triumphantly, in his concluding sentence, having argued at some length in the interval between his first sentence and his last that global CO2 emissions are going to increase and that nothing can or should be done about it. It's going to get warmer; deal with it, he says.
Oops, but wait. Having argued with great vigor both the rightness and inescapability of increased Third World energy use, and having just concluded from that that it's gonna get hotter, Mr. Bryce suddenly remembers that he is an "agnostic" about the science … so he tacks on a very meager fig leaf to his apology for doing nothing … "regardless of the cause of that warming," even though he has just shown, to his own satisfaction if not that of his readers, that such warming is a certainty because of increased fossil-fuel burning.
It seems to me Bryce's position is not really one of agnosticism but one of trying to privilege tough-guy views to the effect that "there's nothing you can do about global warming, so suck it up and live with it," with a veneer of open-mindedness and objectivity implied, at least in liberal circles, by the word agnosticism.
Jim McCulloch
[Robert Bryce responds: Once again, a letter that attacks my motives and integrity rather than the conundrum of widespread energy poverty in the developing world and what to do about it. Jim McCulloch may not like my conclusions, but he offers not a single word refuting my thesis: that the crushing poverty in the developing world can only be alleviated by providing the residents of the developing world with more energy. And as those people use more energy – most likely fossil fuels – we will see more carbon-dioxide emissions, not less.]