I did read the Preface to Hulme’s book and I liked it. I found his writing to be comfortable. But I am not interested in why we disagree about climate change, I am interested in what should be done about climate change. What should we do, and when should we do it?

in my working life I was constantly involved in the efforts of large enterprises to deal with the future. Whenever I appeared on the scene the usual camps had already formed and the debate was underway about what changes, if any, should be made. My task was to listen to the opposing sides and then develop and present a plan for making changes. It was rare for me to walk away, but it did happen. Most of the time my proposal was accepted, with some changes induced by top management, then I had to develop and install the system. When I finished, the enterprise had been transformed–and for the better. So, I am not interested in hearing the debate, I am interested in understanding the range of possible effects, the available options, the range of available resources, and the minimum time before disaster strikes.

In 1956, I was in high school and a man named Hubbert published his “peak oil theory.” It made sense to me. The oil industry did everything it could do to squash his theory. I, a child, thought that even if Hubbert was wrong about the date that we would reach peak oil, it was inevitable. It was certain that there was a finite amount of oil in our planet, and the smartest thing for us to do was to find a way to stretch out the time we would have oil while we worked to replace it as a source of power. To me this was obvious to the most casual observer–which, of course, I was. And I was right. We could have reduced greatly our dependence on oil if we had wanted to, and we would not be facing this crisis today.

Whenever I tell this story, people usually say that it is easy to second-guess things. But I am not second-guessing, I am learning a lesson from history. What I saw, over decades, was that very powerful men all around the planet deliberately did things that were harmful to our natural life support systems, and those same men are in control today. If we let them repeat what they have done for the last 61 years it will be 2078 and our civilization could be, probably will be, a colossal wreck–and someone, but not me, will be Ozymandias.

So, I don’t want to be involved in, or encourage, aimless intellectual discussions. I want to find people who are doers. Who will get busy doing what needs to be done. I want to help them in any way I can. If you know who and where they are let me know. I find that people who know enough to get us started on the right road are afraid to speak. Just like the days of “peak oil.”

It is a critical mistake, a fatal mistake, to avoid action because we are not certain. When the gunman you encounter at the shopping mall turns to face you and begins to lift his pistol you should take his life immediately. If you wait to be certain that he is going to shoot you, it will be too late–you will not be able to realize that fact because you will be pitching backward with a bullet in your brain.

My current intuition about a lot of these things is that we all would be better off if we tried in these difficult conversations to take things back to deep fundamentals and to be curious and exploratory about each other. The problem in so much public discourse is that we are having disagreements about very fully realized issue-oriented and policy-directed matters, way downstream of our deep intuitions and ethical understandings, and that creates a lot of noise and confusion when we mistake those more specific views for deeper ethical and personal commitments. If it turns out that my neighbor honestly believes that there is little to nothing to be done about most things in the world, and lives his/her life that way, with some consistency, then I might be able to peaceably dissent from that view–e.g., we could talk about why we’re different, where that comes from, and what we derive out of that, and learn something. Now if it turns out my neighbor says they believe there’s nothing to be done about most things in the world but they want to bomb Syria and build a wall on the border and a bunch of other things, I might ask them how they reconcile that deep belief with all that other stuff. Maybe they’re wrong about what they believe. So maybe we can discover what they really think about human agency and possibility and then talk about what ought to follow from that. Or vice-versa: talk about how they shouldn’t be supporting a lot of that stuff. Maybe we’d find out that the real thing they support is sticking a bit cultural thumb in the eye of people who offend them–like me! And actually, if the will is there, we can talk about that too. If we’ve been good neighbors so far, then tell me: why are people like me bothersome? Maybe I’ll be the one to learn something.

I live alone and keep pretty much to myself. I am old and I live here because some younger family members can’t move and they need my help. I grew up near here in an almost identical environment, and at an early age I began to follow the path of math, science, and rationality. The folks here tolerate me because they know I have roots here and I don’t challenge what they believe. We are friendly with each other, but we stand a little apart.

My close neighbors either don’t have children or their children left home quite a while ago. But one neighbor has four children, two not yet in school, one in the third grade, and the fourth has just finished his freshman year in high school. The adults in the family are well-educated and successful. He is a manager with a very large national corporation, and she is a nurse with some very special specialty who works when she wants–but mostly she stays home with the kids. I am very careful not to say or do anything that any of my neighbors would find out of place in their world. I don’t go out of my way to support their thinking, but I never challenge it. My neighbors do realize that I do not agree with their thinking, because they know what I did for a living.

About three weeks ago, the father of the four children rang my doorbell. I invited him in, which I always do, and he came in, which he has never done–not a single time in fourteen years has he come in. Usually we step out into the front yard and stand under the trees while we talk. Often other neighbors will drift over to see what is going on and we all have a nice chat. It is all good. I wouldn’t change a thing.

But on this occasion my neighbor came in and sat down. He looked upset. He came straight to the point. He said he was worried about global warming and its effects on his children as they grow up and start their own families. I knew he was a Trump supporter, and I hesitated for a moment. But then we spent about an hour talking about it and I told him exactly what I thought.

So, what would you have done? What would you have told him? What would have advised him to tell his children? Would you have advised him to find out what his children were being taught in school?

Just last Friday, I attended by 60th class reunion in another small Texas town not very far away. I was the odd fellow there because I followed math and science, and rationality. As usual my classmates avoided any subjects that would breach the wall that separated us and possibly set off any battles. At one point I wandered over to a table where several of my friends were having an animated conversation. As I approached, I could tell that they were in the middle of a discussion about how they could say that Mexico was paying for Trump’s wall. They were developing an argument, a theory, that would enable to take that position. When I sat down, they changed the subject. I am sorry that I missed their theory. I’ll bet it was a lulu. Most of these people have three generations of living descendants. I am at a loss to understand how they ever came to reject math and science, and rationality, but they have rejected them.

My theory is that it is in them. In their very souls. It is natural. The combination of inheritance and culture reinforces in them a world view that is filled with magic and magical beings and I am one the demons that threaten that world.

They are nice to me and I love them all. But we exist in two very different worlds.

Not only do they not believe in global warming, but they are not willing to analyze the data. Their minds are made up, and they get to vote. Like my neighbor, who was very concerned about the future of his descendants, I am concerned about the future of our species. So, in the next 9,000 word discussion you host here, please cover what is going to happen to us. I would like to know, and I won’t be able to see it unfold. I am too old. So, take your best shot. What will happen?

I had my own preferences, Jerry, and primarily that was best expressed by Mike Hulme’s book Why We Disagree About Climate Change. Alan Jacobs might find it odd that I prefer Hulme’s book since it’s what he seems to see as Bret Stephens’ “argument” in his column. I think Hulme is the difference here: he’s honestly interested in why communicating climate change is hard, he believes that what people think locally or in particular contexts about “climate” is important and worth investigating, and that the only way to successfully communicate the urgency of dealing with climate change is with patience and sensitivity. The point is that he thinks it can be done, he’s not particularly out to condemn or dismiss climate scientists, and he isn’t just validating a general “public” distrust of science or climate change activism, but instead a far more specific set of local perspectives and attitudes.

But there is one question that I know I can never answer and that is: “In your class on climate change, did you ever develop a course of action that society should follow to deal with it–and if you did, what was it, and where can I go to read it?”

Thank you very much.

Bjorn Lomborg and Oren Cass.

Which authors/articles/books did you assign from amongst the critics?

“Perhaps if there had been less certitude and more second-guessing in Clinton’s campaign, she’d be president. Perhaps if there were less certitude about our climate future, more Americans would be interested in having a reasoned conversation about it.”

1) Why is there a connection at all between Hillary and climate change? It seems like he is doing this just to insinuate that liberals have some vague, innate propensity toward trusting data at the expense of “intuition”. Lol.

2) The last sentence itself is its own work of art. I mean, for one, the reason America has suffered from political inaction on climate isn’t for lack of “reasoned conversations”. It’s more because of people deploying this exact tactic from the climate denier playbook, which is to sow doubt on strong scientific consensus by false appeals to a skeptical epistemology.

It’s really malicious how his argument ignores the history of how climate change communication has evolved too. It’s not as if the scientists came out swinging with certainty a few decades ago — even since I started using my brain fairly recently, I remember there being a long, painful time of scientists being scientists (i.e., not rhetorical geniuses), and speaking in probabilities about climate where they could probably have gotten away with being _more_ certain. It’s a positive and recent development for the scientific community to have found its voice in asserting an urgent message. But Bret Stephens has a problem with that… why? Because it is stifling an imaginary discussion that didn’t exist ten years ago? Why would it exist now?

A lot of this is also just classic “blame the activists” discourse, which argues one way or another that the agitators are themselves causing the problem. I’m pretty familiar with this argument because I used to think it myself, before I thought too much. The difference is that I was literally not an adult at the time, while Bret Stephens has a huge, valuable platform, which he uses it to annoy people into rebutting strawmen in the name of civic discourse.

As for “By your standard, it is impossible to make a bad hire” — well no, of course not. That’s a pure non sequitur. I haven’t said anything at all about whether Stephens is a bad hire, but if you asked me I’d say that Stephens is indeed a bad hire — but exactly the sort of bad hire I’d expect the Times to make, and consistent with many bad hires they’ve made in the past, and therefore not such a big deal (merely eye-rollable, as I’ve said). But this leads back to those first two paragraphs of yours, and the validity of, having accepted many bad hires and various forms of waffling in an enterprise you help pay for, finally reaching the point where you say Fuck this shit. I have complete respect for that position and you make me wonder whether I’m wrong to have such low expectations.

“There may at times be a value to speaking an important truth in your own voice according to your own inclinations regardless of whether it is persuasive.” Absolutely. Agreed 100%. But again you need to remember the conditionals of my argument: I have said that if you wish to persuade, there are compromises you will have to make. But certainly there are often compelling reasons (and not wholly instrumental ones, though I doubt that in speech and style one can ever wholly escape instrumentality and the awareness of affect) to refuse those compromises.

Ok. So fundamentally we keep tracking back to this basic point: you in some sense are willing to settle for the genre limitations of op-eds and I am not. Which is why my own unsubscription to the NYTs was not “Oh, Bret Stephens touched me on my sensitive spot, I have to quit”, it was “Here’s another opportunity for the NYT to break the mold and what do they do, they choose a typically limited representative of a limited genre”. And I think the harms of that genre’s limitations are not merely in the itches it does not scratch, but also in the way that genre reinforces the worst aspects of partisan thinking.

This seems to me a coherent statement of preference consistent with my long-stated views. Hence my irritation with a statement that this is somehow surprising, atypical or unworthy of me.

—————-

Two additional thoughts.

1) As you say, everyone’s got a valid thesis somewhere in the midst of their great invalidity–you use the example of Hitler being right, for example, about the unfairness of Versailles. This is true and yet as valueless a truth as I can imagine. Any seven-paragraph column will have an argument somewhere for which pleading can be made, and maybe a statement somewhere that can be noted as truth. I made this point myself a few weeks back about conspiracy theories: that they have truths to them even when they’re also deranged. What is being argued about here is not, “are there no truths in that column?” It is: is this a product worth paying for? Is this a wise hiring decision? Does this writer do this limited genre well enough to deserve a berth at one of the most influential platforms for it? You and I are both already practiced at making the argument you identify as his argument. Do we need him? Is your own view of the need to speak prudentially with modesty about science so fragile that you need the one-sentence echo of Bret Stephens to buck you up? Is it absent from the public sphere as an argument? Or even from debates within climate activism? No, it’s not. It’s really not. So I am struggling to understand why your ability to say, “Well, he is making an argument which has some truth to it”, is sufficient to the actual issue at hand: is this guy a good hire, and does the NYT make good hires? By your standard, it is impossible to make a bad hire. Even Thomas Friedman has “an argument” somewhere in his work, though it make take truly heroic efforts to find it.

2) There may at times be a value to speaking an important truth in your own voice according to your own inclinations regardless of whether it is persuasive. There may also at times be a reason not to instrumentalize one’s rhetorical style purely according to sociological determinations. Meaning, it should not be ok to be certain, arrogant, decisive as long as you know your opponents are a small, marginal, politically unimportant constituency; and not ok if you know your opponents are a large constituency with real political power. Rhetorical realpolitik is important: we agree strongly on this. It is very much what I want liberals and radicals to understand. They don’t have to be nice to Trump voters, but they do have to recognize the social reality of Trump voters and rethink their modes of engagement accordingly. But an overly instrumental style is essentially Madison Avenue. Or Iago. It is always trying to tell someone what you think they want to hear in order to get them to do what you think you want them to do. It is in and of itself a bad rhetorical strategy, I believe. It may work for a day or a year, but the inauthenticity and deception it requires will in time lose the would-be persuader everything they sought to win.