Cut and Run
Al Gore is traveling around the world telling us how we must fundamentally change our civilization due to the threat of global warming. Today he is in Denmark to disseminate this message. But if we are to embark on the costliest political project ever, maybe we should make sure it rests on solid ground. It should be based on the best facts, not just the convenient ones. This was the background for the biggest Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, to set up an investigative interview with Mr. Gore. And for this, the paper thought it would be obvious to team up with Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” who has provided one of the clearest counterpoints to Mr. Gore’s tune.
The interview had been scheduled for months. Mr. Gore’s agent yesterday thought Gore-meets-Lomborg would be great. Yet an hour later, he came back to tell us that Bjorn Lomborg should be excluded from the interview because he’s been very critical of Mr. Gore’s message about global warming and has questioned Mr. Gore’s evenhandedness. According to the agent, Mr. Gore only wanted to have questions about his book and documentary, and only asked by a reporter. These conditions were immediately accepted by Jyllands-Posten. Yet an hour later we received an email from the agent saying that the interview was now cancelled. What happened? wall street journal via small dead animals
Bjorn has a nasty habit of pointing out that where Al says sea level rises of 20 feet even the IPPC says, well, about a foot.
Over at the ever entertaining Gen-X at 40 there is a conversation about Mr. Ludd and the unintended consequences of technology. Looking at the “buy local” fetish I was reminded of my beloved Thorstein Veblen who, I suspect, would be slapping his knees in delight at this most recent manifestation of the leisure class’s desperate search for ways to differentiate itself from the proles. Indeed, and I really should write this up, there is a dandy argument that everything from UV obsession through blue box recycling and Smart Cars all the way to hand wringing about climate change may simply be a manifestation of the social anxieties of the richest people world history has ever seen.
Written by jay on January 19th, 2007 with
no comments.
Read more articles on "Global Warming" and culture and tech.
- [+] Digg: Feature this article
- [+] Del.icio.us: Bookmark this article
- [+] Furl: Bookmark this article