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Watermelon is a word that tells you what is wrong with the climate change debate.
For some libertarians, it is the insult that expresses what greenies and climate scientists are really up to. Behind all the acronyms and the jargon, they say, is a conspiracy to promote a nakedly political aim – anti-big business; anti-free market; pro-tax increases. In short, green on the outside but red on the inside.
The full conspiracy theory requires an impressive degree of paranoia, but one of the reasons the jibe is so persistent is that, if we're honest, there is a grain of truth to it – at least among some in the green movement and on the left.
Many of the policy responses to the climate change problem – consume less, regulate businesses, curb big oil and coal, restrict car use – feel more comfortable to those on the left than the right of the political spectrum. And as a result, right-leaning politicians and thinkers are in danger of losing grip on the most important issue of our age. That has already happened in large measure in America. It would be disastrous if it happened in the UK too.
This is the backdrop to the parliamentary science and technology select committee's inquiry into the communication of climate science, to which I gave evidence on Monday. The Met Office is being questioned on Wednesday. The MPs on the committee are trying to get to the bottom of why the public is still confused about climate science when the core science has been pretty clear for years. The thrust of many of their questions was "what could the media be doing better to communicate the science?"
Here's my answer in a nutshell:
• Don't confer scientific expertise on people who do not deserve it.
• Avoid false balance. In a field where 97% of peer-reviewed publications support the mainstream position we don't serve the readers well by giving undue prominence to those on the fringes (think scientists who argue HIV does not cause Aids or that smoking has no link to cancer).
• And perhaps most importantly, make clear where scientific uncertainty lies and where it does not. While the precise impacts and timescale of climate change may be uncertain, the basic tenets are well-established science. The projections from climate scientists indicate that there is a significant risk of profound changes to climate if we continue to release greenhouse gases at the current rate.
But if it was just a question of putting across complex science to a lay readership whose attention must be grabbed from the numerous other shiny news stories on offer that would be, if not easy, at least no harder than your average science story. Science journalists' stock in trade is making unfamiliar ideas intelligible, compelling, relevant and entertaining. And let's face it, climate science may be complex, but the Higgs boson is harder to grasp than global warming.
The elephant in the room at the parliamentary inquiry though has been that, consciously or not, there are people on all sides of the climate debate who argue backwards from a cultural or political position. As a result, arguments about the science of climate change become a proxy for what is really a political argument. If you like the prescription, then you embrace the diagnosis. If you don't, you undermine the diagnosis or attack the doctor.
Here's an example of former chancellor Nigel Lawson doing just that:
"There is now a new religion – the AGW [anthropogenic global warming] religion, of which scientists are the new priesthood, preaching their dogma with precisely the same claim to authority as the medieval catholic church."
It is perhaps understandable that some on the right have reacted strongly to what they perceive as a left-wing agenda masquerading as science. But it is also a catastrophic mistake.
Mark Henderson, in his book The Geek Manifesto, argues:
"The result has been to create a powerful constituency that delightedly seizes on any indication, however poorly founded, that the science of climate change might be less robust. If the problem can be discredited, then so can the solutions."
The irony is that the radical green camp and the libertarian camp are not so far apart.
Environmentalist Mark Lynas (quoted in the Geek Manifesto), argues:
"The rightwing climate contrarians and the greens actually agree that climate change means we have to dismantle industrial civilisation. The greens want this, the right wing doesn't. It leads them both to manipulate the science."
The truth is that we don't need to return to the Stone Age, but all this has made it much harder to have a sensible discussion about policies to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. We need a vigorous – and yes political - argument about nuclear power; carbon capture and storage; climate diplomacy; windfarms, air travel and much more. Not to mention how much it will all cost. But that has been twisted by those who prefer to park their tanks on the lawn of climate science.
The reality is that atmospheric physics does not care which party you vote for. So politicians of all stripes need to come up with a coherent response to the profound societal questions raised by climate change. Hiding behind bogus uncertainty about the science as an excuse for inaction is not an option.
So I repeat the plea I made to the select committee for centre right politicians, thinkers and cultural figures to reclaim the climate change issue and talk about it in language their supporters will understand and warm to. With admirable exceptions (here's one interesting recent initiative) there is a big void here to fill.
Only then can some of the political poison be drawn from the debate and the watermelon jibe finally be laid to rest. That would be good for both left and right.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
["Cute Little Girl Eating Watermelon On The Grass In Summertime" on Shutterstock]
Most PandoDaily readers, I assume, accept the idea that technology can make our lives better. We lionize companies like Google, Twitter, Intel, Apple, and Microsoft. We applaud CEOs as celebrities, and, as was the…
The cover of the recent Children's Defense Fund report (pdf) on gun violence in the United States carries a single statistic:
The number of children and teens killed by guns in one year would fill 134 classrooms of 20 students each.
That's just a more dramatic way of stating an already staggering figure – 2,694 in 2010. Most of the report's 73 following pages are devoted to restating it. Sometimes, this done to illustrate the chilling frequency of such deaths:
• One child or teen died every 3 hours and 15 minutes• Seven children and teens died every day, more than 20 every three days• Fifty-one children and teens died every week
Other times, the same set of statistics (all from the Centers for Disease Control) is used to drive home the magnitude of the tragedy, relating it to the kinds of violence we think we understand:
Nearly three times more children and teens were injured by guns in 2010 than the number of US soldiers wounded in action that year in the war in Afghanistan; 82 children under five died from guns in 2010, compared to 55 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty.
And then, there's the shameful comparison to other countries:
US children and teens are 17 times more likely to die from a gun than their peers in 25 other high-income countries combined.
Put it slightly differently:
US children and teens made up 43% of all children and teens in these 26 countries but were 93% of all children and teens killed by guns.
The report is an exercise in word problem reformatting, a hideous nightmare of a standardized test in which every answer is both "all of the above" and wrong. We have failed. The numbers in the examples change, but the fact they illustrate is big and ugly and refuses cosmetic adjustment: the United States, despite a meekly gratifying downward trend, continues to kill its young people with guns at rate more in line with war-torn nations than the prosperous, peaceful countries we presume to lead. In a different, but equally upsetting report, the World Health Organization observed (pdf):
With the notable exception of the United States, most countries with youth homicide rates above 10 per 100,000 are either developing countries or countries caught up in the turmoil of social and economic change.
The repetitiveness of the statistics reflects desperation, I think. One can picture the authors' frantic oneupmanship in coming up with ways to make the truth as vivid as possible: compare it to war! Compare it to Sandy Hook! And, of course, show us the victims – not via pictures of the violence itself, thank God, but in descriptions of who they were: post-Sandy Hook stories salt the wound:
Steven Curtis, 12, dead after accidentally shooting himself in the head with his father's gun. Caroline Sparks, 2, shot in the chest and killed by her five-year-old brother. Tayloni Mazyck, 11, caught in gang crossfire and paralyzed for life. The list goes unrelentingly on. (As of July, the New York Daily News found 120 children had been killed by gunfire since Sandy Hook; they relied only on news reports, not CDC surveys. The end number will be undoubtedly, horrifyingly larger.)
The report wallops us over the head with statistics because its authors can't reach through the pages and throttle us. The frustration is as understandable as it is evident, for as gruesome as the statistics about violence are, the recounting of what legislation has and has not passed is even more dispiriting. Over and over, the public's willingness (even eagerness) to tighten gun laws has been outmatched by the cowardice of politicians in mysterious thrall to the National Rifle Association.
The whimpering death of the Toomey-Manchin bill has been examined at length; the CDF notes further that, beyond the Senate voting against regulations, a majority of Americans were for (assault weapons ban, background checks):
Several proposals to weaken existing gun violence prevention measures received more 'Yes' votes than the background checks provision. They included a concealed-carry reciprocity proposal and a provision to prevent veterans who are mentally incapacitated from losing their right to own a gun without a court hearing.
The news gets worse as we get closer to home, where state legislatures reacted to Sandy Hook primarily by widening access to firearms and weakening regulation. You read that right: more states passed pro-gun legislation in the wake of Sandy Hook than there were states that passed stricter gun control. Maryland, Connecticut and New York and New Jersey all tightened gun laws; Utah, Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Carolina, Indiana, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Dakota, and Kansas all somehow relaxed their gun laws – by extending the number of places one can carry a concealed weapon, by allowing guns in schools, by instituting "stand your ground" laws, or adding the right to own a firearm to the state constitution.
Colorado reigned in some gun rights after the Aurora massacre in July 2012; today, it is at the center of an NRA-sponsored recall, to be decided this week. Another state legislature, Missouri, both liberalized conceal carry and took unprecedented step of nullifying all federal gun laws – outlawing the federal government from enforcing its gun restrictions within the state. The bill was passed and then vetoed. This week, the legislature will meet in a special session to override the veto.
The Missouri proposal goes beyond the kind of passive quasi-civil disobedience of, say, medical marijuana laws, or even those rebellious legislatures that have sought to nullify Obamacare. The Missouri law would punish federal enforcement of legally enacted statutes by setting criminal penalties for federal agents, and prohibiting state officials from co-operating with federal efforts.
This is insanity.
Conservatives and liberals alike can use the tragedy of children's deaths as evidence of the need for their favored policies. After all, gun rights advocates want more guns in schools, they argue, for the greater safety of the children. They might even deny the relevance of concealed-carry laws and stand-your-ground provisions to the issue at hand. What does banning raids from the federal government's "jackbooted thugs" (in NRA president Wayne LaPierre's famous formulation) have to do with those classrooms full of dead kids?
There is only a shuddering half-step between between the general availability of firearms, their lax regulation, and the death of children. States with background checks have 16% lower gun fatality rates. Child access prevention laws reduce accidental shootings by as much as 23%. Australia passed a strict assault weapons ban and mandatory buy-back program (the US law once on the books had no such program) in 1996 – and hasn't had a single mass shooting since.
I'm not even sure the CDF believed this report would change that many minds: to anyone disinclined to believe that strict gun laws work, the report is just a recitation of bad things happening because of bad guys (even if a lot of those "bad guys" are other children). Perhaps the point of the report was more modest: just to let people know what is happening, what violence is going on beneath surface, as politicians and lobbyists posture. Though, who knows: Missouri has the fourth most gun deaths in the nation, the sixth most deaths by firearm for children under 18 and is a favorite transit point for gun-traffickers (in a July raid that may be deemed illegal next week, federal agents seized 267 illegal weapons) and look what's happening there.
We're beyond the point of "what will it take" when it comes to sane gun laws. The tragedies that should spur protests and marches and petitions happen quietly every day.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
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However Congress votes on Syrian intervention, the White House will have problems escaping the fallout
After 12 years of endless war; after Afghanistan, after Iraq, after Libya, after the drones in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the American people have had enough. There is perhaps no better explanation for the rather remarkable situation unfolding right now in Washington. President Obama has gone to the US Congress to ask for a military authorisation for the use of force against Syria after its international-norm-breaking use of chemical weapons against its own people.
Such requests are something of a pro forma exercise for US presidents. When the commander-in-chief wants to go to war, Congress is usually happy to comply (if it is even asked for permission, which is rare). This time, Congress is refusing to bite. Whip counts in the US House of Representatives indicate overwhelming opposition and not just among the president's political opponents in the Republican party but also among Democrats. Public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans are strongly against US involvement in Syria.
What is perhaps most surprising about this is that the Obama administration is seeking authorisation for a rather limited use of force. It is loudly proclaiming that there will be no US boots on the ground, no effort at regime change, no direct engagement in the Syrian civil war – just a few cruise missiles to uphold a global norm and teach Bashar al-Assad a lesson. Yet, while Obama will speak to the American people and make his case for military intervention on Tuesday, few political observers believe he will win the day (though one cannot fully discount the possibility).
It is an extraordinary turn of events and one that goes so strongly against the currents of recent history that it may come to represent a sea change, not just in how the US employs military force in the future but in the very construct of American foreign policy. No longer, it appears are Americans and Congress willing to give the commander-in-chief a virtual blank cheque.
So why is this happening?
Part of the reason is undoubtedly politics. Republicans, who in recent years have rarely met a military engagement they didn't enthusiastically support, would sooner cut off their right arms then give Obama anything that he actually wants. Yet their opposition to involvement in Syria also reflects a growing division within Republicans, between the party's neoconservative national security elite and its long-dormant isolationist wing. Indeed, the congressional vote on Syria may preview a titanic struggle over the foreign policy direction of the Republican party.
As for Democrats, particularly liberals who opposed the Iraq war and were ambivalent about the Afghanistan surge, even party loyalty may not be enough to get them to go along with the White House's plans. Unlike Obama, members of Congress will be on the ballot in 2014 and few of them are going to want to stick their neck out for a military strike that has little public support.
Beyond the political gamesmanship, opposition is due in large measure to the fuzziness of the White House's strategic plan. While norm enforcement and deterring future chemical attacks can be a justifiable rationale, the idea that the US would engage Syria over one category of weapons while doing nothing to stop the civil war that has taken 100,000 lives seems to many to be illogical. Moreover, the lack of clear strategic objectives, or a vital US national interest or even a fallback plan if Assad is not deterred from continuing to gas his people, is raising real doubts about the efficacy of intervention. And truth be told: the White House has done a dreadful job of making the case for war.
In August 2012, Obama laid down his infamous red line about the use of chemical weapons on Syria. Everyone assumed this meant that the US would engage militarily. But in the year since, he has made virtually no effort to prepare the public for that possibility. There was, from all appearances, little private consultation with Congress lining up support for a possible response and the administration position on Syria has long oozed with indifference about US involvement.
But when videos appeared showing hundreds of Syrians lying dead from an apparent chemical attack, the administration grabbed the biggest hammer in the toolbox and immediately started talking about launching cruise missiles and dropping bombs on Damascus. They completely misread the public's appetite for yet another war and were further blindsided by David Cameron's stunning failure to properly manage a parliamentary vote authorising British involvement in a military strike.
Obama's decision to go to Congress for authorisation reflected belated recognition of the emerging political reality and, at the time, looked like an inspired political move. But confidence that Congress would obediently go along with the president's plan (if one wants to be generous and call it that) was misplaced. Faced with growing congressional opposition, the administration is now taking the low road of fearmongering that a failure to punish Assad will embolden Iran, put Israel in danger or perhaps allow chemical weapons to fall into the hands of terrorists.
The White House finds itself in a political no-man's-land. Winning a vote in Congress will mean squandering political capital and twisting Democratic arms – all in pursuit of a military strategy that will, by the White House's own admission, do little to stop the bloodletting in Syria. Lose the vote and risk becoming a weakened lame duck three years before Obama's second term is up. Of course, Obama could ignore Congress, but then he risks entering into impeachment territory.
Yet, for all the short-term political fallout, the apparent train wreck on Syria might be the best thing to happen in American politics in a long time.
Since 11 September 2001, armchair generals (inside and outside government) have planned one military engagement after another and confidently predicted success – and then dodged accountability after repeated failures. The result has been quagmire after quagmire, trillions of dollars in costs and tens of thousands of dead and maimed Americans.
Those chickens have come home to roost. No matter how defensible the plan for military action in Syria might be; no matter how strong the impulse to punish the use of long-banned weapons; no matter how many assertions of limited engagement are made, Americans and their representatives in Congress appear finally resistant to buying the war-makers' tonic (some might say 10 years too late).
The desire of America's foreign policy elite to continue to demand that the US remain the indispensable nation and the world's policeman has come face to face with a public tired of war and tired of foreign policy failure. And the American people look poised to win this round.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
[Cartoon instructor and bomb via Shutterstock.com]
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