The Post-Normal Times

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you are probably already aware of the Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change. Since (here in the US) we have an election, tomorrow, I have only read the executive summary and seen some quibbling elsewhere in the blogosphere about how the calculations were done and the assumptions made. But what is perhaps most
valuable about the report is that it lays out the full range of projected potential changes in average temperature at various possible levels of stabilization of carbon in the atmosphere, and the range of potential consequences – (all nicely summarized in the executive summary in Figure 2). So for example, even at the low end, we can see that even a small change in temperature can have severe consequences – particularly in dry and marginal areas that depend on melting glaciers for their water supply. But one
does not have to go beyond the United States to find scenarios in which small changes have tremendous consequences. Given that changes in climate are expected to go beyond the range of variation to which humans are adapted, and that we have increased our vulnerability to such changes, e.g., through development of dry regions and coastal areas, there is and will always be plenty of uncertainty about its magnitude and consequences, even with a well-founded consensus that human induced changes are significant.

So none of the intellectually honest quibbling negates the main message of the report, “that international collective action will be critical in driving an effective, efficient and equitable response on the scale required.” It goes on to point out that much deeper international co-operation will be required to create “price signals and markets for carbon, spurring technology research, development and deployment, and promoting adaptation.” In other words, it begins to lay out what choices are still available,
and makes a good case that the longer we wait, the fewer choices we will have to make.

To be able to make any of the choices presented in the Stern review, we first need to choose between reality and truthy sciencey fiction – tomorrow at the polls, where we will have the opportunity to restore some measure of accountability to our government. One of the ways we can begin to build the capacity to take the kinds of collective action required to address climate change is by getting our neighbors out to vote, and vote out the thugs who have poisoned public discourse. Robert Justin Lipkin,
on a new blog, Essentially Contested America compares Bush-Rove Campaign “Politics” to Brooklyn Street Fighting:

Gang members hurt one another, and they hurt innocent bystanders, but the ultimate damage was poisoning the ambience of the neighborhood. Gangs placed otherwise enjoying activities such as playing basketball in the schoolyard, sitting on the benches of Ocean Pkway, or just hanging out–now called “chillin”–in the candy store, in an unpredictable shadow where one was never quite sure whether attacks were imminent.

Just as Brooklyn street fighting threatened to poison the joy of growing up in the Brooklyn, Bush-Rove electoral campaigning debases electoral politics. It becomes an activity made for and driven by sociopaths. How President Bush can claim to be a practicing Christian while sanctioning the most transparently dishonest attacks on his opponents–whether Democrats or fellow republicans such as John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary–is inexplicable.His incapacity or unwillingness to assume the
moral high ground reveals a raging cynicism that makes the worst postmodern conception of nihilism tremble in its presence. Bush and Rove are paradigmatic nihilists. Nothing is beyond the pale. In their value-empty world where nothing matters, certainly not moral principles, conscience cannot constrain. There’s no place for conscience. If a tactic works to hurt your enemy, it is eo ipso acceptable. The one salient value in Bush-Rove
nihilism is to retain power at all costs….

…Just as Brooklyn street fighting impoverished the neighborhood, the Bush-Rove ADL impoverishes political campaigning and threatens to deal a death blow to an already moribund deliberative democracy.

The remedy? We are beyond appealing to the better angels of their nature. Nothing like “Have you no shame?” has a chance of working. Perhaps Democrats and victimized Republicans need to become even bigger, badder bullies. When gangs like the Bush-Rove ADL get going, the only effective response seems to be retaliation in kind. Ay, there’s the rub. When George Bush and Karl Rove see nothing wrong in embracing dishonesty and vilification, it impoverishes us all. We desperately feel the need to fight back. But how?
Perhaps we need to import Brooklyn street fighters to wage war against the Bush-Rove Anti-Decency League. On second thought, that would be egregiously unfair to Brooklyn street fighters.

And in today’s post he provides a reminder that: “Seldom in a republican democracy, does the citizenry have a chance to correct the course its own government has duplicitously directed the nation. Tuesday, November 7, 2006, represents such a day. Ours is a moment when we can begin to redirect the course of history for our benefit and for the world’s.”

As for the intellectually dishonest quibbles, Michael Kinsley calls the tolerance for it the biggest flaw in American democracy but other remarks in the same article make me wonder about Kinsley himself, i.e., where he refers to “the growing power of unelected television comedians to set the political agenda,” failing to recognize that these comedians he refers to became popular precisely
because they expose this dishonesty. That remark probably has something to do with sour grapes – Kinsley used to work on Crossfire, which went off the air after Jon Stewart refused to be a comedian on what is suppose to be a news program. But Frank Rich gets it:

When the premises for war were being sold four years ago, you could turn to the fake news of Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” to find the skepticism that might poke holes in the propaganda. Four years later, the press is much chastened by its failure to do its job back then,
but not all of the press. While both Mr. Stewart and Mr. Colbert made sport of the media’s overkill on the Kerry story, their counterparts in “real” television news, especially but not exclusively on cable, flogged it incessantly….

…In retrospect, the defining moment of the 2006 campaign may well have been back in April, when Mr. Colbert appeared at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Call it a cultural primary. His performance was judged a bomb by the

Washington

press corps, which yukked it up instead for a Bush impersonator who joined the president in a benign sketch commissioned by the White House. But millions of Americans watching C-Span and the Web did get Mr. Colbert’s routine. They recognized that the Beltway establishment sitting stone-faced in his audience was the butt of his jokes, especially the very news media that had parroted Bush administration fictions leading
America
into the quagmire of

Iraq

.

I mostly quit watching CNN a long time ago, when it switched from providing News to providing “Newstainment.” But it has gotten worse. Flipping channels on Saturday evening, looking for campaign news, both of the CNN channels had comedians on, trying to make the news not only entertaining but also funny. It wasn’t. It was worse than when Bush tried to be funny by looking for WMDs. I’ll watch TV news again when it is reported with some gravitas. For comedy, I watch real comedians.