Why the Ozone Hole Prompted Global Action—and Why Climate Change Hasn’t

Bleak and compelling:
An Open Letter to
Climate Sceptics
Among your loved ones choose
-when the sweet airs fail,
when the rivers dry -
the hand of whom to hold
until the last breath,
until the last cry.
John Bryson

Once upon a time when scientist talked, “people listened.” Now when they talk, people wonder if they are to be trusted. Farman may or may not be part of the problem of failed integrity and lost trust. Fundamentally those who advocated for cc will not be able to do a end-run and use legislation to force people to accept their views. Fundamentally those advocates of cc will have to persuade the general public to support their views. They will have to start by seeking to recover their integrity and re-establish public trust.

Richard, Earl is Teaparty kind of guy, one whom Mark Lilla would call a contemporary American Jacobin, a radical, populist libertarian, who distrusts all institutions, including the scientific community, valorises the individual as if, unlike the collective, the self were safe from sin, and adheres, more or less, to the following creed: “Stupid is good, so don’t confuse or disturb me with education and intelligence; stay away from my money and guns; stay away from me and my family period; hands off the economy, and tough shit that poor folk and countries are getting screwed and the ecology is going down the toilet.”

Feel me?

To whom it may concern: Prejudice and stereotype masquerading as imaginative critic is still prejudice and stereotype masquerading. If one has something constructive to say in this discussion, address yourself to the discussion. If you simply have a personal dislike for the opinions of thoughtful persons who do not affirm your perspective, then you need to consider why thoughtful persons do not share your point of view. Otherwise your comments can at best only be considered marginal notations to the main conversation.

Earl, there are plenty of “thoughful persons” who do not share my point of view, whom I would not malign. But the Teaparty lot are not “thoughtful persons” - they’re a dangerous bunch of dumbasses who think (the word itself is an overstatement) that intelligence is unAmerican. I mean their heroes are Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. I rest my case.

Oh, I forgot - they’re “tax payers”, so I guess that makes it alright.

It never ceases to be less than amazing how little groups of people get it into their heads that they can being about meaningful change in their lives and future. One reads about Magna Carta and has to wondes… what were those men thinking? Didn’t they “know better” than to challenge “divine right?” Reading about Boston, Concord and beyond, one cannot help but wonder, “What in the world were those men thinking?” The nerve of such people to think that they could dare to determine their own future rather than being told how they would live. One might as well have tried to tell that little man in Tienanmen Square to stand aside and let the little men in the tanks through unopposed. What was the name of that little man in the square who didn’t move? I don’t know. I don’t know how to spell “Everyman” in Chinese. Such thought that questions rather than submits is always seen as dangerous by those who fear the answers.

I have no personal knowledge of the Tea Party Movement beyond what I’ve read in various media. I have heard individuals speak both for and against it. I do not plan to participate in it. But I do not fear it. And I do not fear what supporters or opponents of it may say. If in the estimate of some the Tea Party Movement is disturbing, others had a similar response to movements as diverse as efforts to develop wage and hour laws, facilitate unionization of shops, enacting civil rights legislation, etc. In an earlier era such movements were seen as wrong headed, disruptive and even revolutionary. Experience has proven that such estimates were fundamentally flawed. History demonstrates that Thomas Jefferson knew a thing or two or three about bringing about change that people could really use. In a time of turbulence he observed, “a little revolution now and then is a good thing.”

Call those with whom you disagree whatever you wish to call them. Some of them are tax payers. Some of them are citizens. And those who are legal citizens have that remarkable opportunity to vote for what they believe is best. That is the American way.