Articles by David Roberts

Friedman: pigs sure would look pretty with wings

I'm not sure if Tom Friedman is just a stubborn optimist or whether he has somehow, after years on the international beat, not been divested of a childish naiveté.

His latest editorial in the NYT deplores the fact that the Republicans just cut the National Science Foundation budget by 2 percent. He says what they ought to do instead is marshal the country behind a massive effort toward energy independence, like Kennedy's call to make it to the moon. Political reform would follow in trouble spots around the world. Birds would sing. The lion and the lamb would lie down together. A new day would dawn.

Well Tom, to quote my granddad, you can wish in one hand and piss in the other and see which one fills up first. Time to come to terms with the people in charge. Earnest idealists they ain't.

Science

Is a basic understanding and appreciation of science necessary to be an environmentalist?  Does it help?  Does it matter?

I'm inclined to say Yes, an understanding of science -- not necessarily all the facts (that's a lot to ask), but certainly the basic principles of scientific inquiry -- is necessary to act effectively to preserve the natural world.

Which is why stuff like this depresses me to no end. Some 55 percent of Americans believe that God created human beings in their present form. That is to say, they do not believe in evolution. Sixty-five percent want evolution and creationism taught side-by-side in schools, and 37 percent want evolution replaced entirely by creationism in schools.

For the record: The scientific consensus on evolution is orders of magnitude more solid than that on climate change. We can quibble about the epistemological and ontological meaning of the word "fact," but to the extent that science produces any facts at all, the basic notion of evolution by natural selection is a fact. If you reject it, you are -- whether you acknowledge it or not -- rejecting science.

And if your mind's in the habit of rejecting empirical scientific data, why should you believe when scientists tell you that the climate is warming? That species are dying off? That mercury causes birth defects?

If someone wants to make the argument that science and environmentalism are separable -- that the spiritual side of environmentalism is what's important -- I'd like to hear it in comments.

Consensus

Via Chris Mooney: Naomi Oreskes has a short paper in the recent issue of Science in which she reports on her review of peer-reviewed climate science papers from 1993 to 2003.

Her results are stark: Not a single peer-reviewed scientific paper challenged the consensus that climate change is being driven by human activities. Not a single one. She concludes:

Many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for understanding climate dynamics. The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen.

Indeed.

States continue to lead the way

Washington Rep. Ed Murray (D), chair of the state's House Transportation Committee, is set to introduce a measure that would have Washington impose greenhouse-gas standards mirroring those recently put in place in California. See if this sounds familiar:

The idea of imposing the tougher standards here was endorsed recently by most members of a task force that included government officials, environmentalists and representatives of some of the state's largest businesses.

The bill will likely face a vigorous fight from the auto industry, which claims the California rules are really an illegal, if indirect, attempt to impose tougher fuel-mileage standards.

Supported by everybody but the auto industry. Who coulda guessed it?

In addition to Washington's laudable effort, recent news reports reveal that Maine, Connecticut, and Rhode Island are either passing or considering similar measures.

UPDATE: Hastily written and misleading -- in a blog post no less! First, the proposed Washington measure has to do with auto emissions, obviously. And the "similar" measures in other states are similar only in that they address auto emissions -- they are not the same thing as the global-warming-focused effort in Cali, but rather Cali's more modest (though still controversial and opposed by automakers) "Clean Car Program," which is about hydrocarbons and smog. Mea culpa.