Haha. But seriously, folks. We're all gonna die.
Al Gore just won't quit, God bless 'im. He's trained a bunch of people to present his slideshow. Among the volunteers were Cameron Diaz, and also a 14-year-old kid, who's going to present the warnings about climate change to people his own age. Awesome.
This is good stuff. A few weeks ago, the ever-stylish Alec Hutchinson noted that if necessary changes are going to be made at the governmental level, people need to be as aware of climate change as they are of the dangers of smoking. The social stigma associated with having a cigarette, the subtle guilt/shame involved, needs to be present in taking an air flight or not carpooling, etc. Only then will sane policies become politically convenient.
One group taking an opposite view is the conservative/libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, where a critic called Gore an alarmist and The Climate Project "odd." Marlo Lewis, CEI senior fellow, political philosopher and author of A Skeptic's Guide to An Inconvenient Truth, said the proselytizing, which includes suggestions for reducing pollution to cut global warming, is a waste. "If global warming were really a problem, and I don't think it is, the idea that you can save the planet by carpooling or eating less meat is really silly."
This doesn't help. The "bias of balance", which compels journalists to present "the other side of the story", even if that means giving the ridiculous impression that anyone with any credibility seriously disagrees that global warming is a problem. Fortunately, we have internal documents from ExxonMobil that shows the Competitive Enterprise Institute has received $2,005,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. Marlo Lewis himself, far from being an authority on matters of science, is a politician through and through. Why would any self-respecting journalist give the impression that this guy represents anything other than the interests of carbon-emitting industry?
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