Here in Salt Lake City we have an opportunity to discuss with Ted Nordhaus. What questions / remarks would Pen-l-ers direct at Ted if you were present? Please help us, we will take your suggestions and report back how he responded. Here is the announcement sent out at the Utah Energy list:
Ted Nordhaus from the The Breakthrough Institute (BTI) will be the keynote speaker at the Utah governor's energy summit at noon on Wednesday June 4. Only those who registered and have paid the fee for the summit will be able to hear this speech. But after his keynote speech, Ted has graciously agreed to participate in an discussion round table which is free of charge and open to everyone. This will happen from 3:30 pm until 6 pm in the Auditorium of the SLC Main Library. There will not be long lectures but concise discussion contributions, and the public is invited to chime in. We will have plenty of time, our goal is to have extended interaction with one of the founding members of the Breakthrough Institute (BTI). The Breakthrough Institute presents itself as a contrarian environmental organization, critical of many of the tactics of other environmental organizations. If you go to their web site you will find thoughtful criticism and interesting facts which are missing on other environmental web sites. For instance, this is the only environmental web site where I found references to the Electrify Africa act. What should an environmentalist say about the building of new fossil fuel infrastructure in Africa right now? This is a discussion which we should be having, but most environmentalists ignore that the decisions about the future CO2 emissions of Africa (and also India, Turkey, etc) are being made right now. But here is the interesting thing: the Breakthrough Institute's thoughtful criticism from an environmental perspective leads them to almost the same results which the fossil fuel and nuclear industries derive from their short-term profit-driven climate-denial self-interest. Joe Romm in http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/04/22/203995/the-breakthrough-institute-shellenberger-nordhaus-pielk/ summarizes the basic findings of BTI as follows: (1) The threat posed by human-cause global warming has been significantly exaggerated. (2) Making carbon polluters pay to emit or regulating greenhouse gas pollution would hurt the economy. (3) The only viable solution to global warming and oil dependence is to eschew a price for carbon and regulations in favor of government spending on breakthrough technologies. How can the BTI be so smart and environmental-minded and yet arrive at such wrong results? This is what we are trying to find out in our extended discussion with Ted Nordhaus. Here is my attempt to explain this puzzle, but I hope to find out much more on Wednesday: (a) selective perception of facts. Although they are good at digging out facts ignored by the mainstream environmentalists, there are indeed many relevant facts ignored by BTI itself too. (b) In their eager search to find flaws in existing environmental regulations and the environmental movement the writers on the BTI web site are often contradicting themselves. Despite these obvious flaws, BTI's critique can also be instructive, we can learn a lot from it. (c) The BTI members make skillful use of the peer-reviewed economics literature, which is a stinking heap of poisonous ideology posing as a science. Yes, I am an economics professor, I know this heap from the inside out. TBI demonstrates how dangerous this ideology is. (Our graduate students can also learn from it what kind of research they should be doing if they want a lucrative career and if the future of the planet is not a big concern to them.) (d) Many of the things TBI says take the unwillingness of the public to reduce their consumption as a given. It this public attitude does not change, then the "environmental pragmatism" espoused by BTI may well be the best we can do. This is definitely an issue I'd like to discuss, it cannot be ruled out beforehand. Therefore, on Wednesday we hope not only to expose BTI, but in the process also to learn as much as we can from the critique they offer. Please come to the discussion on Wednesday and give your best input. We are discussing very important issues. Name-calling will not be permitted. You may point out contradictions and factual omissions but you may not accuse our guest of "doubletalk" or "disinformation" as Joe Romm did. Let's try to find out together why TBI comes to conclusions which make many environmental organizations cringe. Our goal is to save the planet. For this we must change social relations. If we try to make specific individuals or organizations look good or bad which are playing certain roles our society offers up to them, we are chasing a red herring and missing the subject. Hans G Ehrbar BTW, there is also HEAL Utah's energy summit today (Monday) at 7 pm, same location, SLC Main Library Auditorium _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
