The only way it might happen is if we had “a perfect storm” — a storm big enough to finally end the global warming debate but not so big that it ended the world.This is the equivalent of hoping that the USSR would have nuked a small country to "prove" how evil it was and justify a retaliatory strike that crushed them during the Cold War. This is the kind of Strangelovian logic that was parodied in the film Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Absent such a storm that literally parts the Red Sea again and drives home to all the doubters that catastrophic climate change is a clear and present danger, the domestic pressures in every country to avoid legally binding and verifiable carbon reductions will remain very powerful.
This would be like somebody hoping that the H1N1 had killed off half the population of some small country to "scare" people into lining up for vaccination and stop those who worried about the safety of the new vaccine from quibbling and putting doubts in people's heads.
Only fanatics wish for harm so that their petty viewpoint can be justified. Thomas L. Friedman has shown his true colours. He is a fanatic.
An honest and sensitive and caring person would say something like "I sure hope that global warming isn't true, but I worry that it is and everything I read and the facts I've seen convince me it is, so we need to act so as to minimize harm." I can respect somebody who says that. I will argue with them that they are wrong, but I can see that their heart is in the right place.
But somebody who says "I want to see people dying in the street from a severe heat wave so that people will agree with my beliefs and act as I want them to" is a vicious, petty, fanatic who is a danger to everyone. They pretend a care and love for humanity, but their own word condemn them for the heartless beast they show themselves to be.
2 comments:
He is a little Jonah; isn't he? For years, I have believed the global warming theory, and I have really resented the cold temperatures and record snowfalls, but I can't say that I have wished for any disasters to prove my opinion or belief to be true. There are fanatics of all sorts out there who are like this, and wishing to see death in the streets for their own vindication. Some try to take matters into their own hands in an effort to help their god out. Those are the dangerous ones.
I kind of like Friedman till I see this...
Thomas, I was a fan of Friedman for many, many years despite comments from people like Krugman and DeLong who poked fun at his thin analysis. I guess I enjoyed Friedman for the same reason I like Maureen Dowd. I like people who paint pictures with words. Friedman is a good wordsmith. What Krugman and DeLong were pointing out is that he was superficial in his thinking. This article by him was just too much for me. I've removed him from my Google Reader and won't be following him. I may read the odd thing pointed to by somebody else. But he is no longer somebody I will read regularly. This one was a step beyond good taste and reasonableness. I don't like fanatics, and in this article Friedman showed himself to be a global warming fanatic. That's a shame. I'm willing to change my mind if he changes his point of view. But for now he is off my list of people to read.
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