politics

Thus spoke Bill McKibben.

18 Comments

From on his high pedestal at the New York Times, Bill McKibben tells us Obama is a climate change denier. Yes. Obama. You can read more at: Obama’s Catastrophic Climate-Change Denial

The article ends with a discussion of the different types of denialists. I guess this is a “Democratic” sort.

This is not climate denial of the Republican sort, where people simply pretend the science isn’t real. This is climate denial of the status quo sort, where people accept the science, and indeed make long speeches about the immorality of passing on a ruined world to our children. They just deny the meaning of the science, which is that we must keep carbon in the ground.

We have not yet heard whether this puts Obama in the 3%. We may need to ask the guys at SkS.

18 thoughts on “Thus spoke Bill McKibben.”

  3. Call me cynical, but since the President is a lame duck, the machine can deem him expendable now. Under the bus ya go, friend.

    Andrew

  5. I don’t think we should allow just anybody to join the 3%. It’s a pretty exclusive club after all. I know the President is a Nobel Peace Prize winner and all, and he’s the President and so on, but still…

  6. McKibben puts the kook in climate kook.
    He has ridden his obsession and con for a nice lucrative long ride and is now doing what extremists do best: eat their own.
    Bon Apetit,

  7. It is appalling that the Bill McKibben’s of the world get the NY Times’ of the world as their platforms

  10. Mark Bofill (Comment #136223)

    “I don’t think we should allow just anybody to join the 3%. ”

    😀 Perhaps we should arrange an application to an elected board with a recognized member of the 3% for mentoring and guaranteeing the veracity of the nominee. Of course we might need some kind of ID or birth certificate or something from the perspective applicant.

  11. Jeff Id (Comment #136241)
    I think the climate concerned have something more like a large badge “D”, perhaps in yellow, sewn on the clothing of skeptics and required by law to be easily seen by the public.

  12. McKibben should read the article linked at the bottom of his entitled It Is, in Fact, Rocket Science where physicist Leonard Moldinow pans school science for leading people to believe science is simpler than it is, that an apple can fall on one’s head and give one an epiphany which allows one to write the Newton’s Principia. Moldinow says over-simplifying science for the purpose of romanticizing it and its heros has a destructive side effect.

    If our discourse on such topics is to be intelligent and productive, we need to dip below the surface and grapple with the complex underlying issues.

    McKibben is the founder of 350.org, (named by the CO2 ppm he wants us to be at). My son got involved in their campus campaign to force their university’s endowment to divest from fossil fuel equities. This is what got your’s truly interested in learning how simple climate really is. Of course, none of the hundreds of students, spending thousands of man-hours planning, campaigning and fund raising, understand a tenth as much climate science as luke-warmers have to know. The burden is placed on the “denier” not to be a bad citizen, leader or dad.

  13. In the line of doing things that won’t accomplish your objective, universities divesting their endowments of fossil fuel equities is up there near the top. 350.org is a classic example of magical thinking. There is no practical way to achieve that objective. Well, there’s always global thermonuclear war or a Twelve Monkeys type plague. Short of that, it’s unlikely that atmospheric CO2 will return to 350ppmv for centuries or longer, depending on the total mass of fossil carbon released before fossil carbon is no longer a practical primary energy source. It took ~100,000 years to recover from the PETM.

  17. Governor Brown of California has issued an Executive Order to all state agencies to consider the impacts of climate change in all decisions they make, with the goal of using the full force of state government in pushing ambitious GHG emission reduction targets for California. A detailed plan for the state will be published in September 2015.

    President Obama could do something similar at the national level, but he hasn’t gone nearly as far as Governor Brown has gone, nor as far as current environmental law allows him to go, in forcing ambitious reductions in America’s carbon emissions.

    Over on WUWT, Bill McKibben himself responded to a post by Eric Worrall concerning NYT’s ‘Obama’s Catastrophic Climate-Change Denial’ opinion piece:

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/13/nyt-claim-obamas-catastrophic-climate-denial/

    In his comments posted to that Eric Worrall WUWT thread, Bill McKibben expressed his faith that advances in renewable energy technology were the key to achieving the GHG emission reductions he seeks. I posed the following question directly to Mr. McKibben concerning President Obama’s lack of action in doing everything that current law allows him to do in pushing ambitious GHG reduction goals at the national level:

    ========================================

    Posted by Beta Blocker on WUWT, May 13, 2015:

    Bill McKibben:

    If the stated goal here is to achieve your vision for a rapid transition into a renewable energy future, technology advancement is not by itself a practical means to that end.

    Energy conservation measures which significantly reduce total demand for energy across all sectors of the American economy are the key enablers which will allow these new technologies the breathing room they need to grow and develop. The only way your vision can be achieved is to combine ongoing advancements in renewable technology with a coordinated series of regulatory actions which strongly encourage the adoption of strict energy conservation measures by all energy consumers.

    How can this be done?

    The EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding for carbon pollution, written under the authority of the Clean Air Act, has been upheld by the US Supreme Court. The Executive Branch and the EPA now have full legal authority to regulate carbon emissions to the maximum extent possible under the Clean Air Act, and to do so without needing another word of new legislation from the US Congress. The 2009 finding enables the EPA and the Executive Branch to pursue exceptionally aggressive action against carbon emissions, if the EPA and the Executive Branch choose to do so.

    President Obama has said that climate change represents a greater threat to America’s national security than does terrorism. He has set a goal of a 28% reduction in America’s GHG emissions by 2025; and a goal of an 80% reduction in GHG emissions by 2050. And yet, the Obama Administration has not gone nearly as far as it legally could go in taking strong regulatory action against carbon emissions.

    The Obama Administration’s existing climate action plan greatly favors natural gas at the expense of alternative energy resources such as wind, solar, and nuclear. Obama’s current plan guarantees that America will eventually be covered with fracking wells from one end of the country to the other.

    For those of the Progressive Left who now have issues with President Obama’s apparent lack of a sincere commitment to fighting climate change, they must acknowledge that the only practical means of reducing America’s carbon emissions to the extent they claim is necessary is to artificially raise the price of all carbon fuels to levels which will make them uncompetitive with alternative energy technologies, doing so through direct and decisive government intervention in the energy marketplace.

    Here in the United States, this can be done without a legislated carbon tax through an integrated combination of two major anti-carbon measures administered by the EPA. The first measure would be to directly constrain emissions of carbon pollution through a specified series of state, regional, and national emission limits. The second measure would be to impose a corresponding framework of stiff carbon pollution fines which is the functional equivalent of a legislated carbon tax.

    As long as the EPA properly follows its existing and well-tested regulatory rule-making processes and procedures; and as long as the anti-carbon regulations are themselves fair and impartial in their application, then this two-prong regulatory attack on carbon emissions can be made bulletproof against the threat of lawsuits.

    What it all boils down to is this …. if America’s progressive left wants to pursue it, there exists today a clear and unambiguous public policy pathway towards decarbonizing America’s economy. Nothing that right-wing politicians could do short of repealing the Clean Air Act could stop the EPA from legally decarbonizing America’s economy, if the EPA were to be given instructions by the Obama Administration to use its full legal authority in pursuit of that goal.

    So the question naturally arises …… why aren’t the most prominent leaders of America’s progressive left — Robert Kennedy Jr., Al Gore, Elizabeth Warren, Edward Markey, Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, and you yourself, Bill McKibben — why aren’t these people all publicly demanding that President Obama and the EPA use the full legal authority the Executive Branch already has in its hands to largely decarbonize America’s economy?

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