As The New York Times has reported, former Vice President Al Gore is still talking about global warming (usually called "climate change," which I think, personally, significantly understates what's really happening). We all do remember the story of the boiling frogs, right?
Some say that this story about the boiling frogs is truly misleading, and that frogs actually will not sit around in a gradually warming pot of water until they're boiled to death.
Humans? Well, there is some evidence going the other way!
The main point made in The Times' article is that Gore now argues his case on "economic," not "moral" grounds:
Onstage in Nashville, Mr. Gore made a central argument that would have been inconceivable two decades ago. Rather than directly invoking morality, he led with economics.
The cost of renewable energy had plunged. He talked about “market forces” and about the “spectacular, unprecedented” technology revolution — including low-cost solar panels and wind turbines — that now make aiding the planet an affordable choice.
“We’re in a different world now,” Mr. Gore said in Nashville. “The options are terrific.”
The moral aspect of climate advocacy has had a long legacy, burnished not only by Mr. Gore but also by Pope Francis, who portrayed a link between environmental degradation and societal rot. In the late 2010s, a wave of youth protesters argued that political leaders and corporations had a duty to safeguard the planet for future generations.
But as that movement waned, some felt the moralizing had at times brought a political backlash. After the documentary’s release ["An Inconvenient Truth"], Mr. Gore was criticized in some right-wing circles for hypocrisy given that he traveled widely and lived a lifestyle reliant on fossil fuels for energy. Later, to attend climate events, the activist Greta Thunberg twice crossed the Atlantic by sailboat in a conspicuous effort to avoid polluting air travel, a move that some critics called a publicity stunt out of reach for noncelebrities.
Environmentalists, meantime, made a new case: that wind and solar energy were becoming cheaper than fossil fuels. Bill McKibben, a founder of the campaign group 350.org, said climate advocates no longer had to “fight against the force of economic gravity.”
Lawyers, who make arguments to juries as part of their normal business, quite often seek to persuade a jury by making multiple, and different, arguments. They always do keep urging the jury, though, to take the specific action for which they are arguing.
One way to look at Gore's recent shift in emphasis is that this is probably a good thing, since the "problem" is to get us to change what we're doing, instead of lounging around in the pot debating whether the temperature is really going up, or not.
I am "ok" with that, but my advice would be to do what the lawyers do. Present all the arguments! Candidly, I am getting quite tired of hearing public policy matters discussed, for the most part, as if "economic" issues were the only issues of importance. Public policy choices do, of course, quite often have very significant "economic" impacts, but there are also moral imperatives that I think are more important than the economic probabilities.
We live in a world into which we have all been born, most mysteriously, a "Natural World" that is not our own creation, and I continue to think that we need to respect that fact, while certainly understanding our own powers and prerogatives and all those very real "economic" impacts that flow from our human choices.
I would like to think that Al Gore (and all of us) would not forget that!
(2) - https://skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=403
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