Snowe and Rockefeller on the 'uncertainty' agenda

Senators send letter to ExxonMobil

Posted by Andrew Dessler (Guest Contributor) at 4:34 PM on 04 Dec 2006

Read more about: politics | business | Big Oil | climate | climate change skepticism

Today's Wall Street Journal printed a letter from Senators Snowe and Rockefeller to ExxonMobil (here) along with an editorial about the letter (here).

In the letter, Snowe and Rockefeller ask ExxonMobil to stop perpetuating the uncertainty agenda (which they refer to as the "obfuscation agenda"). The letter is similar in many respects to a letter sent to Exxon by the British Royal Society.

The editorial is a broadside against the Senators. How dare they write that letter! You can feel the anger in it -- I'm quite certain the first draft was written in all caps.

Here are a few thoughts:

While I agree with much of what Snowe and Rockefeller say, I also agree with the WSJ that this is in some ways troubling. As they point out, if the Bush Administration had sent the same letter to some organization, people would be howling about censorship.
What's the deal with the WSJ editorial page? The paper's news section is quite responsible and accurate in their depiction of global warming. But when you turn to the editorial page, it's through the looking glass into the land of denial. They apparently don't know it's not just a river in Egypt.
The uncertainty agenda is alive and kicking. Its appearance here, after a sighting at the Supreme Court, shows that suggestions of its demise are premature.

Stay tuned for some more thoughts.

For story: Snowe and Rockefeller on the 'uncertainty' agenda
2 Comments | Post a Comment

I thought Scorse wrote it

When I read this part:

The letter is of a piece with what has become a campaign of intimidation against any global warming dissent. Not only is everyone supposed to concede that the planet has been warming--as it has--but we are all supposed to salute and agree that human beings are the definitive cause, that the magnitude of the warming will be disastrous and its effects catastrophic, that such problems as AIDS and poverty are less urgent, and that economic planners must therefore impose vast new regulatory burdens on everyone around the world. Exxon is being targeted in this letter and other ways because it is one of the few companies that still thinks some debate on these questions is valuable.

The 5% Project

by JMG at 9:44 AM on 05 Dec 2006

red herrings

The arguement that "global warming may be a problem, but we don't know how urgent it is, and we know that global poverty is an urgent problem for the people living with it" sounds like good, progressive thinking to allocate limited resources in a logical fashion. Unfortunately, it is a red herring, and a dangerous one, precisely because it appeals to effectively to progressive sympathies.

Addressing global warming (and most of environmental issues, for that matter) is fundementally a matter of humans learning how to not crap in their nest. The West created an industrial system, which we've exported to most of the world at this point, that is based on the extraction and liquidation of resources, and the irresponsible disposal of pollution. The system is often propagated on the excuse that it creates jobs and wealth in poor nations. And while that may be true, the vast majority of the wealth so created always accrues to the industrial West, while the vast majority of the liabilities so created (lost soil, destroyed aquifers, polluted fisheries, etc) accrue to the local people.

The poor of the world always suffer the most from environmental degredation, if only because they have the least freedom to leave a degraded area. This will be true with global warming, just like it has been true with mining, oil development, and industrial agriculture. To focus on "relieving poverty" while continuing destructive business-as-usual practices is akin to bailing out a boat while drilling more holes below the water line. It's a losing strategy that ultimately benefits a few (rich and poor) while harming many (mostly poor).

by GreenEngineer at 10:41 AM on 05 Dec 2006

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