ECO:nomics: The decline and fall of the ideologues

Delayers and doomsayers receive a chilly reception from pragmatic business leaders

Posted by David Roberts at 9:06 AM on 19 Mar 2008

Read more about: business | climate change skepticism

There was a lot going on at the conference, but one underlying dynamic is particularly notable. I mentioned it in my post on Jeff Immelt's panel, but it's worth discussing at more length.

The conservative ideologues -- the WSJ editorial board, invited guests Fred Smith and Myron Ebell of CEI, Steve Milloy of JunkScience -- thought they were going to put the CEOs' feet to the fire. Force business community to face some hard truths. Expose carbon policy as an economy killer!

Instead, they ended up looking small, shrill, and utterly marginalized. Despite their claims to be pro-business, the business community disdains them.

One incident captured it pretty well. During the panel where EDF's Fred Krupp debated CEI's Fred Smith, moderator and right-wing polemicist Kim Strassel of the WSJ editorial board paused to ask the audience, "is there a CEO who went down this road [going 'green'] and hasn't been happy with the experience?" She looked around the room expectantly, even hopefully.

Crickets.

Wait, no. That wasn't my favorite. My favorite came when Strassel asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, "Do you see any pros in global warming?" For just a moment he was struck dumb, as though waiting for a punchline. Finally: "No."

Or when she confronted Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris, asking incredulously, "do you think 80% by 2050 is achievable?" The breezy response: "My answer's obvious." So Strassel turned and asked the same question of the crowd. They voted: 75% think it can be done. Strassel's face fell.

Or hold on. Even favoriter: There was a debate between Mindy Lubber of Ceres, whose Investor Network on Climate Risk represents $5 trillion in capital, and Steve Milloy, who was there on behalf of his Free Enterprise Action Fund. Milloy spent 20 minutes telling Lubber she was an unwitting vehicle for lefty activists and the CEOs in attendance that they were dupes being fleeced out of billions of dollars by devious crypto-socialists. Toward the end, Andrew Shapiro of Green Order rose to ask Milloy, how much capital does your fund represent? The too-dumb-to-be-embarrassed answer, which prompted open laughter in the audience? $11 million. As Shapiro noted: looks like the market has spoken.

Or was it this one? Watch Alan Murray poke and prod Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr., trying to get him to object to a cap-and-trade program because it will raise prices:

Scott just won't take the bait. He's not going to run around screaming like a little girl because some economic model forecasts doom. He's been through this before. He knows as well as anyone that the American economy is extraordinarily resilient and adaptable.

Or perhaps it was when Jeff Immelt responded to one scold, "I don't need to be lectured by anybody in this room about how to compete!"

Time after time, the ideologues pushed the same questions: Isn't this a tax? Isn't the government crippling the free market? Won't we lose our precious fluids?

Time after time, they were dismissed, with reactions ranging from anger to awkward condescension (as when the crazy uncle starts in at the family reunion) to barely concealed disdain. The people operating in the market -- as opposed to lobbing bombs from think tanks and Fox News studios -- are pragmatists. They don't have time for rigid ideology, or as Immelt called it, "false idols." Their job is to make money within the constraints set by the polity; they are under no illusion that there ever was or ever will be the frictionless free market of Ayn Rand's heated fantasies. Unlike the dour doomsayers, they have faith in themselves, in the business community, and in America to innovate and tackle any challenge.

As one reporter noted to me in the hallway, the WSJ embarrassed itself by inviting them. "Maybe this debate was interesting two years ago ..." Now it just looks like the twitching of a corpse already beyond the point of brain death.

For story: ECO:nomics: The decline and fall of the ideologues
37 Comments | Post a Comment

David

Great coverage of the conference. I appreciate your take on it.

It is ironic that dead-enders was a term used by the arch-right, now it looks like more of a Freudian slip.

by anotherID at 9:51 AM on 19 Mar 2008

Awesome reporting

And victory over the wing nut think tank right.

But the pragmatic hedge fund traders are waiting in the wings to get their greedy hands on carbon markets. Maybe Immelt and others will heed the warning of this global credit crisis?

The real market, real world, pragmatic policy is direct subsidy diversion. 10 cents per kwh for renwables and conservation diverted from oil, coal, agribizz, and nuclear energy subsidies.

Not more "hedging" to address GHG climate risks with easily scammed C and T.

The caps will be moved according to the political winds up and down, mainly up. The trading will be scammed just as a hedge fund bubble is being built up in ethanol crop growing farmland right now.

How did that "hedging" of mortgage risk work out? Now that the fed is going to buy all the bad loans, pretty good huh? So the biggest capitalists rely on socialism in the end, to bail them out, with corporate welfare.

Just like in the 80s savings and loan crisis, just like the 90s LTCM hedge fund crisis, just like this crisis. BTW, is another bailout of chrysler coming? Or maybe GM or ford? Too big to fail.

Where do we the people get an insurance plan like that? Spend your paycheck buying lottery tickets, if you lose, get the government to pay your expenees.

Yeah, that's the kind of thinking you want to cure the climate crisis. The Henry Hill financial perspective of "Goodfellas". You lose a bet, you go on the street and rob.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 10:18 AM on 19 Mar 2008

It is a miracle

Amazingdrx posts something I agree with.

The scammers and con men that were in the Enron/Worldcom & tech bubble, that moved over to the mortgage/credit bubble are now moving in on the emerging cleantech/greentech bubble.

The con men are coming! The con men are coming!

by anotherID at 12:45 PM on 19 Mar 2008

I'd like to hear even more

I'm facinated by the disconnect between the idealogues & business.

by setb at 1:28 PM on 19 Mar 2008

Con - text.

Sure, the hipster business community thinks that they can have their cake and eat it too.

"Look how productive/green we are!" "What? Oh, them? Nevermind them or their pollution - they're just our Third World manufacturing base" "Here, have a $5 latte. And don't forget to pick up your complimentary mortgage refi on your way out"

by Grant Williams at 7:02 PM on 19 Mar 2008

Re: Con - text

Meanwhile, the defenders of True Blue Non-Hippie Free Marketeerism have to go around begging people for money so that they can sink it into moronic ad campaigns:

http://www.desmogblog.com/cei-struggles-to-remain-relevan ...

If Grant Williams is so great, why isn't he more successful than Al Gore already?

Hahahahahahaha.

by frankbi at 9:10 PM on 19 Mar 2008

Denialism = making stuff up

Not to mention that the "pollution"-heavy "Third World manufacturing base" of the "hipster business community" is entirely made up in the denialists' own heads.

While the CEI's attempts to get corporate welfare dole-outs from Good Capitalist Samaritans are... really real.

Denialists have been screaming that the entire group of non-"skeptics" is guilty of unspecified bias or undescribable hypocrisy or undetected fraud. While turning a blind eye to the well-proven, well-documented cases of distortion and inconsistency and pure garbage being pumped out by their own "camp".

by frankbi at 11:29 PM on 19 Mar 2008

This was hilarious

I especially liked how, even though the right wing likes to attack the straw man of liberal ivory-tower eggheads, it's really these think-tank types who've spent their entire lives in a bubble, blathering about "markets" even though they never have and never could make a cent selling water in the desert.

by Russ at 6:33 AM on 20 Mar 2008

Con - vict

Because I don't know how to appeal to the petty, power worshiping emotions of people like yourself. I certainly don't know what to say to the schizophrenic laugh at the end of your post.

There's that, and there's also the fact that I, like business people, don't have the power to use compulsion to get people to follow my point of view.

by Grant Williams at 6:49 AM on 20 Mar 2008
[ Parent ]

Also...

What makes you think that I'm a denialist? I don't know squat about the environment. I just know that, whatever it's negative byproducts, industrial civilization is far more beneficial to human life than "eco-harmony."

by Grant Williams at 6:56 AM on 20 Mar 2008

Economic growth versus ECO: NOMICS

What concerns me is this: the captains of the corporate world in my generation of elders could be "selling a bill of goods" to our young people today; but we have no intention of fulfilling our promises and will fail to deliver the goods. In part, these unfortunate circumstances result from my generation's conspicuous over-consumption of finite resources as as well as from our reckless dissipation of limited natural resources bound up in the colossal scale and soon to be unsustainable growth of economic globalization.

My not-so-great generation appears to be mortgaging and threatening the future of its children by remaining religiously focused upon the endless accumulation of material wealth, the unchecked increase in per capita consumption of scarce resources, and the continuous expansion of large-scale industrialization capabilities.

Despite all our high-minded rhetoric to the contrary, we need not look far to see that money, power and privilege for ourselves, for our bought-and-paid-for politicians, and for our newly-made rich minions in the mass media are the primary objects of our desire. Regardless of the human-driven calamities that might befall coming generations, the leadership in my generation advises all of us to live long, and to "achieve in life" by living large, in a patently unsustainable world of idle comforts, effortless ease, ravenous consumption, secret handshakes, exclusive clubs, exotic hideaways and thousands of McMansions and private jets, having abandoned our regard for the less fortunate among us, for the maintenance of life as we know it, and for the preservation of the integrity of Earth.

Please consider that the single-minded pursuit of dollars, political power and privileges to profligately consume, and to magnificently ignore the practical requirements of biophysical reality, as our raisons d'etre, come what may for the children.

When my generation completes its unsavory 'mission' on Earth, I fear young people will look back in anger and utter disbelief at the things we have done and failed to do.....all things we proclaim loudly now as exercises of virtue.

Yes, of course, there is a huge, outstanding and growing ecological debt.... but, please, let us get real for a moment and understand what my generation does not want its children to know: your elders are determined to let the gigantic ecological debt and looming threats to human and environmental health, for which our generation is largely responsible, fall into your lap, come what may.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/

by stevenearlsalmony at 7:48 AM on 20 Mar 2008

Grant Williams, stop making crap up

Grant Williams, stop making crap up. You have nada to back up your aspersions against the "hipster business community", period.

"it's really these think-tank types who've spent their entire lives in a bubble, blathering about `markets' even though they never have and never could make a cent selling water in the desert."

Well said, Russ!

by frankbi at 8:14 AM on 20 Mar 2008

Fun with Grant Williams

I don't know squat about the environment.

Since you live in the environment 100% of the time, this is a fairly astonishing admission.

I just know that, whatever it's negative byproducts, industrial civilization is far more beneficial to human life than "eco-harmony."

Especially if you have the money to buy its products, and aren't part of that bottom 40% which lives on less than $2/day. Caveat: don't have children -- they'll get to experience the ecosystem collapse you engineered.

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

by LegumeSam at 8:15 AM on 20 Mar 2008
[ Parent ]

Fun?

Spurious, intentionally confounding claims aren't fun. You knew exactly what I meant by my use of the term "environment."

As for your admonitions that my appraisal of industrial civilization is selfish: Yes, it is. Proudly so. I do not feel one iota of responsibility towards all of those people in the 3rd World (who, by the way, wouldn't nearly be as numerous if not for some seepage of industry into their countries), nor for the children I would never be able to have were I hobbled from 16 hour days of Medieval farm labor or killed by the influenza virus.

by Grant Williams at 8:38 AM on 20 Mar 2008
[ Parent ]

Yes, fun.

Spurious, intentionally confounding claims aren't fun. You knew exactly what I meant by my use of the term "environment."

I don't think I do know what you mean. Is this the Humpty Dumpty theory of word meaning: "`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'"

Or are you arguing that we don't spend 100% of our time in the environment? You did say that my claim was "spurious," did you not?

As for your admonitions that my appraisal of industrial civilization is selfish: Yes, it is. Proudly so. I do not feel one iota of responsibility towards all of those people in the 3rd World

Selfishness and irresponsibility woven into his banner! Wave it HIGH!

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

by LegumeSam at 8:51 AM on 20 Mar 2008
[ Parent ]

Sad

Your retort was spurious because it appeared like a response to my claim that I'm not a scientist specializing in the field of ecological homeostasis, but in fact it was a response to my "claim", invented by you, that I exist apart from the environment.

It was confounding because it brought our discussion to this point. Instead of having a discussion centered around weighing the benefits and hazards of industrial civlization, or establishing a rational standard for what is a benefit and what is a hazard, we are doing this. I am defending myself against insinuations that I am a religionist or a mad man, and you are attempting to redefine the word "spurious" to mean simply "untrue."

by Grant Williams at 9:07 AM on 20 Mar 2008
[ Parent ]

Entertainment for a Thursday morning

you are attempting to redefine the word "spurious" to mean simply "untrue."

From Merriam-Webster online:

2: outwardly similar or corresponding to something without having its genuine qualities : false <the spurious eminence of the pop celebrity>

Yep, "spurious" means false.

So, have you changed your mind? Do we live in the environment 100% of the time, or don't we?

Your retort was spurious because it appeared like a response to my claim that I'm not a scientist specializing in the field of ecological homeostasis, but in fact it was a response to my "claim", invented by you, that I exist apart from the environment.

No, actually what you were suggesting, from the get-go, was that you live in ignorance of your environment.

It was confounding because it brought our discussion to this point. Instead of having a discussion centered around weighing the benefits and hazards of industrial civlization, or establishing a rational standard for what is a benefit and what is a hazard, we are doing this.

Why would I want to discuss these things with you?

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

by LegumeSam at 9:22 AM on 20 Mar 2008
[ Parent ]

yawn

Spuriousness is a specific type of falsity. That's why I said that you were, and are, wrong in defining it as simply false.

As for your next feeble attempt at sophistry: No, I did not claim that I live in ignorance of my environment, I merely claimed that I lacked adequate knowledge to determine that human activity is the vital cause of ecological destruction. Would I be contradicting myself to claim that I am not a nutritionist merely because I am aware that bread, and not rocks, are edible?

But of course, none of this matters, because my agreement of disagreement on legitimacy of environmentalist claims is not the issue I raised. The issue I raised is the one which you wish not to discuss: why "eco-harmony" is preferable to unbridled industrial civilization.

by Grant Williams at 9:35 AM on 20 Mar 2008
[ Parent ]

You're such a great comic foil!

Grant Williams said:

I don't know squat about the environment.

What was that again?

I don't know squat about the environment.

Yeah, I thought so. LOL! And then he said:

I merely claimed that I lacked adequate knowledge to determine that human activity is the vital cause of ecological destruction.

Which brings up my earlier question: "Why would I want to talk about it with you?"

Do you think I'd learn anything?

The issue I raised is the one which you wish not to discuss: why "eco-harmony" is preferable to unbridled industrial civilization.

Since you "don't know squat about the environment," it stands to reason that you don't know what "eco-harmony" is, either. We're back to the last question: why would I want to discuss it with you?

Here are some books that might start you out:

Mark Lynas, Six Degrees
Miller and Westra (eds.), Just Ecological Integrity
Jared Diamond, Collapse
Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, The Sixth Extinction

well, that's enough for now...

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

by LegumeSam at 9:46 AM on 20 Mar 2008

thanks

You're earlier question: "Why would I want to talk about it with you?" was in response to my claim that industry is better than ecology. It was not in response to my claim that I don't know if industry plays a role in pollution. I don't want to talk about that one with you, either.

Moving on, maybe I don't know what "eco-harmony" is, but I do know what I'm opposed to. I'm opposed to everything mentioned in the article above - as well as any restrictions on industrial activity beyond the right of a private citizen to demand that his private property be left unpolluted.

The fact that some business men, knowing it would be political and legal suicide to do otherwise, support these restrictions in the developed world doesn't change the fact that their profitability has to come from somewhere. Notably, the third world. Of course, it is in their short-term interest to convince people like yourself that they're on your side, but that doesn't change the fact that if they wish to continue to be business men, and not Medieval serfs, they have to eventually be on mine.

by Grant Williams at 9:57 AM on 20 Mar 2008
[ Parent ]

Grant Williams hates facts

"I'm opposed to everything mentioned in the article above - as well as any restrictions on industrial activity beyond the right of a private citizen to demand that his private property be left unpolluted." -- Grant Williams

Woohoo, another idiotic anti-science, anti-fact ideologue who spends his time in an abstract bubble, in contrast to someone who actually knows something about how to create value for money.

by frankbi at 11:23 AM on 20 Mar 2008

Facts :(

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights..." - Thomas Jefferson

Woohoo! Another stubborn, uncompromising ideologue who spends his time dreaming about some abstract "liberty", in contrast to someone who will just accept the conventional wisdom, that Britian is our mother, and attempt to make his forturne trading with them.

by Grant Williams at 11:32 AM on 20 Mar 2008

Grant Williams still hates facts

I'm sure the "..." part of the Thomas Jefferson quote says why facts are evil evil evil!

So Grant Williams, when are you going to actually get around to providing evidence for your aspersions?

Oh yeah, because Thomas Jefferson said something, therefore the IPCC are obviously completely wrong and Al Gore is the Antichrist and Andrew Liveris is a pinko. Surprising how many "truths" one can pull out just from a snippet of Thomas Jefferson.

by frankbi at 11:40 AM on 20 Mar 2008

um

I don't know what the IPCC is. I haven't researched any of Al Gore's claims. I don't know who Andrew Liveris is.

As I've said in many of my comments so far, I don't care how true or false the environmentalists' claims are. That has never been my point. My point has always been that none of whatever humans might be doing to the environment is inherently wrong. The cost of reversing industrial civilization far outweighs any of it's benefits.

I also hold that, if there are any benefits to human life which being green brings, they don't need government intervention to come into being. All they need is a reaffirmation of private property in the legal code. A reaffirmation that says that if a plaintiff can objectively demonstrate that a particular polluter has caused a direct impact on his property's cleanliness, then he is entitled to justice.

I also don't care if you agree with me, or if some CEO disagrees with me because he can't see beyond next quarter, or if you dismiss logically inferred, Constitutionally consistent philosophical principles as "ideological stubbornness", it is what it is.

by Grant Williams at 11:49 AM on 20 Mar 2008
[ Parent ]

Why does Grant William hate facts?

"I don't know what the IPCC is. I haven't researched any of Al Gore's claims. I don't know who Andrew Liveris is."

And yet you're effectively saying that they're all wrong and they're all frauds, because Thomas Jefferson said something.

"logically inferred"

Wow, it's so "logical"! So which of Aristotle's syllogisms did you pull out all your profound "truths" from? Inquiring minds want to know!

(Well, my friends, that's denialist "science" and "logic" for ya.)

by frankbi at 12:07 PM on 20 Mar 2008

I'm confused

I don't see what is so difficult to understand about this. I'm not saying one thing or another about the IPCC, Gore, or Liveras. I'm simply saying that if their predictions or true, it still wouldn't change the fact that industrial civilization, in order to continue to exist, must be free of any and all environmental restrictions. I'm saying that the most important question is whether or not climate change is a bad thing - not whether or not it is occuring.

You just will not spit out this straw man argument you keep attributing to me. I'm sorry that you didn't understand my analogy between myself and Thoman Jefferson, but it's really making your attempt to claim big business as allies pathetically desperate. It's also, quite frankly, calling into question your reading comprehension.

by Grant Williams at 12:14 PM on 20 Mar 2008
[ Parent ]

Grant Williams still hates facts

"it still wouldn't change the fact that industrial civilization, in order to continue to exist, must be free of any and all environmental restrictions."

And you arrived at this "fact" how?

Of course, since Al Gore and others disagree with your supposed "fact", therefore you're effectively saying they're wrong. But yet you try not to say directly they're wrong, by acting all ignorant about what they're saying.

But after all, you're saying that some unspecified syllogisms from Aristotle allowed you to conclude that "industrial civilization" "must be free of" "environmental restrictions". Aristotle Aristotle Aristotle! Yeah, that's it.

by frankbi at 12:22 PM on 20 Mar 2008

Here's how...

A good example of how I arrived at that fact was in my very first comment. I pointed out that despite all of the feel-good talk by the pandering business men in this article, they pollution has not gone away. The rise in prices and the greening of the developed world has simply been absorbed by the developing world - in terms of cheap labor and increasing pollution levels in those countries.

Now, you may want to do away with those phenomenons too, but then we'll have to end this conversation - or at least continue it via The Pony Express.

by Grant Williams at 12:26 PM on 20 Mar 2008
[ Parent ]

Big biz vs. Grant's take on Aristotle

"it's really making your attempt to claim big business as allies pathetically desperate."

No, you see, we don't "claim big business as allies", because they are allies.

The ones who actually produce stuff, and actually know how to make money -- as evidenced by the fact that they do make money. These people do support eco-friendly policies, and they do know how to make money.

Unlike the soi-disant "free market" CEI, who don't stand a chance in the real free market. And unlike you and your interpretation of Aristotle.

by frankbi at 12:26 PM on 20 Mar 2008

No

"A good example of how I arrived at that fact was in my very first comment. I pointed out that despite all of the feel-good talk by the pandering business men in this article, they pollution has not gone away."

No, you made up a bunch of crap and passed it off as some sort of "evidence".

by frankbi at 12:28 PM on 20 Mar 2008

how..

how do they make money?

by Grant Williams at 12:29 PM on 20 Mar 2008
[ Parent ]

uh

It's not true that there has been a massive increase in industrial activity in China, India, Japan, and the Middle East ever since America and Western Europe stopped being primarily manufacturing economies?

by Grant Williams at 12:30 PM on 20 Mar 2008
[ Parent ]

Now it's the fluffy generalities

Oh, now it's China, India, and the Middle East. I thought you were talking about the "hipster business community"? Or are you just blowing lots of smoke?

by frankbi at 12:32 PM on 20 Mar 2008

Simple reasoning.

I'm not going to continue with you. You're too intellectually dishonest.

by Grant Williams at 12:34 PM on 20 Mar 2008
[ Parent ]

Grant Williams, give me one solid fact...

...that's not a fluffy generality. And tell me how this solid fact proves that the "hipster business community" are hypocrites.

by frankbi at 12:35 PM on 20 Mar 2008

GE and Wal-Mart = "hipsters"?

Odd.

grist.org

by David Roberts at 1:06 PM on 20 Mar 2008

John Gray speaks out.............

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/30/fossi ...

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/

by stevenearlsalmony at 5:41 PM on 30 Mar 2008

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