This morning, I have had some fun deconstructing a characteristically gloomy article in Newsweek [‘The Green Phantom. Global warming’s curious absence as a campaign issue’, Newsweek, April 24].

Fundamentally, the piece is a cry of disbelief that, despite all the coverage [uncritical coverage, I would add] of the great ‘global warming’ trope in such bien pensant US media as Newsweek itself and the New York Times, a deep:

“... disconnect persists. National polls show that the environment ranks fairly low as an issue that moves voters. In the Pennsylvania primary global warming was such a peripheral issue that exit pollsters did not even bother to measure voter attitudes toward it ... Aside from speaking in broad generalities and making vague promises, the candidates steer away from involved debate on global warming. (Enabled, it should be said, by political reporters. Of the more than 3,000 questions asked in the more than 20 presidential debates, fewer than 10 mentioned global warming.)”

The main thrust of the article is that, while ‘global warming’ remains an elitist, coastal issue in the US, a dinner table love-in for the chattering classes, in reality it is, paradoxically, an issue that “the green-conscious upper classes do not wish to confront”:

“Making a serious dent in global warming would be hugely costly. Fueled by population growth and a growing prosperity in underdeveloped parts of the world, greenhouse emissions will more than double by 2050, according to most estimates. About three-quarters of the growth will come in developing countries like China and India that, for understandable reasons, are not about to forgo economic growth at a time when their average citizen still consumes about a fifth as much energy as the average American.”

In conclusion, there is a reluctant recognition that slashing ‘greenhouse’ gas emissions is virtually impossible. Hence the final cri de coeur:

“That means calling for sacrifice - serious wartime sacrifice.”

Intellectual Masturbation

This is a strangely satisfying piece. It may be the usual doom-laden call to arms and to sacrifice, but, when deconstructed, it is a clear admission that the average American is not falling for the intellectual masturbation [apologies for using that phrase - yet, it is an all too accurate description] of East and West Coast ‘intellectuals’, and that, for all the brouhaha, even the latter are unlikely to wreck the economy for the new-found faith:

“... politicians posture. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger boasts of a plan to drastically cut his state’s greenhouse emissions. But he doesn’t spell out how this goal can be achieved.”

Of course not. I have long argued on this site that the ‘global warming’ myth will lose sway, not because of any scientific coup, but because, in the end, the politicians will be unable to act on their own rhetoric. I believe the political crunch is imminent, above all because ordinary folk are starting to grasp the hypocrisies and the ill-judged costs involved.

This Newsweek article is characteristic of a number I have read recently. Suddenly, ‘global warming’ is being commuted to complex climate change, climate mitigation to climate adaptation, and the current cooling seen as ‘global warming slowing down’. Along with the last-ditch cries for a wartime spirit, the excuses and the get-out clauses are being honed by the day.

‘Global warming’ will remain a foolish faith without works, a ‘Green Phantom’, from which the fear will gradually and inexorably drain away.

What worries me is what will be next on the East Coast agenda of doom and gloom.